Meg Whitman set to get H-P job

Company is supposed to make the announcement after the market closes this afternoon, but in a sign of how undisciplined that place has become the news is all over the Web this morning. (Here's the account at All Things Digital.) Whitman, the former head of eBay, is replacing Leo Apotheker, who had received board support only until recently. Speaking of which, NYT columnist James Stewart takes aim at the company's directors:

Interviews with several current and former directors and people close to them involved in the search that resulted in the hiring of Mr. Apotheker reveal a board that, while composed of many accomplished individuals, as a group was rife with animosities, suspicion, distrust, personal ambitions and jockeying for power that rendered it nearly dysfunctional. Among their revelations: when the search committee of four directors narrowed the candidates to three finalists, no one else on the board was willing to interview them. And when the committee finally chose Mr. Apotheker and again suggested that other directors meet him, no one did. Remarkably, when the 12-member board voted to name Mr. Apotheker as the successor to the recently ousted chief executive, Mark Hurd, most board members had never met Mr. Apotheker.