Odds & Ends: Journalism is doomed
OWNED: A student newspaper columnist at Northwestern’s Medill school of journalism recently investigated his dean’s suspicious use of anonymous quotes, and found that they were most likely made up. After the resultant media-media frenzy, the faculty there are pisssed. Here’s their letter to Dean Lavine. What’s it say? Show us what you got, or quit. Good thing our dean isn’t lazy, and knows how to identify her sources.
Please God, No: Some abstractly-thinking-person who just happens to be in charge of the University of Minnesota’s “new media” program (I hate that term, very hard) has come up with a modified version of the fantasy role-playing game Neverwinter Nights to teach students how to become journalists. Apparently real life experience just don’t cut it anymore. Forget those internships, journalism students. Just boot up the ol’ laptop and log some serious video game hours. This is ridiculous. I’m currently shedding a salty tear for my profession.
And now, regular college news, in bite-size form:
Bye bye, hippies: UC Berkeley has started removing the houses of the hippie protesters who, for more than a year, have been living in a grove of trees scheduled to be destroyed for the creation of a new stadium. As much as I support their grass roots (tree limb?) cause, I still think this latest development is hilarious. Poor hippies.
Libraries are not for masturbating: The scene is the Tufts University library. A female student is studying in the periodicals section. On the library’s main floor. Dude comes up, opens a magazine, starts jerking off (clothes on), while staring at the girl. “Frequently,” the article says. Guy caught; police can’t prove anything. The mad masturbator is loose!
Harvard’s got a new gym policy - no boys allowed: For six hours every week, Harvard’s QRAC gym will only allow women to work out, in order to accommodate women whose religion prohibits them from letting men see them in Spandex and booty shorts. Sad, this is. Really. Calling the policy “Pareto inefficient,” The Harvard Crimson is rather cranky about this. Like they actually work out.
Poor people still poor, NYT says: There’s been little or no increase in social mobility for those in society’s lowest strata, the NYT reports, citing a new study by the Brookings Institution. Hispanics and blacks are finding it harder to get a college degree and enter the middle class. The good news: college helps you get a better job, the study says. The bad news: even with the Ivy’s new aid policies, less poor minorities will be able to even afford to go. Well that’s just awesome really really bad for society.
College kids love - and hate - Internet gossip sites
It’s the latest college-themed site to make a splash, but unlike Facebook’s almost universal appeal, this one has been rubbing lots of people the wrong way. The web site is called Juicy Campus, and it markets itself as a place to spread “juicy” rumors and find secrets.
But nobody likes being gossiped about, never mind gossiped about on the Internet, where these things have a tendency toward permanency. There’s been considerable backlash to the site recently, which lets people post things like ?Who is the sluttiest girl????,? ?Hottest Cornell Sophomores,? and ?Biggest Cornell Cokeheads?? Today’s big topics include “ball-licking” and “anti-semitism - not cool. anti-asianism - totally acceptable.” It’s pretty much all the same on the site.
Here comes the backlash:
Not surprisingly, the Cornell Daily Sun isn’t so happy about this latest online troll-frenzy. A columnist there has suggested people stop writing but that most certainly won’t work, and in fact, it’ll probably drive more people to the site.
Facebook groups protesting the site have been started, college newspapers are writing, student governments are passing resolutions and pretty soon this whole thing is going to be huge, or people are going to decide to stop slandering their classmates online. I’m guessing it’s just going to get bigger. Remember ratemyprofessors? This is just like ‘rate my friends,’ but instead of rating, I’m going to accuse them of being a slut or a cokehead.
What can you do if you’re accused of being a slut or a cokehead on the site? Not much. They offer you the option of “giving a thumbs down” to the offending posts, but they aren’t willing to delete anything, administrators say.
We’re no strangers to campus gossip, either: College Ave. had a run-in with an anonymous blogger posting nasty things about nice people last semester. So how’d we deal with that situation? After we outed him, he quit. It works, people, it works. Just find these people and reveal them, and the world will be a less-gossipy place. Hopefully.
Congress throws money at the piracy problem
At first glance, the The College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 seems like a pretty good thing. And don’t get me wrong, it is. Mostly.
The 747-page bill (a much quicker summary here) is intended to make college cheaper by streamlining the FAFSA process, keeping student lending practices honest, and creating more need-based aid. It also provides incentives to colleges to keep down costs, makes a half-hearted attempt to make books cheaper (try Half.com instead) and plans to forgive $5,000 in loans to students who enter public service jobs (Here’s to wishing that protecting democracy journalism was considered a public service). It’ll also provide money to help disabled students go to college and in case of a disaster will provide money for schools to rebuild.
