The lost history of the WSJ

One of the lingering legacies of the Harold Evans era at RandomHouse is an unfinished history of The Wall Street Journal, which wasto be written by veteran Time magazine editor Richard Clurman.Originally contracted for $300,000, the book was about 70 percentfinished at the time of Clurman's death in 1996. Clurman'smanuscript was then turned over to Newsweek writer Jon Meacham, whokicked in 25,000 more words. But then Newsweek promoted Meacham tomanaging editor and he didn't have time to work on the manuscript.

So here's the problem. The manuscript needs to be polished andbrought up to date. The project clearly calls for a Ron Chernow(biographer of John D. Rockefeller) or a Joe Nocera (author of aFortune magazine cover story on rifts among the family that owns theWSJ) to pull the book together. But Random can't afford -- or won'tspring for -- a Chernow or a Nocera. There's only about $40,000 ofthe advance left -- and plenty of work involved. Yes, Random couldhire some pup from Bloomberg or even the Journal itself, but thatwriter wouldn't bring the needed authority to the book.

There is also the question of who wants to read a book about theJournal. Three such histories have been published since 1982, and Idoubt you've heard of any of them. Which may be why Random doesn'twant to throw any more dollars down this particular hole. Rich getricher dept.It's pretty widely known that Cambridge's own Martin Peretz had apaper gain of $180 million when his on-line financial news service,thestreet.com, went public earlier this month. (His stock is nowworth closer to $120 million.) Less well known is that Peretz, theowner and editor of The New Republic, made out nicely in anotherrecent Internet deal -- the sale of Williamstown-based home-pageportal Tripod to Lycos -- and could profit handsomely when two otherWeb ventures go public.Peretz invests through a low-key Manhattan-based company calledClark Estates. Clark Estates invests the considerable legacy of oneEdward Clark, who was a 50 percent partner in the Singer sewingmachine company. Peretz's wife, Anne, is a Clark family cousin. Adifferent branch of the Clark family, coincidentally, founded thelovely Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, where Tripod and anotherof Peretz's Web businesses have been based.Clark Estates owns The New Republic. It also owns the ElectronicNewsstand (enews.com), a widely hyped Publishers Clearinghouse-stylemagazine discounter that seems quite unprepossessing at first glance.Nonetheless, as a "dot.com," it is expected to go public in the nearfuture at an unreasonably high valuation. Aside from Tripod, Peretzand Clark Estates have also invested in Employease.com, an Atlanta-based human resources Web site, this time under the name FederalPartners. FP owns about 12 percent of the stock in Employease,which can be expected to go public at some future date.Social note: Employease was, and Tripod is, based in Williamstownpartly because Tripod's Bo Peabody and Employease founders John Nailand John Alberg all attended Williams College. As did America Onlinebossman Steve Case. Ephgeeks one and all. Plausible deniability?New Yorker writer Susan Orlean has been skittish about attachingher byline to a comic diet book, "The Skinny," that she coauthoredwith her friend, humorist Patricia Marx. Orlean, best known forstylish nonfiction prose jobs like the recently released "The OrchidThief," used her married name, Susan Sistrom, on the diet book. Butin a recent two-page spread in the National Enquirer,Orlean/Sistrom's name has disappeared entirely. In nine columns ofbreathless hype, the Enquirer reprints the "Weight Loss Secrets ofSkinny Women" and attributes the information to "diet expert"Patricia Marx.So maybe the uptown Susan Orlean didn't want her name in thedown-market tabloid? "I wouldn't say that the peak of my fantasy asa writer is to appear in the National Enquirer," Orlean/Sistromtold me. "I was neither dodging them nor courting them. I have noclue why they didn't use my name." Enquirer editor Steve Plamannwon't reveal how the piece ended up in the tab. "If she wrote it forus, I wouldn't tell you," Plamann said. "We have freelancers in theBoston Globe newsroom, and we're not giving out their names, either.Your editor might well be one of our contributors."Alex Beam's e-dress is beam(AT SIGN SYMBOL)globe.com.