When contacted about any special activities or viewings of Barack Obama's historic swearing-in, Harvard history professor Charles S. Maier wrote back a curt, angry response: CONTINUED »
Manhattan Media, owner of esteemed publications including the New York Press, Avenue, and Our Town, has purchased 02138, the Harvard alumni magazine that was all the rage this time last year, from The Atlantic's parent Atlantic Media. [NYT] Not only are they boosting the number of issues from four to six (that's quarterly to bi-monthly, to those keeping score at home), but there are grand plans to launch a website and start a social network around the Ivy Leavue school.
Um, yeah. It's called Facebook.
Okay, so supposedly this article is about how wunderkind elitist mag 02138, and how they unearthed this giant university-wide plagiarism scandal and revealed that Harvard's most prominent professors are "secretly" outsourcing menial research tasks to annoying student overachievers.
But since that's not particularly interesting or surprising, we've decided to switch to a new topic: 02138. Does anyone else find it sort-of annoying that this magazine (featuring articles like "How Not To Be Poor") is succeeding? [Note: Saying "Yes" might preclude you entry to various secret societies, highbrow social institutions and eclusive millionaire's clubs that you couldn't possibly afford, anyway, because let's face it, you went to Columbia.]
Nevertheless, we've decided to risk social pariahdom by voicing our dissatisfaction the only way we know how: through inarticulate instant messages. After the jump, a revealing IM debate between dueling Jossip editors Debbie Newman and Rebecca Aronauer. (Both Columbia grads).
Every few months, an article comes out to make you worried your most precious internet commodity, Facebook, is under attack. Harvard programmers and entrepeniers have long been accusing Mark Zuckerberg of stealing programming ideas in Facebook's developmental stages.
02138, the magazine for Harvard alums who are not over it yet, has devoted 5000 plus words on the issue.
We can't really blame them for the inflated coverage: After all, it's not as if a Yale dropout could have come up with Facebook. CONTINUED »
This just in, from the AP:
Tommy Lee Jones will co-host the Nobel Peace Prize concert for former Vice President Al Gore – his roommmate at Harvard University – and representatives from the United Nations' climate change panel.
The accompanying stock picture is almost enough to make us regret not picking Harvard as our safety school. [via Mollygood]
I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I'll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I'm just happy that the Crimson has called me "Harvard's most successful dropout." I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.
But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I'm a bad influence. That's why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.
Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me…I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House…Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn't guarantee success.
–Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates's commencement address to the Harvard University class of 2007.
• Rumor has it Chris Albrecht is being asked to involuntarily resign.
• Okay, we know this is nothing new. But watching a lady old enough to be your great-grandmother talk about giving head will never not be funny.
• Win a date with Dave Z! Actually, better yet, don't.
• Jared Fogle used to sell dirty, dirty porn. And he only went on the Subway diet because he's sloth incarnate!
• Harvard grad tickets going for $125 a pop. Which almost seems expensive until you remember how much tuition is.
• Ellen DeGeneres calls up ABC Entertainment Prez Steve McPherson to find out when we can all stop watching Grey's and start watching Addison's spinoff.
• Turns out it's always been Us Weekly's practice to highlight the mistakes of others, while forgetting about their own.
Three years and just two issues later, Harvard University's sex magazine H-Bomb has short circuited. With such a high-brow audience and a low-brow niche, one might've thought H-Bomb was on a sure-fire route to success. You know, like Cargo.
H Bomb last published an issue in the spring of 2005, and according to H Bomb’s former business manager, Vladimir P. Djuric ’06, the magazine was scheduled to publish a third issue last spring but simply did not have the financial resources to put the issue into print.
“One issue was put together last year, but it was never printed,” Djuric, a former Crimson executive editor, said. “We didn’t have enough money at the end of last year to print another issue.”
It's a shame to see such promising university students missing out on the one lesson any adult publisher learns right away: take a cut of any sales made from the back-of-the-book "out calls" ads.
