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.

BIZARRE LOGICThe Medill-White House Correspondents Association connection

So the White House Correspondents Association website is hosted on Medill servers. Weird, right?

But rather than point out that Medill is moving closer to the White House while everyone else is putting like 9,127 miles between themselves and the president, I decided to actually figure out what was going on. Yeah, so what follows is an unadulterated transcript of e-mails between me and Ellen Shearer (right), the webmaster (really?) of the WHCA's Medill-hosted site.

Peter -- happy to answer questions. But first, is this for a Daily article?

Why, would that change the nature of your answers? So, I said:

I'd never say never, but for now it's for my personal gratification and possibly for my blog. That said, it could contextualize Medill coverage. Even if you guys dreamed up MC Rove, I doubt anyone would deem it worthy of an article.

Thanks again.

Onwards. About ten minutes later, out came the claws:

Peter -- Karl Rove was a speaker at the Radio-Television dinner, not the WHCA dinner.

Medill coordinates judging of the WHCA awards. We also created and have hosted the Web site, but this fall it will be redesigned and moved off the Medill server so we only will be coordinating the awards judging.Medill coordinates judging of the WHCA awards. We also created and have hosted the Web site, but
this fall it will be redesigned and moved off the Medill server so we only will be coordinating the awards.

Like, who knew those were separate events? Anyways, that answered like one of the questions I originally posed. I guess prejudices aren't always off-base.

SOROSTITUTESTri Delta, because no one else will

After watching the above video, you've pretty much gleaned all there is to know about this post. Serena Brahney, a recent NU grad/tri-delt/medill broadcast gal has combined all of her skills to prove this is she is "charismatic, capable, and [OMG!] clearly the right choice for the Smirnoff Top 10."

The folks over at Smirnoff will pick ten sluts and dudes to travel around the world as brand reps while getting drunk in such exotic locales as New York, Shanghai, Paris and Moscow (what, no Ho Chi Minh City?). If you're too lazy to watch the video (or don't want to deal with a Facebook photo montage), Brahney would make the perfect pick because she's the "resident social planner" for her social group, a trained dancer, has lived in four (!) different cities, and has been trained at the Medill School of Journalism. That last bit is especially important -- it taught her how to shoot her own video in a much too dark room (Ava would be so upset!), and put a little Smirnoff-red signer with her name at the beginning of her youtube contest entry.

Is this the kind of thing we're supposed to apply for when we're unemployed? Does this even count as a job? Can I put this on my resume?

In any case, our money is on Brahney. Not because all the other entries seem to be from Canada (in fact, Brahney is too). But because we remember her as the only girl crass enough to convince Darla Ward to send out an e-mail when she lost her designer sunglasses during a Crane Lecture.

So raise your glass to the past memories. Here's hoping Brahney will be embarrassing herself, not over the Medill listserv, but on youtube soon enough.

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...

CH-CH-CH-CHANGESThesaurus: give me a new word for LEARNING

I'll be honest (integrity is so hot right now); I didn't read the Medill Honor Pledge either. Well I have now, but I read Kassner's post first.

I'll be honest again; Shouldn't media organizations, and companies, and marketing agencies or whatever, be responsible for their own employees? Or is that really the job of an Alma Mater? I'm not counting on plagiarizing or embarrassing Medill, but it seems like $40,000 should buy a great education, lifelong learning and fabulous facilities. It has -- but now it comes with a metaphorical jail-cell not even Lindsay could rehab her way out of. Is paranoia the new pedagogy?

Also, while we're talking about name changes:

OLD: Medill School of Journalism
NEW: Medill School of Journalism and Integrated Marketing Communications

OLD: Honor Pledge
NEW: Integrity Code

OLD: Teaching Media Program
NEW: Journalism Residency

What's next? comment away.

I'm off to go write the sequel to A Million Little Pieces.

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!!!

FROM A TO XXXSex, Drugs... no Rock'n'Roll

A Sinderbrand, or Alexandra, or whatever, was Northwestern famous for a certain sorority overshare; a documentary where she spilled the secrets of Tri-Delta's rush process. It was delightful and deranged all at once (and can definitely be found on the internets). She was also a sex columnist over at nucomment.com, but nothing can really compare to telling hundreds of freshmen girls a week before rush that they're not attractive, wealthy, interesting or, um, attractive enough to join the ranks of NU's elite. The truth hurts, don't it?

