Like this, but a magazine

Personally, we think it’s better when college magazines start blogs. But you know those NYU kids.

From the Observer:

NYU Young Media War Rages On: The young folk of NYU Local—the pirate NYU news publication/blog, as opposed to the officially-mandated NYU publication, Washington Square News—is going to wage further war on its rival by putting out its own print publication. It’s going to be called NYU Local Magazine. The scrappy youths at NYU Local have sold us on it as follows:

It’s going to be a mix of guides to life at NYU (A guide to smoking pot in your dorm room written by a former R.A.), some long profiles of NYU students and New Yorkers (Rapper Cakes Da Killa), and there’s some servicey content of stuff that we think NYU students need to know (Where you can drink with and without a fake id). Essentially, now we’re the most exciting print publication at NYU too.

So head on down to Bobst (that’s their Butler, which we are apparently allowed into) and pick up a copy. Or just get your fill of NYU hate from celebrated New Yorker Fran Lebowitz:

I don’t love NYU. I didn’t hate it before. I just never thought about it. It’s not of interest to me. And it really should be stopped from being called NYU, because it really has nothing to do with New York…The worst thing about being around these people, about these students, is overhearing their conversation. For that alone, I walk around my neighborhood in a constant rage, thinking I want to say to them: No, no you’re not. NYU should move out of New York.

From the Department of New and Quirky Campus Blogs comes Dicks at Columbia (http://dicksatcolumbia.tumblr.com).  Don’t worry, it’s totally SFW: the blog is a “celebration of the phallus in all its forms” on this undersexed campus, documenting the proprietor’s near-anthropological quest to find and photograph every wang at our apparently wang-obsessed school.  You can help, too!  Send all tips and photos to dicksatcolumbia@gmail.com. For more on the site, Bwog was able to snag a few precious Gchat minutes with the site’s founder:

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Have you ever wanted to get into the mind of a Columbia ID checker, to see what it’s like behind that desk? A new blog, The Red Zone (http://showyourid.blogspot.com/), offers just that opportunity. It chronicles the tales of an Avery General Assistant, known to readers only as “GA,” since the author never mentions his/her name.

Of course, being in Avery makes everything so much better. Not only is it home to the ever-elusive “hot girl”, but our unnamed GA indeed confirms it to be the “sexiest place on campus.”

Photo Via Doctorsimcha.com

In anticipation of the Hebrew awesomeness slated to invade Miller tonight (tickets are available at the TIC), Bwog would like to officially welcome the Columbia/Barnard Hillel blog onto the internet scene.

The blog seems like an aggregation of Jewish events in and around Morningside Heights as well as photos from said events. But, given the great introduction video, maybe the site will have some comedy as well (though they have stiff comedic competition and a lot of history). 

Anyhow, best of luck, Hillel blog. We add you to the lower right hand side of our site with pride.

-DJB

Why didn’t you think of this first? 

Six CC ’09 gentlemen who met on their pre-Orientation COOP trip have started a blog from their EC townhouse. Designed with a bright red hue to echo their townhouse’s decoration (“as if McDonald’s built a ski chalet”). Casting reformed gender norms to the wind, the group has chosen the title of “The Mansuite,” an epithet for the group that existed long before the blog.

Updated often (for now, at least), the Mansuite blog boasts a photo album with rotating shots of recent parties the bro-consortium has hosted. One such photo, which depicts the archetypal scene of a frenzied and cramped college party, is the permanent bottom banner of the site. Previous posts have included documentation of the Mansuiters’ $450 spending sprees treks at the 125th Street Fairway and of scooter rides down the Lerner ramps.

It is unclear where the idea to start the blog came from, but in a short play one member (who would only go by the alias of “Colin Drummond”) wrote for Bwog in an attempt to link Mansuite back to its roots, the member wrote of a fallen scooter, upturned risotto bowl, puddle of spilled wine and a freeze frame of Gossip Girl forming the letters B-L-O-G. If this description is any indication, the Mansuite is certainly worth a read.

