Posts Tagged ‘NYU’
The Case of NYU’s Phantom Philanthropy Records
An interesting story in today’s Washington Square News where my intrepid former colleagues, quite literally, “follow the money” and expose both NYU and the state’s Department of Education as — at the very least — shoddy record keepers, and maybe (but probably not) part of a $30 million fraud conspiracy!
The article in question is interesting for a number of reasons, but especially for its underlying suggestion that NYU may or may not have accepted a $30 million donation from Saudi Arabia shortly after September 11th, lied about it to avoid the public relations shitstorm, and got away with it because neither NYU nor the state agency NYU is required to report foreign donations to can find that year’s records!
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An Ode to John and My Supreme Court Peeps
I took a class last semester with 15 freshmen and taught by NYU President John Sexton. We had a little “class dinner reunion” tonight at the “presidential penthouse” (which, um, is sick), and afterwards, John asked me to make a few “closing remarks” about the class. I kept it brief, but then I thought about it on the walk home, and ended up with 1,300 words. Heh.
I first met John Sexton when I was but a wee freshman staff reporter for NYU’s student newspaper.
I had been assigned the “university senate beat,” presumably because I was the only rookie without class when the senate convened from 2-4 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month, and while Sexton chaired these meetings, I didn’t actually meet him until November.
My other beat (yes, I had two!) was higher education, and in September, Margaret Spellings (the then-Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education) had published a report proposing a series of initiatives to “reform” American higher ed.
Sexton had vaguely criticized the so-called Spellings Report in October, and I had so impressed the paper’s editor by then that when she decided to arrange a sit-down interview about Sexton’s (and NYU’s) “reaction” to the Report, she handpicked me to do it.
“I told Sexton today that you’re coming, too, and now my plan is to sit back and smile and let you interview him,” she said.
Sarah had come to the first senate meeting with me to “show me the ropes;” I remember she would point out who was who among the school’s administrators, and we would write little jokes and comments to each other about the funny (and frequently ridiculous) things people said. Someone, maybe Sexton himself, made some ridiculous remark about NYU as a “gas giant” of American universities, so I drew a picture of Jupiter in the margins of my notebook.
“You take good notes,” she scribbled. More »
WSN, The Epilogue
So, I was “fired” from WSN today.
On Saturday, I wrote a post describing my observations about WSN, NYU Local, and a few of the issues I felt these student media outlets (like many of their grown-up counterparts) are grappling with.
Yesterday, I followed up with a post to make some clarifications and, somewhat pre-emptively, defend myself from the guillotine blade I was wholly expecting to drop.
You see, WSN staff members are forbidden from publicly criticizing the paper. As I’d said, this policy isn’t actually on the books anywhere, but it’s pretty commonly understood. New writers who are unaware of it often get away with just a slap on the wrist, but I was fully aware of this “rule” and, knowingly, ignored it. (To be honest, I didn’t expect my piece to either attract the attention or spark the controversy it did, but that’s sort of irrelevant.)
I should point out that, at least for the purposes of this post, I’m not taking a position on that rule. I recognize its purpose and merits, and, likewise, its flaws. But that isn’t my call, it is what it is.
Anyway, yesterday I received an e-mail from WSN’s Editor-in-Chief, Rachel Smith, requesting a meeting with me to discuss the content of my posts. Today, she and I met to discuss my “motivation” for writing such a “negative” — but, more importantly, public — critique of WSN. And, because I was still considered an “active” staff member, violating WSN’s “don’t talk about WSN” rule meant I could no longer report or write on behalf of the newspaper.
The Rise and Fall of a Student Journalist
So, it looks as though I caused a bit of controversy on Saturday with my piece about NYU Local and the Washington Square News.
As of yet, nobody from WSN’s mentioned it to me. I expect it’s only a matter of time until someone does, because I can’t imagine the public proliferation of my thoughts on this subject sat too well with them.
So I write today as a matter of pre-emptive damage control, clarification, and an exercise in passive-aggressiveness. If anyone from WSN does bring my previous post up, I’ll simply direct them to this one, thus fulfilling two completely self-serving purposes: avoiding an awkward confrontation and increasing web traffic.
The Embittered Feud Between NYU’s Junior Journalists
Anyone who knows me will attest that despite my affiliations with the Washington Square News, and unlike most of my colleagues there, I’ve rarely — if ever — talked smack about its online rival, NYU Local.
“Local,” as people call it, launched in 2008 as the brainchild of two undergrads: film/TV student Cody Brown, and journalism student/fashionista LIly Quateman. Its purpose, ostensibly, was to cover campus news and foster discussion and community among the university’s disconnected student body.
At the time, the fledging project was (and still is, sometimes) controversial, especially as a conversation topic within the bull pen of NYU’s older, “more established” publication: WSN.
“Controversial” might be a little generous, actually, since the newsroom’s response was mainly to mock the idea altogether. In retrospect, it’s funny to realize how dismissive my co-workers were to our up-and-coming competitor when we didn’t even know what it was, yet, really. But I guess when “dismissive” is just a manifestation of “arrogant, fearful, and resistant,” it sort of puts things in perspective.
And when Local finally launched (an event which itself was not without some embarrassing gaffs), WSN’s attitude about the new kid on the block did not improve.