Well, she's at it again. This time, divulging the dirty (and delightful and deranged) truth about losing her v-card. I could go on and on about this (what will her parents think? what will "Shane" think?), but really, let's just cut to the excerpts for all of you reeling from the weekend and too horny to be at your precious internships:

Here, we learn the extracurriculars that got A into NU:

We found ourselves up against the walls in empty classrooms, on floors, in the grass, rolling around with our hands down each other’s pants. But Shane seemed to like me for reasons outside of my ability to give a decent hand-job. Shane read my articles in the school paper. Shane nodded and smiled at me as he headed toward the locker room at halftime. Shane came to my a cappella shows and set off the standing ovations

Here, we learn about the prep-school importance of fitness and safe sex:

When he pulled off his shirt, I realized we’d never seen each other naked. He was length and leanness peppered with ripped limbs and an eight-pack. Only a thin hemp necklace, left over from the summer, broke the line of his buttery torso. I’m pretty sure I drooled. We were grinding against each other, me in a thong, him in boxer-briefs, when he pulled away and looked at me. The look was the question. “Do you have a condom?” was all I could muster. He said yes and smiled, but it wasn’t a boyish, psyched smirk of anticipation. His voice was shaky when he asked me if I was sure.

Here, a gratuitously hot excerpt:

The sex that followed was simultaneously the most painful and the most romantic experience I’ve ever had. Shane was huge and hard, but his gentleness suggested that he was constantly aware of what I was feeling. He took my virginity in slow, soft thrusts, kissing me in between his low moans. My complete awe and adoration for him shut down my pain-receptors. He didn’t roll off of me after he came. He held me and smiled. I think I knew that night that I’d never fully get over him.

That climax, above, is the climax of her article. After that (spoiler alert!), Shane cheats, A goes on about the double-edged sword of having the perfect first time and manages to turn her lit-porn into a tirade on cheating that makes us at GossipDesk feel guilty.

Still an incredible read though. Medill does teach people to write, after all

SELL OUTThe Good Ol' Days

This half of gossip desk remembers this moment clearly: He was sitting at home, summer after freshman year, when he received a list of peer advisees that he would shepard into the upcoming years of Medill, initiating them to all the wonder and glory and, yes, fear that was impending. He fielded IM convesations, banal packing requests and even the rogue question about hooking up with your writing professor to get ahead; in the end, he was left satisfied.

Word has it that this season is once again upon us. And loyal readers of gossipdesk (all 32 of you and counting), we need your help. Send any hilarious questions, banter, or peer-advisor influenced queries that your youngins send your way to thegossipdesk@gmail.com. I'll post the best questions and respond to them in a less-than-Medill way. C'mon, it'll be fun (and anonymous). And like all those other "real" blogs out there, it might even turn into a regular feature.

Plus, Kassner could use some advice about snagging the ladies. Me? I want a trip down memory lane. At this point, the only thing I have to look forward to is my roommate cleaning his discarded pubic hair off the toilet bowl.

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.

THE NEW BLASPHEMY: ANALGod still losing to Daniel Radcliffe in sexual fanfiction wars.

"I want to do something special for this day," Muhammad said sultrily. "I know how we usually do it, and...this time, I want you to take me."

Jesus looked at him with wide eyes, uncertain. While there was no clear 'dominant' man in their union, the Messiah had always been the taken, rather than the taker." (From "Peace on Earth," by Slash Firestorm)

You can imagine where it goes from there. This is a family website?

Anyways. Daily alumna Elizabeth Gibson brings some truly original reporting to The Methods Reporter, the Medill grad students' really quite decent website. The prophets! They're gay! But, thankfully, stories involving Harry Potter outnumber religious pieces 136 to 1. (No mention of Voldemort, who would presumably blur the boundary between the two categories.)

I'd write more, but Ginny Weasley is giving me an erection I really can't ignore.

[Methods Reporter]

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.

Baron cancels sleepover; ethically justified maimings dispensed via handheld keypads

Today's 21st century marketing lecture was meant to be devoid of Steve Duke. It wasn't.

Perhaps the thought of skipping the ethics lecture to jet off to one-time guest-speaker Ed Baron's Key West abode struck Duke as a tad too ironic. From the confusion pervading the ensuing PowerPoint slides, ("real truth may not come from juxtaposing extremes; it may come in a gray area in between") we're betting it was just a bad breakup.

Didn't slow down Friday's lecture, though. The keypad clickers employed by ASG for voting and tested on Medill freshmen a few weeks ago were back for an ethics questionnaire culminating in a scintillating ethical dilemma. A bargain-bin video posed freshmen-cum-train-conductors an impossible choice: mow down five immobilized invalids on the tracks or flip a magic switch, derail the train, and avert their deaths but kill another innocent bystander waiting at the platform.

And the students vote to maim! Fully 66% (come to think of it, a suspect portion) of respondents said Fuck the invalids. Apparently the prevailing logic was that these people were on the tracks and should therefore die instead of the poor woman waiting at the platform. It evidently escaped freshmen that the five people on the tracks were undoubtedly unable to move for some reason -- perhaps tied to the tracks or deaf -- and just as innocent as the latte-sipping woman awaiting the next train. And, on that note, why is the train unable to stop if people are waiting for it at a nearby platform? Wouldn't it be stopping? Here's to the hope that Duke posts the video on YouTube for public perusal. Who knows -- it may just turn up on the final.

