Cyrus in NYC Aug 13-Sept 3

I’ve announced this in other places, but I don’t think here on the blog. I’ll be teaching a crash course in radio for a few weeks at my alma mater, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism starting next week.

My time there is booking up fast! I arrive in town tomorrow and already have a research day trip to Philadelphia planned as soon as I hit the ground early tomorrow morning, as well as an evening meeting back in Manhattan. I’m also going to visit family two out of the three weekends that I’m there, and hopefully with other friends/colleagues. If you’d like to meet up with me, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Cops seek torturer of Ivy League grad student

AP:

NEW YORK (AP) — It was an ordeal that lasted 19 hours. In that span, a man bound a Columbia University graduate student in her apartment, raped her, doused her with hot water and bleach, slit her eyelids and finally set a fire before fleeing, police said.

Police pressed a manhunt for the assailant in the April 13 attack, with investigators hoping any surviving DNA and a $12,000 reward for information leading to an arrest would produce fresh leads.

The victim, who managed to free herself before the fire spread, was still in the hospital Thursday, police said.

The woman was nearing her degree at the Graduate School of Journalism when the attack occurred at her apartment more than 20 blocks north of the Ivy League campus in upper Manhattan, classmates have said. Dozens paid tribute to her Monday with a candlelight vigil.

[via _wendybird_]

NYT: Cheating on an Ethics Test? It’s ‘Topic A’ at Columbia

The New York Times:

Cheating is not unheard of on university campuses. But cheating on an open-book, take-home exam in a pass-fail course seems odd, and all the more so in a course about ethics.

Yet Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism is looking into whether students may have cheated on the final exam in just such a course, “Critical Issues in Journalism.” According to the school’s Web site, the course “explores the social role of journalism and the journalist from legal, historical, ethical, and economic perspectives,” with a focus on ethics.

Nicholas Lemann, dean of the journalism school, said that students had to sign on to a Columbia Web site to gain access to the exam, and that once they did, had 90 minutes to write a couple of essays. But he was unwilling to detail how the cheating might have occurred.

Mr. Lemann said that no student had been formally accused of any violation, but that the issue had become “Topic A” at the school.

The situation was reported yesterday by RadarOnline.com.

The course was taught by Samuel G. Freedman, a professor of journalism at the school who also contributes columns on education and religion to The New York Times. Mr. Freedman confirmed yesterday evening that “there are allegations of cheating.”

Dave Cuomo plays two nights in the Bay Area!

When I lived in New York, I was invited to get cheap drinks and attend some great live music once a week at The Underground Lounge by my good buddy and Columbia cohort Jennifer Weiss. She had a regular gig rockin’ the back room on piano and killer vocals.

Jen and I also shared a radio class together at Columbia, and after having been exposed to various musical performances at the Underground, and in dire need of a subject for a radio documentary, she suggested that I do one on Mr. Dave Cuomo (pictured at left).

After spending hours with Dave, attending his shows and chatting with him in his Washington Heights apartment, I came to realize here was someone who was living his dream. Many kids fantasize about coming to the big city with a few bucks in their pocket and a guitar on their back, ready to take on the world with their music. Dave did it, and did it with gusto and style. He’s a fast-talkin’, passionate, grungy and romantic musicmaker and is just an all-around cool guy. You can hear him in my April 2005 radio documentary: “Music Man.”

So it is with great pleasure that I’ll be hosting Dave Cuomo for the next three nights, while he continues his 2006 tour.

He’ll bring the house down Tuesday night at Brainwash (1122 Folsom St., San Francisco) at 7 pm and Wednesday night at Mama Buzz (2318 Telegraph Ave., Oakland) at 6 pm for the low price of three bucks.

Sam Gustin on Google

A Columbia cohort of mine, Sam Gustin, has just penned a sweet article for The Village Voice on Google’s plans to expand in the Big Apple:

For the time being, by installing itself above Chelsea’s broadband “fiber highway” at 111 Eighth Avenue, St. Arnaud explained, Google can bypass many of the major telecommunications firms and interface directly with Tier 2 service providers such as Level 3 Communications or XO Communications, which also are located in the building. This will significantly cut down the costs associated with reaching business customers on Wall Street and in the media and fashion worlds, and generally throughout the Northeast power corridor from D.C. to Boston. The arrangement also suits the Tier 2 providers, which are “thrilled because they can get content directly from Google and bypass” the major telecom and cable Tier 1 providers, St. Arnaud says.

But the advantages of Google’s new space at 111 Eighth Avenue are not merely technological. Google’s office will be highly efficient, because the lease covers nearly 300,000 square feet on just two floors, rather than the 10 or more floors that much space would take up in a traditional New York City office building, like, say, the Empire State Building, which was completed one year before 111 Eighth Avenue, in 1931. That means fewer bathrooms, fewer elevators, more efficient wiring, and less energy consumption, not to mention those large communal meeting spaces that Googlers love so much. In a way, the vast horizontal spaces afforded by 111 Eighth Avenue echo the sprawling, horizontal nature of Silicon Valley itself, perhaps best exemplified by Google’s vast campus in California.

Q&A with Prof. Sam Freedman

The toughest, most demanding and most ultimately rewarding professor I ever had, Sam Freedman, has just come out with his latest book, Letters to a Young Journalist. Poynter (a clearinghouse of journalism industry happenings) has a great interview with him:

You’re tough on bloggers, FOX News and citizen journalists. As a former New Yorke Times reporter and tenured professor at Columbia Journalism School, what separates you from charges that you’re an elitist scold?

I don’t mind being called an elitist if being an elitist means being the best, not being snooty and effete. When I hear people complain about the elite, I always ask them if they’d like to apply their principle to sports. Let’s have an NFL season with only mediocre players, because all those elitists like Tom Brady and Donovan McNabb are ruining the game. Somehow people don’t mind the elite all of a sudden. I don’t think an amateur is as qualified as a professional in journalism. There are qualified journalists and scholars whose blogs I do read — Juan Cole on the Middle East, Andrew Sullivan on social and political issues, Gregg Easterbrook on football. But in their cases, the blog is simply an alternative delivery system. These people write out of a body of research, if not for every posting, then certainly over the course of a career. But to just sit down and write your opinions or harvest the day’s gossip — that’s not journalism, even if it is momentarily chic. As for FOX, it’s a fascinating political movement, but it’s not a news organization in any way I recognize. If that’s scolding, then I’m guilty as charged.

But I want to be more than a chastising prophet. I think that the best bloggers and podcasters and webzines of the future can be enriched by an appreciation of the commitment to reporting, unbiased inquiry and lucid expression that the evil MSM can practice at its best. The “old” can inform and enhance the “new.” Just the other day, I was listening to Terry Gross interview the jazz drummer Paul Motian on “Fresh Air.” Now, I associate Motian with modal and free jazz, modern forms, but he was talking about how much he’d been influenced by supposed old-timers like Chick Webb. In journalism, as in jazz, there is a tradition, and that tradition has something to teach modernists, too.