So, all in all, sounds just peachy, right? Well, not if you read between the lines, or more specifically, just pages 411-412. Practically buried in Congressional jargon and verbosity is a lovely little section entitled CAMPUS-BASED DIGITAL THEFT PREVENTION.
Essentially, any college or university accepting any money under the auspices of the bill must:
“develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.?
It also authorizes the Education department to offer all-purpose, monetary grants (read: free cash) to colleges who pledge to “eliminate the illegal downloading and distribution of intellectual property? on campuses through the use of technology and other policing methods.
Well, the stick didn’t work, so now they’re trying the carrot, I guess. But this bill, with its promise of easy money, could potentially pit colleges (or their internet providers) against students illegally downloading music and movies, when in reality, it’s not their job to hunt down students trying to grab “Crank Dat” off LimeWire.
Guess who’s loving this, though: the people whose job it is to police illegal downloading. Here’s an adoring statement from the MPAA:
?The MPAA commends Chairman Miller for taking this step to protect intellectual property on college campuses,? said MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman. ?Intellectual property theft is a worldwide problem that hurts our economy and costs more than 140,000 American jobs every year. We are pleased to see that Congress is taking this step to help keep our economy strong by protecting copyrighted material on college campuses.?
Oh, and while researching this, I found a funny little thing on the RIAA’s homepage: featured prominently in the menu on the side of the site is a link called: “For Students Doing Reports.“
Apparently they get so overwhelmed with questions from college students writing research papers about downloading music illegally — while probably simultaneously downloading the top 500 rock songs of all times off Bittorrent — that they’ve put together a special page summarizing their views on music piracy for those adorable little college kids who just want to learn more about the enemy, essentially.
Thanks for being interested in the music industry and our positions on various issues. We get many requests from students and others for information for papers and other research needs.
So what are its views on illegally downloading copyrighted materials, you ask? PIRACY: BAD. PAYING US: GOOD.
Sounds like a great start for a research paper to me.
The Law: 1 Facebook Creeps: 0
In the latest blow to the sex lives of convicted sexual predators: Looking to get your game on harass small children once again using social networks? Not so fast, says NY state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. He’s gotten Facebook to agree to a new list of safety guidelines to protect against “sexual predators” and “obscene content” on the site. This attempted cleansing of sexual predators already happened on MySpace last year, after a Wired magazine article revealed that a ton of sexual predators (duh!) use the site.
According to the article, if someone complains about site content, Facebook will review the claim and then make a decision to remove the profile, picture, video, group, posting, etc. I don’t know how that’s different from the present - they already remove things they don’t like anyway.
Atkind will not pass Go, will not collect $200: The Journal is reporting today that Alexander Atkind, the Cornell student who pleaded guilty to a felony charge of abusing his roommate’s dog, Princess, will spend six months in jail for that crime. In his court-ordered Christmas stocking, he also gets: five years probation and another six months in jail for possessing magic mushrooms! There’s a lesson here, kids, and it involves not abusing animals (especially named Princess), not having drugs, and not getting caught.
And Now For Something Completely Different: A bunch of Australian newspapers - and now the Freakonomics blog - have linked to a picture of a spinning dancer, which purportedly spins a different way depending on which hemisphere of your brain you use more. Check out the comments on Freakonomics for an interesting look at which way people of different professions saw the dancer spinning. Counter-clockwise, and you’re a boring, logical right-brainer. Clockwise, and you’re a crazy, radical, creative type without a job. Or so the logic goes.
Me personally: I got it to spin both ways, which either means I was too tired to see straight, I’m actually lying to sound cooler, or I’m part Jedi master. I prefer the latter. Enjoy.
A tip: if you have any trouble getting her to spin right round, just focus on her foot and vibe out, man. Chill, bro. Then open your eyes, and she’ll be spinning the right way, I swear.
Roundup: Common sense and decency
A couple of quick hits already today, so let’s just get them over with:
Attention Ithaca College students: Start locking your doors. Seriously. Intercom has issued yet another Public Safety Alert ? what’s the common thread here? People are entering without force, taking things in the middle of the night, usually on weekends. It’s common sense people. Just lock it up when you’re going to bed.