- ECS

According to an article by everyone’s favorite authority on colleges, US News and World Report, Columbia was nipped ever so slightly by Harvard this year for the top honor of being the university whose name appears most in global print and electronic media.  Hey, at least we trounced the rest of the Ivies, as Yale, Princeton, and Cornell were the only other Ancient Eight schools to appear in the top ten.

Rounding out the report’s top five were Michigan, UC Berkeley, and Stanford.  For the rest of the results (as well as a different ranking for the number of appearances of liberal arts colleges in the media) check out this New York Times-evoking report courtesy of the Global Language Monitor.

Who knows, maybe this post will push us over the top! Or maybe not!

As we all know Columbia loves controversy.  We also know that Columbia loves Mexican food.  Thankfully Morningside Heights entrepreneurs have recognized this and consequently the neighborhood offers plenty of Mexican eateries. 

So many in fact that the recent increase in Mexican restaurants has caused quite a controversial and competitive commotion.  Where can a student find the cheapest nachos? The most filling burrito? The freshest guacamole? The quickest quesadilla or closest taco? All these questions have roused heated debate.  But the most contentious question of all does not concern the price, proximity or preparation of the food, but its authenticity. 

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Our new friends at this J-School blog have spotted a TV schedule for tonight’s forum on one of the trailers on Broadway. Industrious aspiring journalists that they are, they have summarized the preliminary order of events. What you need to know:

• The candidates will not speak until 8 p.m. (McCain) and 9 p.m. (Obama) respectively. Each has about an hour for their speeches.
  
• The preceding hour will be mostly taken up by introductions of various kinds, including New York Governor David Patterson (who apparently plans to introduce a new service initiative) and Tobey Maguire (best known for playing fictional Columbia student Peter Parker).
  
• PrezBo’s intro will be at 7:30.  

To see the rest of the schedule (including a photo of the actual minute-by-minute sheet), head on over to that J-School blog.

With Spec on summer vacation for over a week now, it’s time to check in with that other journalistic medium: the internet. And now, a closer look of what some of the blogs on the sidebar have been publishing. 

Roar Lions Roar: Columbia athletics, the high school years

The Phlog: Diners go Greek

The Blaaag: Finals week, we’re nostalgic already!

The One Train: Bwog can’t quite figure out where this bench is. Any guesses?

Off Broadway: More from our Ecuadorian correspondent

Reflective Pundit: Fancy graph points to sensibility of Clinton nomination 

Tipster Mariela Quintana, who volunteers at Park Slope’s 826nyc (a tutoring endeavor of Dave Eggers & Co., and previously featured on Bwog for its Superhero Supply Store), was kind enough to pass along a link to a new blog, “Fish Slaps A Baby,” started and run by their elementary-school-age students. Here you’ll read on such topics as

Rock Jellyfish!

Rock Hot Dogs!

Penguins! 

Bwog is ever-so-pleased. Pleased enough to plug their excellent opportunities to volunteer as well. Plus, you can tell your friends that, in four years in New York, you managed to visit another borough at least once.  

— ZvS

According to Wikipedia, a phlog is a “type of daybook, similar to a blog, but run off a Gopher protocol server,” although  the word may also refer to a photoblog. According to Columbia’s Philolexian Society, the phlog  is a “blog of awesometude” on which various philolexians post poems, essays, and random thoughts. It’s run through Blogspot  rather than Gopher, and it doesn’t have many photos, but we’ll forgive them. Welcome to the bwogroll, Phlog!

According to The Spine, a blog written by New Republic editor Marty Perez, Joseph Massad has been denied tenure. There’s no other source on the story so far and no official word on the reasons behind the decision, but Gil Ronen of Israel National news claimed yesterday that the decision to make Nadia El-Haj a tenured professor was part of an internal deal in which Massad’s tenure would be turned down.

