Yada yada yada-ing across America

Seinfeld bus you guys! If you're in college (some of you are still on college) you might be treated to the multi-platform, Wi-Fi equipped, eco-friendly, totally unnecessary Seinfeld Campus Tour. Um, too late? Unless this bus is actually a DeLorean and can reach 1.21 gigawatts to travel back to 1997 before Michael Richards ruined race relations, and when people still cared about Larry David's other show, this is just going to be a wash.

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Aug 13, 2008 · Link · 1 Response

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As major news outlets continue shelling out for a very expensive election season (Debates: $500k-$1m a pop; Convention coverage: ~$2m), some might be looking to cut corners. Networks like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News already have some version of a user-generated news product, where viewers are solicited to send in tips and photos, that's less about getting all Web 2.0 than it is about getting everyday citizens to act as unpaid reporters (or so the inner cynic in us believe). But that doesn't mean the media are cooling down — quite the opposite. With the feisty Democratic primary done with, it's time to explore every possible angle leading up to November. Like what the temperature is on college campuses. Which explains why CBSNews.com, WashingtonPost.com, and university press syndicate UWIRE.com are teaming to find "15 to 20 top reporters" to keep their readers plugged in to who's waving what campaign banner on the Quad. They need everybody from investigative journalists to photographers to satirists to play a part. Interested? Fantastic. Just tell them how you like to be paid: Cash, cheque, wire transfer, or … exposure.

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Jun 26, 2008 · Link · 1 Response

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Bill Cosby has made a career out of delivering commencement addresses, usually picking up an honorary degree whenever he stops by a campus. At Stanford's commencement on Sunday, though, it was Oprah fulfilling the celebrity duty, delivering words of wisdom, hope, and virtue. "I like money," she told the nearly 5,000 graduates staring up at her. "It's good for buying things. What you want is money with meaning. Meaning is what brings real richness to your life." Easy for a billionaire to say, sure.

But all was not lost. Though she "really wanted to give you cars, but I just couldn't pull that off," Oprah handed out something she's most famous for: books. Each graduate got a copy of Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth and Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind, both books about states of mind. Which is perfect for new graduates, whose current state of mind is how they're going to pay off six-figures in loans. Enjoy your summer reading!

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Jun 17, 2008 · Link · Respond

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JuicyCampus.com this week becomes the latest Internet fad for the media to obsess over. In an AP story that's getting plenty of pick up, the college-focused website, which posts gossip about students' sex lives, is already seeing its traffic spike from the coverage. (Visitors the site today might find it unreachable.)

From freshman to seniors, Duke, Cornell, and UCLA campuses are all targets for the nasty comments, which in all likelihood will start popping up next to Google searches for students' names.

But leave it to the meta-concerned MSM to ruin the party: What should normally be a rallying point around First Amendment rights is instead actually drawing criticism from college newspaper editorials. And student leaders!

Founder Matt Ivester is being pleaded with to take the site down. DontDateHimGirl.com, meanwhile, remains a revered public service.

Feb 19, 2008 · Link · 1 Response
Tufts Naked Run Is White, Documented On YouTube

Guess what: If you’re going to Tufts, you probably didn’t get into Harvard. And if you’re running around naked in public, it’ll probably end up on YouTube.

The Somerville Journal, a community paper, covered the Tufts annual naked run and put a clip of it on YouTube.

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Dec 13, 2007 · Link · 2 Responses
Basketball player really has to go, goes

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With the Knicks season already over, we’ve turned our attention to college ball, and we discovered it’s just as disheartening.

At the Kansas State-Oregon match up last night, Kansas State forward Bill Walker had to pee so badly he stepped to the sidelines and relieved himself on several towels. Even towel boys for the Knicks have it better than that.

Kansas State, along with public hygiene, ended up losing the game.

[Photo Credit: Kansas City Star]

Nov 30, 2007 · Link · 2 Responses

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In a desperate attempt to gain some attention, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern is considering renaming itself.

