WSJ pay survey: Dubow both lags -- and exceeds

CEO Craig Dubow's annual pay last year fell below the median for all 200 companies in The Wall Street Journal's new executive compensation survey. But his pay bump from 2008 bucked the overall trend of lower payouts.

Dubow (left) got $4.2 million, according to the Journal's survey methodology. The median -- or midpoint -- in Gannett's industry category, consumer services, was a lower $3.4 million, however.

Across all industries, the WSJ found that the median value of salaries, bonuses, long-term incentives, and grants of stock and stock options for the chief executives of the 200 major U.S. companies fell 0.9% to $6.95 million, according to an analysis for paper by the Hay Group management consultancy.

"The drop in total direct compensation was only the third since 1989, when the Journal began tracking CEO pay,'' the paper says in its story today. "In 2008, pay fell 3.4%. The analysis also showed that highly paid CEOs generally run companies that deliver better-than-average shareholder returns."

Using Gannett's methodology, Dubow got $4.7 million in 2009 vs. $3.1 million the year before, the executive compensation table in the new shareholders proxy report says.

Related: The WSJ's full survey results