The Columbia publications scene can seem oversaturated—there’s always something new on newsstands and strewn across dorm hallways. But Barnard has historically been a one-publication campus, with the Bulletin absorbing the journalistic energies of those who don’t take their writing talents across the street, or down Broadway to the Spectator.

Until last fall, that is. Keondra Prier, BC ’08, had been developing the idea for a magazine centered around the African Diaspora since her sophomore year—and at the end of first semester, it was born in hard copy with the proxy (decapitalization intended), a glossy, full-color, 44-page compendium of reflections on the African experience, from spoken word to personal essays and graphic pastiches. The magazine’s inaugural issue has no standardized font or color scheme, creating an almost zine-like collage of words and pictures. One of the most valuable inclusions is a reprint of the infamous Blacky Fun Whitey cartoon published in the Fed in spring 2004 2005, which helped set off a wave of protests and which many students are too young to have actually seen (if you haven’t, it’s a bit of a punch in the gut.)

 

The proxy will come out again this semester, with the theme of “commodified activism.” Meanwhile, the small proxy staff has followed AAA’s Blaaag into the world of loosely ethnicity-oriented blogging with thep(rob)e, a fashionably spare site with posts that comment on campus controversies and celeb faux pas, among other topics. Webmaster Muya Souaiaia, BC ’08, and web director Daphne Larose, BC ’10, say that one of the reasons they started the blog was a feeling of bad communication, both from the top (Souaiaia was particularly disturbed that she didn’t know about the rape of a journalism school student last spring until a professor told her) and among groups.

Next up is a WBAR radio show, and expanded p(rob)e coverage—but only if they’ve got the staffing for it. If you’ve got the itch to blog, e-mail theprobe@theproxyproject.org.

- LBD

A bit of late news that was recently brought to our attention: according to the ominously-titled website House of Bnai-Haman, September 24, 2007 will now permanently be referred to as “Columbia’s Day of Shame,” which the site asks to readers to make sure “is never forgotten.” Granted, the blog was actively updated for a grand total of two weeks, so we’re not sure how long people will remember such an appellation — never mind the nifty bit of poetry in the left hand column. Hey, at least its’s got those sister sites loaded and running (more or less, anyway).

He even makes up quotes from PrezBo himself! Here’s one selection:

“Since Hitler is no longer available and Amadinejad has already spoken, I want our students to have the chance to hear from this scummy scoundrel,” Bollinger said’ in a news release.

While Professor Constantine told news outlets covering the story that she found the incident “very personal and very degrading,” Bollinger said the feelings of all victims matter not.  “What counts,” Bollinger said, “is that in America, everyone from the corner grocer to the corner cannibal has his or her opportunity to besmirch the reputation of our campus.”

Now that would require some serious sensitivity training.

Because Bwog doesn’t do hot, sandy or constantly-in-existential-danger, Iraq didn’t quite make it into our summer plans. Not so for Matt Sanchez, GS,  who has been blogging out of the war-torn country for the past couple of weeks. What the hell’s gotten into the conservative activist, military man, Spec opinion writer, American studies major and one-time porn icon? We reached the Marine corporal by e-mail in an attempt to find  out.

How did you get the opportunity to travel to Iraq? Moreover, why go there in the first place?

I applied for the media embed; the process seems daunting but if you’re tenacious and know exactly what you want to do, your chances of getting approved are a lot higher.  I had several advantages. I have a security clearance from my time at NYPD Counter-Terrorism,  I know people who have been through the process and they explained it in detail, I had a definite plan of doing a syndicated radio show, In Their Own Words and Hometown Heroes, and I was as specific as possible with dates, units, places etc.

The reason why I came here in the first place was because I just wasn’t content with the media coverage.  Having seen, personally, how the media can twist, mislead or just fabricate stories, I really wanted to see things for myself.  You see, I know lots of people who have been to Iraq and back and I had not been given that opportunity, so I was eager to see for myself  Let’s face it, this is THE issue of 21st century and, frankly, I want to know what’s going on as much as possible.  (more…)