John Lavine, Dean of the school, said, "We're really exploring what the name should be, could be, what people think about it."

When we think of the Medill School, here’s what comes to mind:

• The I Spent $160,000 and I still Can’t Get a Job School of Journalism.

• The Hoping For Some Short Term Publicity School of Journalism

• The Nicole Lapin (from CNN) Went Here School of Journalism

• The Suburban Chicago Media Scene School of Journalism

Hey, all those names are catchier than "Integrated Marketing Communications," which is an actual contender.

Oct 18, 2007 · Link · 1 Response

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If they were so desperate to root for a deadbeat dad, Matt Leinart would have been fine. [Deadspin]

Sep 27, 2007 · Link · Respond
Unranked Small Schools Hate Annual Rankings So Much That They're Willing To Stake Their Nonexistent Reputations On It

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Sixty-one small relatively obscure American liberal arts colleges have reportedly opted out of U.S. News & World Review's annual rankings of higher education, in what Bloomberg News is calling "the biggest protest yet."

Although, top-ranked schools (like Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore) have expressed "concern[s] about the survey's fairness," those concerns seem to be largely outweighed by the satisfaction of being rated the highest.

Meanwhile, those (safety!) schools joining the rebellion against U.S. News stand by their decision to boycott the "reputational survey," explaining that they'd simply prefer to "sit around in patchouli oil-stained bohemian clothes, sipping green tea and eating organic ramen noodles out of dye-free handcrafted porcelain bowls while listening to Rufus Wainwright on their iPods or writing touchy-feely essays about 'The Feminist Mystique' instead."

Jul 25, 2007 · Link · Respond

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If you're the type of media ass who reads more than one college newspaper, that copy/pasted editorial you just read in each of those rags isn't the latest instance of plagiarism on a college campus. Rather, a consortium of self-important university papers joined together for a self-important cause – college newspaperdom – and printed the same editorial blasting the University of Southern California for blocking the reelectiion of Zach Fox as EIC of the Daily Trojan. Fox had grand plans for the paper, like actually making a stab at journalism, and went so far as to request financial documents for the rag he spearheaded. As the editorial puts it, it was a lone administrator who got pissy and blocked the Fox's renewal, just like it was just one jerkoff administrator who refused our transfer credits and made us have Friday 8am classes.

After the jump, the editorial in full.

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Dec 6, 2006 · Link · Respond

Michael Wolff

Daniel Golden's new book, The Price of Admission, has already been widely discussed in the media — especially among gossips.

Golden spends 323 pages discussing how much the East Coast elite are willing to dish over or donate so their kids to make it into Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, with the most notable among his examples being New York Observer owner Jared Kushner.

And in yesterday's Times Vanity Fair writer Michael Wolff takes on the pages, interpreting the story as one of the regular folks. Sure, Wolff's kids go to "fancy schools" but that's because he bought them S.A.T tutors, not a new wing for the library. While Wolff is not one of the parents who bought his kid's into school, per se, he does think the fact that Golden wants "some people — people like himself — to have access to elite universities" to be ridiculous. Of course we also have to hear how Wolff could've written this book with more insight and depth than Golden did.

But he’s immune to the greater comedy of manners and so misses a potentially more profound story: the joke may be on us — not just on the rich, but on everybody who’s clawed his way and his kid’s way into big-brand colleges.

"Us?" Well, obviously he doesn't mean us. He means, like, him his fellow VF editors and a few families that have lived on the Upper West Side since 1920.

Show Them the Money [Michael Wolff, New York Times]

Sep 18, 2006 · Link · Respond

This just in: 15 students at University of Berkeley ate some cookies laced with pot and are now hallucinating and can't breathe and shit.

Berkeley Headline

What? We didn't even think you could get into Berkeley without proving you could handle a couple weed filled pastries. NYU students continue to curse the fact that they are at this moment pulling bongs filled with schwag they had to freakin' pay for.