Let’s stop this flame war: Looks like my co-blogger Aaron Munzer’s post about the SpartanEdge made it over to MSU. Junior blogs editor Jordan Barnes, who has his own blog and also writes Styledge, wrote a pretty rough post about Munzer and our blog there. I’m not going to play the measuring game of who has a more difficult time publishing or who works harder, but I’m going to clarify a couple of points. First, nobody reads our blogs before they’re published. That’s the whole point of blogs; they’re mainly unfiltered. We try to make sure we’re not dropping f-bombs but otherwise it’s the blogger’s discretion. We also don’t pay our writers.
As for Barnes’s blog and the SpartanEdge, here’s my take. Some of Barnes’s writing is interesting. It’s too bad he didn’t talk more about when he was in Ithaca for the dean’s incubator project, although from what I can understand there wasn’t much of note. The SpartanEdge style of experimentation is interesting, but it’s not our style. And Munzer’s post? A clear joke. So relax.
Also of note: Ithaca’s local newspaper is one step closer to being swallowed into a regional rag when the Star-Gazette’s publisher, Monte Trammer, became the Journal’s president and publisher today. Comments on the story were more about deadlines than dead papers. It screams of The Journal News of 10 years ago. It probably means future features like the Dalai Lama’s visit will be pared down. For shame.
Round-Up: You think you’re all big and bad?
Got told: The University of Wisconsin was quickly becoming the darling of the pro-piracy anti-RIAA crowd, since they were one of the few brave souls to ignore those pre-litigation letters. A U.S. district court judge decided earlier this week they must turn over the names. But because university refused to give the letters during the “pre-” part, any settlement made with the RIAA will not received the substantial discount (just the arm! you can keep the leg!) that those who got the letters on time had.
The eigth word? WQRI, the student radio station of Roger Williams University, fired two of their DJ for repeating the Offensive Phrase of 2007, “nappy-headed hos,” on the airwaves repeatedly. Dana Peloso and Jon Porter, the Imus’d DJs, are claiming their show was part of a political take-down in collaboration wit the administration. Peloso is the president of College Republicans on campus, who just happen to have Jason Mattera coming to speak. The CR at RWU have grabbed the media spotlight before with the “Whites Only” scholarship a few years back. The station’s manager, Mike Martelli, held a vote (at a staff meeting neither Peloso or Porter attended) and it was unanimously decided that the phrase would not be used multiple times on the air, thanks to the FCC license review WQRI is under. Martelli, apparently a former College Republican himself, wrote a response to the IHE story. (Scroll to the bottom. Uh, “free speach?” Dude: spellcheck.) It sounds more like a pissing match between DJs who think they’re above Martelli and a station manager who feels slighted than an actual attempt to silence speech. But I’m a little concerned that there was no dissent from the other student DJs about the phrase and this pervasive idea that radio has to be “a non-offensive product.” Just sayin’.
Where’s IvyGate when you need it? Director of the FBI Robert Mueller got heckled during his speech at Harvard last week, the Harvard Crimson dutifully reported. Also dutifully reported: two of their own editors were the hecklers. Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky and J. Claire Provost (those names exude Haaarvard) were chanting things like ?We will never forget the role of the FBI in McCarthyism!? and “Stop the unconstitutional repression of the environment!” (Most likely followed by snickering.) The term editor is misleading ? anyone from a writer to a photographer to graphics designer is an editor ? but it didn’t stop Romenesko and The New Editor working up a small lather over it.
Starting fresh: Here’s something you don’t see every 100 years: the newest university in the Georgia system started last year with 116 students and expects a whopping 3,000 to enroll this fall. Georgia Gwinnett College (”The campus of tomorrow” with a Web site from 15 years ago) expects to have 15,000 students by 2012, but for now they’re more concerned with making sure high school students in Gwinnet County even know they exist. Don’t worry, they’ve got plenty of hats, key chains and coffee mugs already made. But this is kind of a neat idea; the students get to make their own traditions, start their own student government, choose their own mascot. Hey, I hear one might be looking for a job.
Roundup: Get your Atkind gear while it’s hot!
PrincessGate will never get old: Thanks to the magic of Internet?, jokes can turn from a simple news article to a a blogpost (complete with anti-Semetic jokes/prison rape jokes abound) to an ironic T-shirt quicker than you can say “Duke Lacrosse Witch Hunt.” My personal favorites from the “store”: the terrorist pack of playing cards featuring cute puppies instead of dictators (oh no! not Precious!) and the Atkind/Cheney ‘08 ticket tossed in for good measure. I guess torture is torture is torture. [Thanks, Cornell Justice!]