• Keith Olbermann's online provocateur KarmaBites1 claims she'll unload another 100 or so emails between her and the MSNBC host, all because he won't publicly acknowledge he's like any other guy: quite complacent with a one night stand. [P6]
• Culture + Travel owner Louise MacBain visits the New York offices of LTB Media. For the first time. [NYP]
• Dan Bova pogos from exec editor to EIC at Stuff, replacing Maxim jumper Jimmy Jellinek — and, perhaps, some of his staffers? [FBNY]
• Victoria Hearst is fingered as the nut who left the creepy religious message at the Hearst Tower dedication. How do you know she's crazy? She's anti-Cosmo. [WWD]
• Time Warner stock moves .. upward. Jon Friedman wets self. [Marketwatch]
• Tom Freston and Peter Chernin are smart men. Smart enough to let someone else write their jokes. [Radar]
• Believing a Harvard Crimson columnist would lift an item from Slate would requires two sets of beliefs: 1) Harvard enlists fucktards; 2) Slate publishes worthwhile material. Okay, not such a hard conclusion. [Boston Globe]
Meredith Vieira loves her blog! Rosie O'Donnell has one, Ellen Degeneres has one, and now, well, she wants one too. The folks at Mediabistro have been following her blogging career closely — we learned of her venture through TV Newser, and are now being made aware of the reason for her Today show absence via FBNY.
Vieira was taking her son Ben on a college tour. And boy is Vieira proud of him for staying level headed and keeping his focus in perspective. Not like she did. See, before becoming the shining star of The View and Today, Vieira has faced a few broken dreams along the way. Like not getting into Harvard.
I say that as somebody who desperately wanted to go to Harvard University. Instead of Harvard, I went to Tufts University; certainly not shabby but it wasn’t my first choice. I wasted a lot of energy holding on to some Harvard fantasy– I even went so far as to hitch into Harvard Square every Saturday and “pretend’ that I was really a Radcliffe gal.
Sniffle, sniffle. See, kids. That's why you set your dreams a tad bit lower. Aim for say NYU or Northwestern … or Cornell. (Sarcastic joke cue: insert laugh). Any university that keeps telling the students "someday we'll be a real Ivy" even though it's never gonna' happen. That way you won't ever feel disappointed with your lame Tufts degree and crappy $10 million a year salary.
It's not about the bumper sticker [Meredith Today]
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]
Harvard, not content with the cash they're raking in from parents of potential students who go on to own the New York Observer is now taking sticky money from accused child molester/rapist Jeffrey Epstein.
The Ivy League university says it'll keep a $6.5 million donation from Jeffrey Epstein, despite the billionaire's arrest two months ago on charges of soliciting sex from hookers at his Palm Beach mansion. The Harvard Crimson newspaper also reports that Mort Zuckerman's former business partner may give another $23 million to Harvard.
It's the Post so of course you get the Zuck mention, but that doesn't really concern us. Actually, Harvard taking kiddie porn cash to buy books and renovate buildings and stuff doesn't really concern us either. We just hope they clean all the lube off first. And give some of it to the women's studies department.
DIRTY MONEY? [Page Six]
Some people might say young journalists are important in a newsroom because they bring life and fresh outlook to a paper. Others might say it's for their passion and work ethic. The Wall Street Journal likely thinks it's because they're allowed to join networking sites like Facebook without looking like those guys from How to Catch a Predator.
Take the two strapping young Harvard Ivy upper-echelon-university graduates who worked on today's piece regarding new changes to Facebook, for example.
How did the Journal get this breaking scoop? It sent its hippest, youngest scribes to do what they do best: hit up Facebook during work. You gotta hand it to Jamin Warren (Harvard '04, but not of the Crimson) and Vauhini Vara (Stanford '04), the reporters who wrote the piece: they know how to set their privacy preferences.
The Ivy Leak has the full record of the Facebook research from a tipsters newsfeed. Mostly, we just think this blurb is awesome because it's the Wall Street Journal. And that this is where a degree from Harvard (and/or Stanford) can get you.