Berkeley students who got sick may have eaten marijuana-laced cookies [Court TV]

Sep 8, 2006 · Link · Respond

Elle Magazine

The biggest media story of the day? Magazines are trying to attract subscribers via the Web. No, the mags aren't looking to create whole new interactive, frequently updated Websites, because that would be way too in line with what readers are looking for. Instead, they are sending the entire magazine via email to college kids in hopes that one or two will subscribe to the online edition.

Five schools (literally, individual schools within universities) are participating in the initiative to bring mags to their email inboxes: The School of Cinema-Television at the USC will get Premiere; the Parsons School of Design will get Elle; Johns Hopkins' School for Advanced International Studies will be sent Foreign Policy; the Kellogg School at Northwestern University, BusinessWeek; and Notre Dame’s college of engineering, Popular Mechanics.

So why the push for college kids to have easy digital access to mags? Simple, college students don't normally subscribe to pubs.

“Colleges have typically been a black hole for magazines in terms of distribution,” Jack Kliger, the president and chief executive of Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., said. “There’s always been a difficulty in reaching college students because the physical distribution issues are very unique to colleges in that nobody stays in one place for very long.”

Though we have to wonder if those college students don't make up a big chunk of newsstand sales? Especially in New York, where you can't go anywhere without something to flip through … maybe that's why NYU, Columbia, and SVA didn't get any free mags in their inboxes?

Which is honestly fine. It's pretty hard to collage your walls with printouts from your computer.

Magazines Going to the Web to Get Students to Read [Julie Bosman, New York Times]

Sep 7, 2006 · Link · Respond

Cornell

Here's a New York Times trend piece we sort of can't deal with right now. There are just too many numbers, too many Marty Markowitz quotes, and too many random, nonsensical assumptions.

The gist of the piece is that more college grads are moving to New York. (Of course they are, it's the intelligence hub of the entire country). The problem (says the Times) is that these grads are taking well-paying jobs, and sucking up the "affordable" housing. And when, with their fancy college degrees in hand, they still can't afford Manhattan, they move to Brooklyn and suck up that housing. These Cornell, Georgetown, and Michigan State yuppies are ruining New York City. And not just with their Abercrombie polos, flip-flops, and GQ subscriptions. They are making it even harder for the average kid born in Queens to succeed here in their own city.

Granted, we agree. New York is by far more accommodating to those who come in later in life with education and money than it is to the working class families who have roots in the city, especially outer boroughs. But let's take a quick look at the New York Times' "analysis" of the situation.

“But unfortunately, it’s more likely to mean that it’s increasingly difficult for poor people without college degrees,” he said. “Affordable housing is not as available. The people who make the city work, who do the hard work in the city — the waiters and janitors — are not going to be able to live in the city.”

Which is kind of funny when you think about how many college grads you know who are working as a waiter, waitress, bartender, or caterer in New York. And even more hilarious when you think about how many Yale and Tufts grads have jobs at the New York Times. And live in Manhattan.

New York Area Is a Magnet for Graduates [Patrick McGeehan, New York Times]

Aug 16, 2006 · Link · Respond

We think some of our readers might be fedora wearing spies themselves. Today, one engaged gossip writes in to ask about some possible connections between media scandal mongers.

Did [Peter Davis] go to college at Bennington with Jared Paul Stern? Someone by that name did. And he graduated the same year Jared did (1994) and he studied literature and writing, just as Jared did.

Just asking…

While we get underway on our research, does anyone care to help out your gossip community? If you know where Christian Leone's boyfriend went to college, let us know. Maybe there needs to be a journalistic red flag on Bennington's lit department?

Earlier: The Sunday Styles Writer and His Boldface Boyfriend
Earlier: Page Six's Jared Paul Stern stung by Daily News

Update: Yes the New York Times' Peter Davis went to Bennington with Jared Paul Stern. However, according to JPS, Davis graduated in 1991, not 1994 and left the year after Stern arrived. Stern "knew him slightly" but it's doubtful they studied Chaucer (not to mention ethics) together.

Apr 25, 2006 · Link · Respond