Loeb finalists named

The finalists for the Loeb Awards, administered by the UCLA Anderson School of Management, were named in a video conference on Monday by dean Judy D. Olian. There is no press release yet, and I did not catch all of the reporter’s names, but I did get all of the names of the newspapers and media outlets. The webcast can be viewed at http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/

(Updated at 2:27 p.m. EST) A press release is now available here, but the finalists have yet to be posted on the Loeb web site.

The Loeb Awards are considered the Pulitzer Prize of business journalism.

The finalists in the big newspaper category, circulation of more than 400,000, were USA Today, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. The Atlanta entry was titled “Borrower beware,” while the WSJ entry was “Taxes and terrorism.” The New York Times’ writer was Barry Meier.

The finalists in the medium newspaper category, circulation between 150,000 and 400,000, were Toledo Blade, Sacramento Bee, Syracuse Post-Standard and Seattle Times. The Blade’s entry was for the rare coin scandal, while the Times’ entry was “Selling drug secrets.”

The finalists in the small newspaper category, circulation of less than 150,000, were the Willamette Week in Portland, Ore., the Allenton Morning Call, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Finalists in the magazine category were Barlett & Steele in Time magazine, Bloomberg Markets, The Economist, Barron’s and Carol Loomis for her story on Hewlett-Packard and ousted CEO Carly Fiorina in Fortune.

Finalists in the commentary category were the Boston Globe, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

Finalists in the deadline category were the New York Times, the New Castle News Journal in Delaware for coverage of the sale of MBNA, the San Jose Mercury News for coverage of Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina’s ouster and the Detroit News.

Finalists in the beat reporting category were the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Press of Newport News, the St. Petersburg Times and the New York Times.

Finalists in the news service/online category were the Associated Press, CNetnews.com, Bloomberg News and TheStreet.com. The Bloomberg entry was “Big pharma’s shameful secret.”

Finalists in the TV deadline category were two entries from CBS News Sunday Morning and one each from ABC News and NBC Nightly News.

Finalists in the TV enterprise category were the ‘NewsHour’ with Jim Lehrer for “China Rising,” WFAA in Dallas, Leslie Stahl and staff of ’60 Minutes’ for “Illegal and Thriving” and ABC News for “11 Wall Street.”

Finalists in the business book category, a new category for 2006, were Thomas B. Friedman’s “The World is Flat,” Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s “Freakonomics” and James Stewart’s “DisneyWar.”

Winners will be announced at the dinner on June 26 in New York.