Outwardly, WSN seemed to welcome this new player to the game. But personally, I still felt the paper had been condescending from the outset. In his public statements, Adam Playford (who was WSN’s editor at the time) never seemed to truly acknowledge NYU Local as legitimate competition, and none of the rest of us really saw it that way, either. We just figured this Crazy, Gawker Wannabe, NYU Blog Experiment would never fully gain traction and fail.
Plus, the name was (and, I contend, still is) stupid.
But before you knew it, while WSN struggled with churning out a print edition every day; waning ad sales; staff turnover; and a disasterous website, NYU Local had captured the community and administration’s attention; outpaced WSN’s web traffic; and was publishing a product that was, honestly, informative, smart, and funny.
To recap: WSN (the newspaper) overestimated its clout; while NYU Local (the Internet blog), free of pesky overhead costs and the usual conventions of traditional media, published an entertaining/useful product that attracted a lot of readers very quickly.
Sound familiar?
Of course, the fact that this went down in the same year that the journalism industry at large began to collapse upon itself is just a sweet, delicious, Maraschino cherry of irony on top of all this. (And fodder for another post, I promise.)
Anyway, fast-forward 1½ years, and the rivalry between NYU’s precocious student journalists is still going strong.
The battle lines are a little hazier (troops from both sides follow each other on Twitter and are Facebook friends, for instance, which I guess just means the media industry, no matter what the scale, is always just one big, insular circle-jerk), and some of the players have changed (Adam’s graduated and retired to Florida, and in his stead are Rachel Smith and Mary-Jane Weedman), but the war wages on, just as (if not more) passive-aggressively as ever.
Take, for instance, Jessica Roy’s swipe in a recent post about NYU’s bookstore:
We could pull a WSN and contact our BFF John Beckman for further comment, but he’s probably shopping at American Apparel.
The “let’s make fun of WSN’s self-imposed policy to get the university’s response” meme is, for some reason, pretty popular among NYU Local’s writers and commenters (or maybe just Roy? I don’t really pay attention to their bylines).
Now, believe me, there are plenty of things I’ll openly criticize about WSN (loyalty be damned), but adhering to the principle of “get both sides of the story” isn’t one of them.
Local would be much better off (i.e., sound less juvenile) if it stuck to its habit of pointing out each instance that NYU Local beats WSN to the punch. Because while they’d probably never admit it, I’m sure getting scooped pisses those WSN editors off more than getting called out for, um, trying to be fair?
Then again, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a WSN editor actually acknowledge getting scooped by NYU Local, either. Somehow, they always manage to turn a failure in quick reporting into a tirade about shoddy fact-checking and biased journalism and how they let their writers comment on their own articles, and for some reason that last one is particularly offensive to the tenets of good journalism.
Again, sound familiar?
In another post, NYU Local’s Charlie Eisenhood critiqued a WSN editorial about a student protest in California. Charlie, sadly, can’t help himself, and starts off with:
Set aside the fact that WSN (as usual) failed to attribute credit to NYU Local for breaking the story while adding almost no value to it.
Apparently Charlie forgot what “breaking a story” means, because I doubt NYU Local was the first media outlet to report this story. And by “first,” I mean, you know, first. Anywhere. Ever. Because that’s what “breaking” a story means. And a story that’s attracting national attention (students occupying buildings in a state university, just to give an example) isn’t so exclusive that you get to claim some kind of “breaking” rights to it, anyway. Dig up some juicy court documents or put together an investigative report or something, and then we’ll talk, but if you’re just reporting on an event that’s going to scroll by beneath Soledad O’Brien’s face on the CNN ticker in an hour, get over it.
That said, I don’t really understand why Charlie thinks WSN is obligated to credit NYU Local for anything to begin with. I guess if NYU Local actually broke something, or if it had done its own reporting and had some kind of exclusive that nobody else had caught onto yet, it would make sense (although even then, Media Outlet X would only cite Media Outlet Y to either avoid embarrassing itself if Outlet Y got it wrong, or if Outlet X couldn’t confirm the report on its own).
Now, don’t get me wrong, usually I adore Charlie Eisenhood’s work. I think he’s a brilliant writer, and I was extremely impressed by his reporting when a group of students occupied an NYU building.
Speaking of which, I clearly remember following the coverage that day, and never before was WSN’s ineptitude at covering developing news (or operating a website) more obvious. NYU Local’s coverage, on the other hand, earned some well-deserved accolades from its readers, the community, and the mainstream media, alike.
And yet, my WSN colleagues still refused to admit that they had been out-reported.
Listening to a group of 20-somethings dismiss Internet journalism is pretty hilarious, if you think about it, since those same kids probably grew up with the Internet and you’d expect them to embrace online journalism above anyone.
NYU Local doesn’t have much to worry about. It continues to build a reputation for quick news, humor, and biting commentary. At this point, its writers can probably afford to stop taking pot shots at Local’s geriatric journalistic cousin. (The underdog shtick only has so much life in it before Local’s status elevates it to the position of “obnoxious, schoolyard bully.”)
But WSN has much graver concerns. It never anticipated that its competitor might offer a product that readers found more desirable than its own. But that, at least, could be dealt with, if WSN wanted to. Instead, its editors chose arrogance, to be too stubborn either to realize the paper’s shortcomings or to fix them amidst a changing media landscape.
But hey, I guess that means they really are teaching us journalism. So at least we’re getting our tuition’s worth.
