You can take the man out of Medill, but...

Howdy, everybody. I think, in this crowd, none of us need any introduction; but I thought I should say hello first. Long time, no see. A little bit of an update: I live in Orlando now, and I am a news designer for the Sentinel. And if any of you want to come to the Happiest City on Earth, mi sofa es su casa.

Now, to brass tacks.

For my first post, I wanted to share with you all a great, and Evanston-related, story that has been making its rounds here in Orlando. Anybody remember the temple across the street from Harris? That'd be Sigma Alpha Epsilon's national headquarters. But lately, they've had to focus their attention on their University of Central Florida chapter, here in Orlando:

Police called to a University of Central Florida fraternity house last week found young men crawling on hands and knees, screaming profanely and wearing women's underwear, fairy wings and a diaper.

University police released this account of the incident Thursday, the same day the national headquarters of Sigma Alpha Epsilon suspended the UCF chapter pending its own investigation of how three men at the house ended up being taken to a hospital.

[...]

UCF police responded early Oct. 26 to the on-campus fraternity house, which sports a large gold lion statue out front and purple doors. Officers heard weeping, moaning and "aggressive screaming," according to their report.

At first, investigators were told they could not go inside because a "ritual" was being performed, police said. When officers entered, they saw seven or eight crawling men wearing bras and women's underpants and one man sobbing on the floor and wearing a rainbow-colored wig and a diaper.

One man wearing a pink tank top, women's underwear and a blond wig lay on the floor vomiting while another participant held his head up, the report states.

It seems that the Sentinel story actually left out some of the most horrifying parts. From the UCF Central Florida Future story:

Police contacted Orange County Rescue when some of the men were deemed in need of medical attention, citing that one man "appeared to have trouble breathing." Another man received assistance in order to "keep him from lying in his own vomit," and one "could not walk under his own power."

Orange County Rescue transported three men, whose names have not been disclosed, to Florida Hospital East. They were released the same night.

Police found "numerous" beer cans and bottles, one mostly consumed bottle of rum and "numerous mangled hotdogs" scattered on the floor of the SAE house.

I've been fielding questions from the copy desk about a variety of Evanston- and Northwestern-related conventions, for the last couple of weeks, every time they need to write about this. So it was the first thing I thought of when I decided to make my first post. As Scott might say: Hey presto!

P.S.: I would like to propose that we name the "meta-media" category "Seriously I Mean" in honor of a certain classmate with roman numerals. (Unfortunately, using commas will throw the whole system off, I suspect.) And the job category "La Cosa Nostra." Just my two bits.

big news in Mumbai

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061113/ap_en_ot/people_angelina_jolie

And later this afternoon, watch as Jolie drinks a cup of coffee... that she made herself.

The New Medill Dean, Indeed

There is one primary reason I decided to sign on when I got Andy's invitation. That is, of course, the Dean John Lavine/Medill 2020 cataclysm that has taken place over the past year. The school's abrupt change of course and its uncertain direction, enunciated in only the most ambiguous prose, has left hundreds of students, alumni, and other journalists scratching their heads.

I hope we can bring a discussion of these issues to the public with this site. I propose an "On Medill" category for the blog, in which "NU Media People" will turn a critical eye on the institution from which most of us hold degrees. I was asked by a reporter soon after the announcement that Lavine would become dean whether there was "cause for concern." After some thought, I said, "I don't know if there is cause for concern, but I know that people are concerned." In that spirit, let's gather some information, maybe even do some good old-fashioned reporting, and get to the bottom of this change.

First, a disclosure: I was serving on Medill's Curriculum Committee as an undergraduate student representative when Lavine took the helm. That committee stopped meeting for the rest of the academic year, and I don't know whether it has been reinstated. I then served as a member of Lavine's "Advisory Council" before he released his vision publicly. Because of the nature of those groups, I will generally withhold information I gained there. I learned nothing in that environment that shouldn't be accessible without that access, and I would like to maintain a bit of distance from my own advisory service.

I'll start by posting a few of the stories out there on the issue. Happy reading:

• The Vision for Medill 2020 – This document outlines Lavine's vision, which emerged some weeks after he took over as dean. It is a written document, not an interview, and many have told me the charts the dean uses here appear regularly in his presentations to outside groups.


• CJR's story, "The Magician" – Less fawning than the title might suggest, this story gives a good deal of background that we might not otherwise encounter. A highly recommended read for those who haven't seen it.


• The Mystery Of Medill's Missing Macs – A Daily story on Lavine's decision to switch to Windows computers. The story got Romeneskoed. A friend mentions that this change makes design Prof. Susan Mango Curtis' job incredibly trying, as layout and design happen on Apple operating systems almost 100 percent of the time.