WSJ SENDS EMBEDDED JOURNALISTS TO COVER IMPENDING FACEBOOK COUP [The Ivy Leak]
Is there anyone who gets into Harvard without paying someone , knowing someone, or being a celeb? Not really. Going to Harvard is like working at Vanity Fair — somewhere along the way, somebody important did you a favor. (If you don't believe us, just look at the fact that Jonathan Taylor Thomas went to Harvard for a year, and Christopher Hitchens writes for VF.)
So why should Jared Kushner, the new New York Observer owner, be any different? According to Daniel Golden, author of The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges, new New York Observer Kush is among the "pay to play" of Harvard's grounds.
"Jared was certainly not anywhere near the top of his class," said his own high-school college counselor, Margo Krebs. "It was an unusual choice for Harvard to make."
But Jared's admission came on the heels of a $2.5 million pledge to the school from his father, reports Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Daniel Golden.
Surely $2.5 million isn't the largest funding Harvard has seen. Plus, the "Kushner family spokesman" (uh-oh) Howard Rubenstein (uh-oh) claims that Jared is strange and smart …
" …. He graduated Harvard with honors, proving that they were correct in admitting him."
We don't exactly take that as a denial … more of a, "sure he paid off Harvard, but it's not like he failed out or anything." So, he stayed without bribing anyone. We hope.
Getting ahead the old-school way? [Ben Widdicombe, Gatecrasher]
So, you know how we learned today that it's not only Jared Kushner who owns the New York Observer, but his entire gaggle of siblings get a chunk of the paper as well?
Well, turns out the youngest, 21-year-old Joshua Kushner (who we like to refer to as "Little Joshie"), isn't just jumping on board with no experience. He goes to Harvard. And is an executive editor. At a magazine. A magazine which has published a whole issue, in fact.
From today's Harvard Crimson, which is just reporting that their most celebrated alumni since Natalie Portman now owns a newspaper.
Kushner is currently attending New York University’s law and business schools. His younger brother, Joshua Kushner ’08, is an executive editor of Scene Magazine, a fashion and lifestyle magazine that was founded last year and has thus far printed one issue.
See, Scocca? Nothing to worry about at all. These kids have worked in media before. They totally know what they're doing.
(PS - If anyone has a photo of Little Joshie, we'd really love to catch a glimpse of it.)
Kushner Buys NY Observer [Paras D. Bhayani, Harvard Crimson]
Earlier: And Observer Staffers Thought it Was Bad When a 25-Year-Old Owned Their Asses
If you want to own one of the most old school gossipy newspapers in New York, you better be ready to be gossiped about yourself. Yes, we're talking about Jared Kushner, the young buck who just took over as the new owner of the New York Observer. Rush & Molloy did their best to dig up some dirt on the kid (we're sure after last night's Tabloid Wars the imagery is all coming quite easily) and here's what they found: Kushner's a Harvard hero.
"Some distressed upperclassman bursts out screaming that a pre-frosh just passed out (from alcohol) in her room," recounts our spy. "Jared rushes to the rescue, disappears in the elevator and moments later returns holding the girl cradled in his arms and then carries her off to the health-services building, five blocks away."
"Yes I did carry a girl to the hospital," explained a surprised Kushner when we recounted the tale. "She seemed like she was in a bad place."
Wow. That's pretty intense. The only thing we can do with this random, arbitrary gossip is give it a headline that would make Peter Kaplan proud. Well, that, and keep his name handy for future "where was Kushner when she needed him" jokes relating to underage girls barfing all over NYU.
A dash of vanilla for peach-hued paper [Rush & Molloy, Daily News]
Talk of a Harvard's "not in the traditional sense" alumni magazine 02138 surfaced back in December, during the same period that Atlantic staffers were leaving Boston for Washington D.C. With Atlantic President David Bradley backing the new little mag, 02138 staffers began taking over the Boston digs, even before the disgruntled Atlantics could be fully moved out.
As you can probably anticipate, tensions grew. Bom Kim, founder and president of 02138, alligned with Bradley to raise this new baby, and Bradley's first child quickly got jealous. Well, they did have good reason — they were forced to fight for what was left of their turf.
