Lawyers: Kicking ass and taking nameplates

Poor Dow Jones! First their first-quarter earnings tank , prompting today’s shareholder challenge and all sorts of schadenfreude, and now they’re losing their fancy-pants nameplates from their swanky downtown digs to a bunch of lawyers.
The NYO’s Gabriel Sherman reports that Dow Jones had to remove its stately brass lettering from two of the three main entrances at 1 World Financial Center, replaced by “shiny new signs” signalling the proud residency of white-shoe firm Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft LLP. Sherman quotes a staffer:

“The idea that they can tear your name off the building, it’s just depressing,” a Wall Street Journal staffer said. “This is a symptom of a larger problem. The Journal has no distinct physical presence. Look at the other great papers – they all have landmark buildings that signify their public presence and give their employees a sense of purpose and place.”

In midtown, the Wall Street Journal’s advertising office also plays bridesmaid to a blushing legal bride: White & Case, which has nameplates outside both entrances at the black art-deco building at 1155 6th Avenue and continues to gobble up floors within.

Related: DOW JONES REVOLT IN THE WORKS [NY Post]
Do as We Say, Not as We Dow [Slate]

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