• "The Medill School of Media Management?" from the Chicago Reader – From December 2005, this story contains comments from a Medill alumni listserv (who knew?) and an anonymous faculty member.


• Inside Higher Ed's December story – On balance a positive story, this includes comment from Lee Ettleman, who served on the advisory council with me.

Categories

This site is designed to serve a number of functions. I'd like each post to fit one of the functions and carry an appropriate label. Because the site is based in a common culture of friends and acquaintances, I figured it would be fun to give each category a humorous named that's based on a reference many of us would get. The only one I'll insist on is a tribue to Dalia; "Orange Balconies" could be changed. What are your ideas for the rest?

How Prestigious
Career moves, journalistic coups, anything else you'd like to brag about.

Orange Balconies
Anything goofy and Evanston-related; later discovery or insight about a story you worked on while at NU.

One Exclamation Point, Ever!
Style, grammar, writing issues, etc.

Category name
Job information, freelance opportunities, any information that you would rather go to a friend than a stranger.

Category name
All things meta-media, articles on controversies and debates, Poynter and ombud-type stuff.

Category name
Articles of interest, good or bad (not meta-media).

Category name
Anything purely social, get-togethers or announcing you'll be in a certain part of the country, that sort of thing.

Category name
Observations about the working life, whether you're in journalism/media anymore or not.

Category name
Any comments related to the site itself

Welcome to NU Media People

Dear friends and colleagues:

Some of you I talk to every day. Some of you I haven’t seen in more than year. But I think you’ll all like this idea and will want to participate.

The idea: an informal networking site for NU students and alums interested in the media. What does that mean? It means a place to share job information, interesting articles, observations about the working world, or reflections on how the current media world connects with your NU experience.

Why? I have a few reasons myself. The first is that if there’s one thing I’ve discovered in my five months in the “real world,” it’s that one must network or die. Just about any job worth getting or opportunity worth pursuing is discovered through a friend or colleague of some sort — or can be exploited much more efficiently is one has that sort of connection. I hate the slick, superficial, elevator friendships that usually accomplish this sort of goal, so I thought this might be a good way to accomplish the same goals while also staying in touch with a bunch of people I like.

It may seem odd that I am starting such a site when I no longer work in any sort of obvious media job. There are two answers to that. First, my job is about to expand to include a bit of something like journalism, which I’ll explain in a later post. But the more fundamental answer is that there are many of us who were either journalism students or media people of some sort who, for whatever reason, aren’t anymore. Yet if you’re like me, you still get a kick out of awful headlines or unapologetic bias or ombud columns. You want to be a part of the discussion. And who knows, if you find the right opportunity, you might want to get back in. So even if you’re not a writer or reporter or editor or designer anymore, please join anyway.

If you are one of those things, as many of my friends still are, you must have also observed what I have, even as an outsider: reporting is a lonely profession. Erin Ailworth and I once had a conversation about how most journalists seem to be secretly antisocial. Even if you didn’t come into the reporting life that way, it might make you so; you have to move to a town where you don’t know a soul just to get a job; your profession is one of the least trusted in the United States; you witness awful things each day and are expected to maintain a straight face; even when you produce a decent bit of copy, it’s likely to get hacked up or poorly packaged; and though you might have lots of friends to drink and go out with, if they’ve never had a byline, they probably don’t understand. Fundamentally, this site is a small way to fight that sort of despair, which has infected too many of us and our friends.

So I hope you give the site a try. If it fails, well, it was worth a shot.

A few rules and guidelines:

* This site is not designed to be any sort of in-club or private network. At the same time, it is not the Medill career office. Attempting to join just to find a job or the like will be frowned upon; new members should have some previous connection to a member of the group.

* All the information posted will be public. Don’t be an idiot and post about how much you hate your editor and all your co-workers. If I’m worried that a post will get us in legal trouble, I’ll take it down.

* Membership and posting privileges will be extended to anyone a current member vouches for (as long as they spent some time at NU). If this gets out of hand, we’ll develop something better.

* Being a firm believer in the First Amendment, I don’t want to discourage anyone from speaking their minds. However, I’d ask everyone to keep in mind the purpose of the site.

* That being said, it seems prudent to add that current NU students probably shouldn’t post about current issues at Medill, the Daily, etc., unless the other members can be engaged in some way. So “new dean of Medill,” yes; “don’t forget the bagels for this week’s city desk meeting,” no.

* Finally, don’t be a jerk. Malicious gossip or flamewars could ruin the site for everyone.

* Feel free to suggest other sensible rules.

I hope everyone enjoys the site. Just let me know if you think there's anything I should change.

By the way, the list of people I invited to the site this morning was not intended to be exclusive at all... please invite anyone you'd like.