Supplies and paper were being divvied, Kim used Atlantic's fax number (which was intended to move to D.C. along with the staff) for 02138's letterhead, and furniture was being stolen from offices.
Later that month, Mr. Kim moved a gray couch that had been outside the office of The Atlantic’s then art director, Mary Parsons, into the office of his incoming managing editor.
“It was her personal couch,†a staffer said. “It wasn’t an Atlantic couch.â€
This huge magazine office no-no caused Atlantic office manager Robert Moeller to stick “You Touch, You Die" labels to Atlantic staffers' stuff. Oh, dear. This is even more drama than we had in the entire last season of 90210. Can we a get a reality show crew in soon?
Harvard Prodigy Spends Bradley’s $4 Million;Alumni Await Magazine [Gabriel Sherman, New York Observer]
Despite an (honestly, unconvincing) apology on the Today show this morning, Megan McCafferty isn't really all good with Harvard prodigy Kaavya Viswanathan's "interpretation" of her books.
"This extensive taking from Ms. McCafferty's books is nothing less than an act of literary identity theft," said Steve Ross, publisher at Crown Publishers and Three Rivers Press, in a statement. "Based on the scope and character of the similarities, it is inconceivable that this was a display of youthful innocence or an unconscious or unintentional act."
Oh, yeah, and the amount of comparative passages have jumped from 29 to 40. (Which the Washington Post claims is "more than twice the number" but, we don't expect journalists to be that good at math.) Just like we don't expect a student who was "unconscious" throughout her college education to remember the time she sat down and copied a book.
Plagiarized Author Rejects 'Unconscious' Excuse [David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post]
Related: Kaavya Viswanathan Got Wild, Got a Life [Gawker]
Reading Harvard prodigy Kaavya Viswanathan's book seems to be sort of like reading Highlights … except instead of finding the toaster in the tree, you look for the matching passages. (Even better, at first they thought there were only 13, but it turns out there are 29 — bonus issue!)
The passages from her book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life borrows what Viswanathan calls "inspiration" but the Harvard Crimson calls "plagiarizing" from author Megan McCafferty.
And luckily the bright folks over at the New York Times were able to find at least one matching pair of passages. But we wanted to play, too! So we emphasized some of the really matchy-matchy quotes.
From McCafferty's young adult novel Sloppy Firsts:
"Though I used to see him sometimes at Hope's house, Marcus and I had never, ever acknowledged each other's existence before. So I froze, not knowing whether I should (a) laugh, (b) say something, or (c) ignore him and keep on walking. I chose a brilliant combo of (a) and (b).
" 'Uh, yeah. Ha. Ha. Ha.'
"I turned around and saw that Marcus was smiling at me."
From Viswanathan's book:
"Though I had been to school with him for the last three years, Sean Whalen and I had never acknowledged each other's existence before. I froze, unsure of (a) what he was talking about, or (b) what I was supposed to do about it. I stared at him.
" 'Flatirons,' he said. 'At least seven flatirons for that hair.'
" 'Ha, yeah. Uh, ha. Ha.' I looked at the floor and managed a pathetic combination of laughter and monosyllables, then remembered that the object of our mockery was his former best friend.
"I looked up and saw that Sean was grinning."
Ha, yeah. Uh, that sounds like some sloppy seconds to us.
Harvard Novelist Says Copying Was Unintentional [Dinita Smith, New York Times]
• We don't know if anybody will ever truly understand Suri. This girl's teen angst might even beat out Claire Danes'. [CNN]
• Leonardo DiCaprio should totally get a shirt that reads: "I followed Brangelina all the way to Africa and I'll I got was this lousy leg injury." [ET]
• As expected, Charlie Sheen attempt to maintain his integrity. No word on how he's maintaining his hard-on … [ET]
• For some truly amazing celebrity news: Naomi Campbell spent $2,800 on 10 pairs of jeans — and managed not to injure a single low-wage worker. [Page Six]
• Aw. And here we thought Harvard students could buy their way out of these situations. [NYDN]
