The Dull News Awards

Headline today:

Live Blogging Amazon's Kindle 2.0 Launch.

This from a bona fide major media site.

Look Who Else Is Mad About Those Bonuses

I've been reading the comments on the Times' Dealbook blog about those infamous Merrill bonuses. The item's already two months old, but it's worth going back to for the notes from folks who say they're Merrill employees (I see no reason to doubt this) and sound just as mad about the bonuses as anyone else. One question I haven't seen addressed is how much of Merrill's bonus pool was contractually guaranteed. I would imagine a lot, but then you'd think that Thain and Co. would be shouting from the rooftops that they had no choice.

So why aren't they? It might be because bonus guarantees were not a big factor (I really don't know). But it also could be because the folks with the guarantees were those at the top. The comments from the Merrill folks imply that while Merrill gave out a lot less in bonuses than last year, what cuts there were came at the expense of the people at the bottom of the pecking order, who got their bonuses cut to nothing.