DEATHWATCHBriefly: His Majesty's blog ne'er existed

Besieged by resignations, dogged by transparent p.r. masquerading as legitimate coverage and inundated with student complaints, Medill Dean John Lavine now gets his very own deathwatch.

Once upon a time in a crabby old building called Fisk, Medill Dean John Lavine decided to complement his sea change — excuse me "blow up" — of the curriculum by blogging about his decision-making. There were even periodic posts!

Anyways. I was going to write that it had been 100, 200, 500 days since his last post, but Medill now has no records of any such Dean's blog. Come on! It had that happy-go-lucky logo, that formal prose, those obsequious descriptions of meaningless changes. Stop trying to hoodwink me, Michele Bitoun.

WEEK IN REVIEWSo much mediocre copy, so little time.

• We had a birthday.
• We suffered through the Daily's freshman guide. Twice.
• We found out Delt is dead.
• We discovered H.M.S. Medill is taking on water.
• We kinda read this OTR blog.
• We wrote something really long about transgender people and what, exactly?

Join us next week for the real reason Delt died, why dildos couldn't get us to join OTR and the latest on His Majesty Dean John Lavine's plan to mindrape us all.

THE END NEARSH.M.S. Medill sinking faster than expected; D.C. ed quits, and it's nasty!

Behold the false prophet. Earlier this week, Dickson rather lazily noted the existence of the adoring Chicago Magazine profile this photo accompanies.

I interrupt this adoring profile — which, don't worry, we'll poke lots of holes in later — to return to the realm of real world, where it's the facts, not the rhetoric, that counts.

Which brings us to the as-yet-unrevealed departure of Medill's D.C. Newsroom director, Ron Cohen. He's leaving, effective immediately, and he's not going quietly into that good night. From his post on the United Press International listserv:

thanks for outpointing the chicago mag piece on medill. i can say without
hesitation that it fails completely to reflect the depth of the turmoil sweeping
both the journ school and many parts of northwestern as a whole. this guy is
going to ruin the franchise of a terrific journalism program, and i am certain
that yesterday was my last day affiliated with the washington semester -- my
strengths, teaching reporting and writing, are no longer of value in the dean's
overall scheme of things.

John Lavine, you are so screwed! Hmm, is it time to start the deathwatch? I do so love deathwatches, and what with a few more of these untidy adieus and perhaps even our lovably braindead president may take note.

Anyways. Medill will be making this public in...

YOU ARE SO FUCKEDMedill consults thesaurus, knows what you did at Time for Kids this summer

It's a sad consequence of our little cottage industry's ongoing transition that not even I bothered to read "john"'s e-mail about the new Medill integrity code. When you get to an explanatory sentence about Jayson Blair, totally unnecessary dependent clause here, what do you do? You stop reading. And you should.

Moving on. The new Integrity Code replaces what I believe was an Honor Pledge, which proves what Michele Bitoun lacks in cerebral matter she makes up for with thesaurus skills.

Surprise, though! There are substantive changes here. I am actually not joking. Now, whatever you do on your time away from Medill, be it p.r. or journalism (the days of those as separate words and not as a market-tested blanket phrase appear to be some time off as yet) will be subject to the code.

Well. This is all because some dumb bitch whose name no one remembers plaigarized a story in the Daily last Fall. This was not her fault! She wrote Devo.

O.K., anyway, everyone was having a Paula Abdul-on-crack reaction to this in Fisk, especially the freshmen. It was all like, Oooh, is she gonna get kicked out?

Now we have our answer! No word yet on whether it's retroactive, but if anyone remembers this girl's name, I will sooooo call her for a quote.

The other interesting thing here is that it applies to marketing. That's going to create a lot of rough situations, don't you think? Like, all those people who work at Mattel, what are they supposed to do when it turns out they totally lied about the safety of the products they market?! The ethical quandaries!!!

JOHN LAVINE, TAKE THAT OFFDispatch from California: An audience with His Majesty

So yesterday I had this e-repartee with a Los Angeles-based Medill alum, and it was kind of like, Yeah, Medill. What the hell is going on?

Good question! And we had the opportunity for great answers, as the Dean of the Medill School for Journalism was stopping in Los Angeles to meet with parents, alumni and what have you. Journalism people. Onwards.

A few hours after I sent her a blistering prep sheet, I received the following report back.

"I was not impressed by him.
He was wearing a necklace. Does he always? And a long-sleeved white linen shirt buttoned to the neck with long billowing sleeves buttoned at the cuff, but the tail out---a Midwesterner's notice of tropical attire who believes that Los Angeles is the tropics.
Is he gay?
He had that vibe.
He seemed very arrogant."

Hmm, is the dean gay? He once complemented me on a shirt. Perhaps this is a question for Dickson. Dude has the gaydar of Anne Hathaway.

Anyway. What do we think about the dean these days? I promise not to solicit your comments only to ignore, obfuscate and ridicule them! Now go.

WHAT IS... MASTURBATION?There are no stupid questions, just stupid people

Because I was newly invited to this blog, here's a retroactive post. Let's look back to July 20 when Medill unveiled Innovation 2020, an obvious name-borrow from intern autoerotica Ed2010; the only two differences being that the new Medill is for people who want to pay $40,000 to be unemployed and Ed2010 is for awkward girls from middle America who want to pay nothing and work at Vogue.

