Well, look at that. The Pulitzers have been announced, and they certainly have spread the wealth: the Wall Street Journal wins two, but no other paper gets more than one, including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, which each win one. The Washington Post gets completely goose-egged, though the paper had finalists in several categories. (Complete list here.) Interestingly, the Daily News editorial board wins for editorial writing "for its compassionate and compelling editorials on behalf of Ground Zero workers whose health problems were neglected by the city and the nation." That's great for the DN and all, but it's a slap in the face to the newsroom, which, you'll recall, got slammed by the New York Times in February for not doing its due diligence on the story of a supposed "first responder" to the scene who later fell ill, which then led to some newsroom mudslinging as the news side felt abandoned by editorial. Look who's come out on top now!

• Byron "Barney" Calame's term as Times ombudsman will not be that paper's last. No word yet on a successor, but we understand that this guy is not in the running. [WWD]
  

Girl reporter Jo Piazza, who earned her gossip Brownie badges as a Rush & Molloy stringer before becoming a full feature-writing girl scout, has taken up her sash and emancipated herself from the New York Daily News. She's headed for the greener pastures of New Jersey, where she'll help to launch the Bauer-owned ladygoss magazine Cocktail—no, not the eponymous magazine for men with small weiners that Balk made up—as an executive editor. Good news for Jo, but a devastating blow for newsroom gender equality: now there is almost literally no one left on the News's writing staff for Joanna Molloy to borrow a tampon from.

The Long Island couple who are raising a half-black baby as a result of a Park Ave. fertility clinic's mistake got a judge's go-ahead yesterday to sue the clinic for malpractice. They're also trying hard not to come off as racist assholes, but it's tricky. The line between 'we love our daughter' and 'we would like to return this defective product' is a fine one, it seems! "While we love Baby Jessica as our own, we are reminded of this terrible mistake each and every time we look at her," legal documents quote the couple as saying. Also, "We fear that our daughter will be the object of scorn and ridicule by other children, both in school and as she grows up." Well, of course she will now.

What A Mess, Baby [NYDN]

The Sun does not shine.
The Post's not that bright.
But compared to the News,
They're both brilliance and light.

• Everything you need to know about Conrad Black, whose fraud trial starts this week. [Maclean's]
  

And we thought that was the problem with his first marriage.

"Famous author" Rob Byrnes—he wrote the gayest book on earth, Trust Fund Boys—has sniffed out a new angle on the mysterious burning and beating of UES 'society doctor' Denton Sayer Cox. Cox claims that an assailant attacked him on a street corner. But the cops think his injuries are the result of a "gay pickup gone wrong," based on the types of burns and the fact that Cox's wallet was, uh, in his apartment. Sad and not at all funny! What is a little bit intriguing, though, is homo-chick-lit writer Byrnes' take on the whole sordid mess.

New Yorker editor David Remnick told the Daily News that the joke in this recent cartoon is that 'Zbigniew' is difficult to pronounce. But residents of Brooklyn's 'little Warsaw' beg to differ. "The people from different nations, they drink, they get drugs; so why did they make the joke about Polish people?" asked Greenpoint music store owner Anna Doda. The New Yorker's form letter response says that "the tacit assumption ... is that the child is not of Polish origin." Oh really? When contacted for comment, the group of red-faced bums who sit in a pile of their own filth on the corner of Greenpoint and Manhattan Avenues all the time getting into drunken fights, singing, and occasionally crying, were like, "Bleaarrrrrghhhhh!" So... yes? Wait—no?

• Holy crap, Ian Urbina did a lot of work in this piece on kids who just want to sell magazines but wind up hanging out with meth-addicted prostitutes. Only 11 months and one week until the next Pulitzer deadline! [NYT]
  

Well, we all got a good cringe out of the Times's front page story that poked a gaping hole in the Daily News's coverage of 9/11 hero Cesar Borja. (He died of a lung ailment on the day that his son was Hillary Clinton's plus-one at the State of the Union address. ) Unfortunately for the News, it didn't take the Times much research to reveal that Borja hadn't actually been "on the pile" until the Christmas Eve after 9/11. Today, the Post does their predictable fun gloaty thing. Now, to be sure, the News did a MAJOR face-plant. But it's not like the Post covered itself in glory either. And then we got this totally impartial [and anonymous] email.

• Ladies Home Journal is celebrating being relevant for the first time in, well, ever — thanks to an interview they did with Lisa "Astronut" Nowak last September. [LHJ via FishbowlNY]
  

This morning, Jo Piazza and Chris Rozvar dangled a tantalizing tidbit in the Daily News. To recap:

Well, we weren't quite buying the Daily News's front-page claim ("N.Y.'s Best Fashion Coverage" — yes, perhaps WWD would beg to differ, maybe) when we first dipped into the paper. And we still weren't convinced after reading their coverage of the weekend's shows (did you know that, this fall, "pink — in every hue, from hot to pale to dusty to a shade of Sweet N' Low — is all you'll want to wear"?) But then we read Chris Rozvar and Jo Piazza's 'The Back Row,' and we were convinced. Because this is the best blind item we've seen in a looong while.

The intrepid girl reporter went under less cover than usual to make a point of some nature about the outfit Sienna wore at the Factory Girl premiere. Her findings? Well, apparently, dressing like a cheap hooker attracts the wrong sort of attention. Listen up, ladies:

At least, that's what an item in today's Rush & Molloy would have us believe:

Ball is the founder — the big cheese, the super hefe, if you will — of Rock & Republic jeans, and in this clip, he's talking about a shoot that fashion photographer Marcus Klinko had just completed for his $200 denim brand's Spring collection. Ball seems pleased with Klinko's work, right? "I look forward to working with him again and again?" Well, that wasn't quite how things ended up going down. Oh, and 'paying for this whole thing'? That didn't really happen either . . .

This morning, Page Six took on the "hometown hypocrites" over at rival tab the Daily News. To wit:

As you know, our well-wishes are with Lindsay Lohan, who entered the Wonderland Center rehab clinic yesterday. We respect her privacy during this difficult time. Alas, other media outlets aren't being quite as sensitive as we are. Take the Daily News, for example, which not only splashed Lindsay all over its cover, but used the tattered starlet's film Herbie: Fully Loaded as an excuse to run a mean "Fully Loaded Lindsay Enters Rehab" headline. But that's not all: later in the article, a graph begins:

• Next week is layoff week at Time Inc. Also, every week thereafter. [WWD]