Tough noogies: You go to a college that costs almost $40K, and you just got slapped by the RIAA. What are you going to do now? Complain to the dean, apparently, and Ithaca College’s Dean Dianne Lynch has little to no sympathy for you. She basically told them to cough up the $3,000 bucks to avoid facing litigation at the price of $750 per song and an less-than-clean criminal record. Sure it’s a publcity stunt ? I’d call it slow-motion mugging ? but she says the alternatives (like, gulp, trying to apply for a job with a record) are worse. Commenters are taking her to task, incorrectly, about the lack of protection other schools give their students. Maybe we should add a legal primer class to the majors?
Less like a blog, more like a bathroom stall
When you work for a college newspaper or write for a blog, you’re practically begging for junk email. I got ? and promptly trashed ? one last week telling me about LoudCampus.com. The site was launched and certainly looks and smells like Web 2.0: bright colors, oversized text, gradients, tiny and unreadable icons, and of course social networking.
Since Loud Campus content can only be written by students at your school, you know that the content is 100% real… real students… real discussions… real reviews.
What they don’t say is that the discussions can also be anonymous, which leads to some interesting comments. On their blog, Loud Campus says anonmity keeps things “vibrant,” but it also keeps things more raw and potentially libelous. Sample sparkling-dinner-style discussions include:
- Who else agrees that the new Rogan’s sucks a Nut!
- Do you think it’s unnatural to be orange in the middle of winter?
- THE BIGGEST DOUCHEBAG ON CAMPUS?? (I refuse to put the link to this one.)
Now, far be it from
You’ll have to pry this Dave Matthews discography from my cold, dead hands
Well, it was bound to happen. The RIAA finally sent out over 400 of their latest round of “pre-litigation settlement” letters, and 20 of them were lucky enough to hit Ithaca College. Both the Mothership and the Ithaca Journal have some information, but Dave Maley, the associate director of media relations, is keeping mum on the who, when and where for now. The Journal also is smart to point out that it could be either students or staff, which makes things a little more interesting.
We’re in good company: heavy hitters like Boston, Columbia, Dartmouth, Purdue, uh… Drexel? The University of Wisconsin-Madison already said it wouldn’t act as the lackeys for them, but the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has a different problem: they have no idea where to send the letters. Their system resets the IP address ? the only way the RIAA knows their John/Jane Does ? every time the computer logs on, and the records are only kept for a month. The RIAA is not amused, but unless they can magically pluck the remaining 27 swashbuckling students, Nebraska says they can’t help.
Who’s to blame for college students’ narcissism?
Generation Y is all grown up, in college and more self-absorbed than ever, according to a new study presented today. Who’s to blame? Everyone, apparently. Parents who smother their children with undue praise and give less authoritarian punishment, elementary schools bent of teaching how special and unique we all are, YouTube confessionals and MySpace profiles that thrive off of exhibition and exposure, blogs (yes, blogs) and the Internet as a whole in giving everyone media access like never before, reality television, Anna Nicole Smith/Britney Spears/any other CrazyCelebWatch 2007, etc. etc.
While narcissism is nothing new, the trend behind is troubling to the study’s lead author, Jean Twenge. With 30 percent of college students surveyed displaying high levels of elevated narcissism, Twenge believes we could be heading to a world where people are too into themselves to be emotionally available and think nothing of treating each other like dirt, even in public places.
As if on cue, Inside Higher Ed looks into the Pit Break Up drama at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The set-up (and it was set up): boy dates girl, girl cheats on boy, boy invites girl to romantic spot on Valentine’s day on campus along with over 1,000 other students via Facebook, a Capella group sings kiss-off song, boy dumps girl with the crowd, cameras out, cheers on. The video is pretty long, and honestly it only gets interesting/scary when the crowd starts chanting “Slut! Slut! Slut!” at her as she tells him off for being a coward. Students ate this drivel up, writing letters to the Daily Tar Heel demanding coverage and joining Facebook groups proving they were there, man.
747,000 hits on YouTube later, the du(m)per comes clean with an explanation for the hoax: the Internet is extremely powerful and amazing and the media doesn’t really get us college kids cause we’re so complex and oh, by the way I’m starting this busine… hey, where’d you go? Come back! (The Facebook group is already sad they’ve been had, LonelyGirl15-style.)
Here’s the solution: follow Warhol’s advice and limit the total amount of video clips to 15 minutes total. With guys like this, that’s plenty more than they deserve, but maybe they’ll value it a bit more. If everyone’s listening, they should say try saying something a little more interesting than “I’m awesome.”
(The whole reason for the post was to justify using that picture of the cat wearing sunglasses. Indulge me, please.)
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