Innovation 2020 is, in fact, so innovative that Dean Lavine is posting the questions people write in. Just like a mid-90s message board, but without pedophilia. Here are two questions (of the mere six) that I was especially glad Dean Lavine posted... I've always wondered these things myself:

“(Your curricula are) very, very exciting.. .. (We are) evolving our 25-year advertising agency into a “real” integrated marketing organization. The single greatest challenge is finding people who get it. We are constantly on the lookout for people who do. Perhaps there are Medill IMC folks out there that can head up Client Services rather than those who “service accounts.” There is a huge difference, but it is very difficult to find people who understand that, much less do it. The same situation exists in converting heretofore separate entities such as Media, Public Relations, Database Management, Direct Marketing, Interactive into a cohesive “solution neutral” department. Today most of these departments are silos, and the world just doesn’t work like that. We have done a pretty good job of evolving this, but it’s a huge struggle finding people to manage the vision in each of these two crucial areas. … Thanks for doing what you’re doing."

“Wonderful news, Dean Lavine. Thanks for the commitment to take Medill to the next level!"

The new Medill is so innovative that Q&As don't even need to ask questions any more? And apparently, attribution is out too. Every other entry starts with "an alum says," but these dogged interrogations are anonymous.

Could someone at the school be writing in their own compliments? And if so, why isn't Lavine even responding to them? If Medill is going to masturbate while at work, they at least need to clean up after themselves.

Unless, of course, it's happening in the basement bathroom of Fisk.

What is the Pope doing in our picture? And other vexing quandaries concerning freshmen video-blogging

d
While I really get a kick out of some of Intro to 21st Century marketing Steven K. Duke's e-mails, it's hard not to find this morning's all-class bulletin about two video-blogging students grating. First off, if I had made this video, I wouldn't want to expose to other freshmen. I might even think twice before sending it home to Cincinnati or (really, Katy?) "the OC." That said, it wouldn't be altogether surprising if Duke spends his time away from the Baron scouring northbynorthwestern for freshmen-produced content.

But where's the deluge of e-mails about his other students' accomplishments? Dan Fletcher's written some good stuff in the Daily, as has Emily Glazer. Here's to a non-discriminatory Duke. Teaching for the 21st century doesn't mean ignoring newspapers. Much as the Levine ideology may have completely obfuscated their importance, they're still around. And by the looks of it, video-blogging isn't shaping up as too great a replacement.

Punctuation out the door in wake of online midterm snafus

Check your inboxes, Medill freshmen. Steve Duke is coming to the rescue.

"All,Relax.Clearly, there has been a system problem with the midterm. I'll talk to Academic Technologies tosee what went wrong and we'll reschedule this whole thing.
Steve Duke. [sic]"

This, the first of two e-mails Duke sent out after students couldn't complete Friday's Blackboard-administered midterm, was dashed off in such a flash at 2:27:01 p.m. that the defective spacebar key on his BlackBerry clearly was no concern next to the need of his anxious students.

"Oh my God, I hate you, Steven Duke. Like, I stayed in last night to get an A, not a B!" wailed Medill freshmen after the e-mails arrived.

Some, it so happens, had successfully completed the online midterm and gotten good scores.

In his second e-mail, evidently one written with the use of a keyboard endowed with a spacebar, Duke says he isn't sure how he'll reconcile the wishes of students who scored well and don't want to retake the exam with those who couldn't take it at all.

Let's not even think about the inundation of e-mails deluging Duke's inbox. But the controversy is sure to touch off a battle royale among students dissatisfied with 94% scores who want to retake it and those who cakewalked their way to a perfect 100.

Hopefully all this will be resolved when next week's guest, or perhaps professor replacement, Dean John Lavine decides that since we're all really "Medill consumers," we should be satiated with perfect scores.

Dispatch from Medill: Lavine:Price::Duke:Baron?

"The world is our oyster," slick TV suit Hank Price told Intro to 21st Century Marketing students Friday with a twinkle in his glassy eyes.

Price, while reportedly no match for Steve Duke boytoy Ed Baron in bed, had quite a twinkle to his smooth speech. Decked out in head-to-toe black, he seemed to offer a Faustian bargain to his intrepid audience of young journalists: Adapt with the rest of the media and become adept across many platforms or you won't have a job.

Soon thereafter, however, he seemed to veer into the Lavinespeak students have been saturated with for weeks. "In the future," he said, "everyone's going to be a content producer or content seller."

He then proceeded to gush about the "ambitious" plans Lavine has layed out, saying that "Lavine is doing something for Medill that no other journalism school in the country is yet doing."

Price may yet be the Rachel to Lavine's Ross, or, if you will, the Baron to Lavine's Duke.

But reports were that Lavine's interest in Price was solely to ensure that parents, many of whom visited the class due to concurrent scheduling with Family Weekend, were not treated to another love-in between the Duke and the Baron that might jeopardize the Dean's monopoly on the future of journalism (or at least 180 kids' parents' $45k/year.)

The situation underscored the tension between Lavine and Duke for control of the new-fangled class. Though the Dean helmed its development and sees the class of 2010 as his group of highly-educated lab rats, Duke was given the reins while Lavine sat in the back of the Fisk lecture hall. Today, however, marked the first time one of his proxies has directly stepped in to right the ship.

Duke, left listless by the students' captivation with Price, wandered the aisles like a bald Vanna White, handing out mikes to students with questions.

A key indicator of who wins the battle for control of the class may be which guest speaker's words worm their way into the all multiple-choice midterm next week.

Price, whose return remains up in the air, left the freshmen amiably, saying "usually they don't let me talk to undergraduates because you have your whole careers ahead of you."

Anything to avoid another in-class reacharound sesh, we guess.