Daily roundup: Smorgasbord of the unsurprising

From Wednesday's editions:

• As long as Levine is "exploding the curriculum," cover the Medill shake-up as needed, says Public Ed David Spett. Guess we'll see no more of the oh-so-amusing public spats with the EIC.

• NUIT debuts a roving "laptop ER."

• Zinn blasts war, Bush, balding. The solution: Imperialists anonymous.

• The men of Skokie want their chicken. Badly.

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.

Solo act: Guest-speaker-free and apologetic, Duke incites "fear and fright"... or boredom.

"You can't please all the people all the time," as Duke's recent grammatical gaffe demonstrated. Too bad he killed the truth-ridden cliche by using it three times in the opening moments of class. Better luck next time, buddy. Held hostage on a glorious Friday afternoon, Professor Duke's 21st Century Media class snoozed through a 30-minute tangent of a curiously high school nature, masquerading as "housekeeping." The highlight of the delay to Duke's first solo venture this quarter? An apology for the "your/you're" mishap. Or perhaps it was his finest analogy of the laborious two hours (but thankfully not three), involving a news spigot and journalistic bucket. At least the man has some imagination...

Covert texting and Star magazine consumption (brownie points if you can do both simultaneously) weren't really viable options during today's lecture as the Duke hovered, strolled, patrolled, and wove his way around the entire perimeter of Fisk 217. You'd think he was an anxious first-time student teacher corralling a bunch of rambunctious badasses or something. Speaking of being badass, the solo-reigning prof did manage to infuse some legit, sobering docu-journalism into the second segment of his schtick. The half-hour piece created by Medill seniors chronicled Chitown Housing Authority's controversial revamping of the notoriously ghetto South Side Cabrini-Green projects. C'mon now; that place is seriously fascinating. Not to mention seriously hood. Duke may well have inspired a couple repenting do-gooders after viewing "This Is Change." If only more of his lectures fixated on genuine journalism like that. Granted, the repartee between Duke and his marketing-minded guests of honor have a charm all their own.

Murdoch legal team crashes Duke/Baron sleepover

As if student outcry weren't enough cause for Intro to 21st Century Marketing lecturer Steve Duke to fix the grammatical errors his 9/29 PowerPoint was rife with, a legal team from conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch swooped in Sunday to force rectification of the errors. Duke related last Friday the story of a young Murdoch shopping his newest property, The New York Post, to potential advertisers, including Macy's. A sales rep there reportedly told him way back in 1971 that "Your readers are our shoplifters." Duke's slide, however, read "You're readers," and his words were drowned out by the simulcast voices of ten students reading the slide as it were.

The errors didn't escape the tentacles of Murdoch's vast organization, and now the mistake has been corrected. "We didn't really care about this crap between him and the Baron," a rep for Murdoch writes. "If he didn't correct this, thought, we'd have had to sic Billy on him," he said, referring to Fox News attack dog Bill O'Reilly. Word is Duke really feared that he himself might become Page Six slam material if he did not comply with the legal crew's grammarian's requests, as the group found him and 9/29 guest speaker Ed Baron shacked up Sunday in what a Medill rep referred to as a "holistic retreat where the two mulled future media integration, Nielsen ratings and an ad buyout of High Times." But reports indicate it was more like a reacharound sleepover. Murdoch's team nonetheless rolled Duke out of his four-poster early Sunday to force corrections to the material and a midday posting that all but the most hard-working students were bound to overlook. "Look," the Murdoch rep said with a wink, "it's a sticky situation, but Rupert prefers his history to be, at the very least, properly punctuated."

The Duke and the Baron

Despite the cackles of gleeful freshmen eager to bestow a Medill F on their instructor, Intro to 21st Century Media lecturer Stephen Duke seems uneager to rectify the mistakes in the typo-ridden PowerPoint he forced his 180-strong class to toil through for 45 minutes Friday. The class’ Blackboard homepage, which features a low-res artist’s interpretation of Duke-as-Borg, remains devoid of an edited version of the PowerPoint though last week’s has long since been posted. It remains unclear if Duke is merely being obstinate or is overlooking the glaring errors due to his hapless love for guest speaker Ed Baron, with whom he traded inside jokes and lustful leers throughout the extra-long Q&A session which began Friday’s class. A starry-eyed Duke then tried to pick up where the Baron left off, only to find his poorly paraphrased summaries of the week’s reading so befuddled students that he fell back on the text’s own anecdotes. Unfortunately the Duke’s understanding of the economics of golden geese was no better than Veruca Salt’s, and he abruptly ended his presentation to scattered applause from an audience too tuned out to notice the gesture.