It wasn't enough for Franco to sleep in class at both Columbia and NYU, where he is currently getting his MFA in creative writing (we have one too, James!), now he's going to go to Yale to get his doctorate in English. At least that's what a close reading of the subtext of this article told us. Let's just hope he doesn't get anxiety of influence from Harold Bloom, whom Franco seems to have an inappropriate man crush on.

Speaking of influence, the Yale newspaper has no problem at all ripping off Bop! (the article is below, or you can read it here). Is this supposed to be ironic? Because there is nothing that seems tongue in cheek about the big sloppy kiss of an interview where Esther Zuckerman does everything but lay down and ask Franco to father her children. She loves Freaks and Geeks! She's seen all his movies! She writes Esther Zuckerman-Franco in little hearts on the cover of her binder for Post-Colonial Structuralism and the Poems of Elizabeth Bishop seminar!

We shouldn't be too mean to her, because we love him just as much, especially now that he's trying to bridge high and low culture with a role on General Hospital. The first promo for his stint on the show came out yesterday, and it looks amazing. He plays an "artist whose canvas is murder." So he's a highbrow artist on a lowbrow soap. He's an A-list actor in a D-list genre. He he plays a character named Franco. META! Harold Bloom just let Franco into his PhD program just based on this stunt alone. PS—9 days and counting until it starts!

Meet Lionel McIntyre (pictured), an "Associate Professor in the Practice of Community Development and the Founding Director of the Urban Technical Assistance Project at Columbia University." According to the Columbia Spectator and the NY Post, he went out to a bar on 125th St. last Friday night with Margaret Davis, a white female colleague, and practiced community development by technically assisting her with a sucker punch in the face:

The professor, who is black, had been engaged in a fiery discussion about "white privilege" with Davis, who is white, and another male regular, who is also white...McIntyre, who is known as "Mac" at the bar, shoved Davis, and when the other patron and a bar employee tried to break it up, the prof slugged Davis in the face, witnesses said.

Dude Lionel McIntyre we hope you were really drunk, for your own sake. Judging by all the sources cited, this is an accurate report of what happened. Professor McIntyre is a veteran of the civil rights movement but appears to have descended into either a serious drinking problem or total bitchassness.

The Ivy League Punch-Edginess hypothesis has failed.

Remember in The September Issue how Shaffer made a big deal about how she didn't want to work at a fashion magazine? Well, now she's not working in fashion, nor is she working at a magazine. Actually, the frat boys at College Humor are about as far from the socialites of Vogue as Shaffer could get. Maybe this is just a phase, like the time when we painted our nails all black and decided to become a vegetarian. It must be, because the Columbia Graduate was looking for a job in theater, but that mustn't have pissed mommy off enough. Hope fetching Van Veen's coffee is worth it!

More important than printing comics (which, they actually still do!), Marvel is valuable for the merchandising and movie rights to all its characters—over 5,000—many of which have become the massive film franchises that are the lifeblood of the movie studios. The only two studios that aren't dependent on Marvel for summer tentpoles are Disney and Warner Bros. (which bought out DC Comics and its stable of characters including Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman). Paramount has Iron Man, Sony's long been living off Spider-Man, 20th Century Fox lives and dies by how many X-Men,Wolverine, or Fantastic Four films it can spin out and Universal would like you to like The Hulk.

All of a sudden, those studios have just discovered that Disney may be in control of their summer fates. Welcome to your new groveling life, studio executives.

Erin Siegal submitted the same work twice, to two different professors. But she insists she was above board about everything. Both her thesis adviser, Wayne Barrett, and her book seminar professor, Samuel Freedman, knew she would be sharing content between the two projects. The high-achieving scholarship student even made a PowerPoint presentation for Freedman explaining everything!

But now he's saying she took the three-way arrangement too far. Instead of giving him a big ole book and just excerpting 5,000 words for her thesis, she turned in the entire 16,000 words for her thesis at her adviser's urging. This apparently left no exclusive content for the book class, as Freedman had been expecting.

So, in new media terms: Siegal promised her magazine's print editor an exclusive tome teased online, but ended up giving the Web editor everything, at his request, to amplify the buzz (which worked, in academic terms; her thesis passed with honors). Now the print editor is totally pissed and is all, "you're fired," and she's like, "come ON!"

It's a bizarre spat from where we sit, given than Freedman knew there would be some content-sharing going on. Sure, he doesn't have the exclusive. But what he does have is a student who's poised to do quite well in a world where even the traditionalists at Time Inc. have come to believe in the idea of sharing across titles.

Siegal's email (sent to classmates in April — presumably she's "stop[ped] crying" since then):

(Top picture via ErinSiegal.com)

A letter handed out during the ceremonies is reproduced below. It sketches out the barest outlines of the problem (and you call yourselves journalists!), involving a high-performing student who was nevertheless blocked from graduating when a "misunderstanding" with a professor led her to earn an "Incomplete" grade.

The student, photojournalist Erin Siegal, is named in the letter. The professor isn't, but we're told it's former reporter Samuel Freedman (pictured).

We have no idea what went down, or what Siegal's peers mean when they refer to Freedman's "type of behavior", but we assume scholarship-student Siegal isn't about to start fishing in her pockets for the tens of thousands of dollars she would need to re-enroll on her own dime, if that's even possible. If it did come to that, the economics of the industry make it an unlikely bet for such an apparently bright journalist.

Bad newspaper news daily roundup: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is cutting its news staff by 30%, which will make that paper even worse, somehow; the Houston Chronicle is laying off 12% of its staff; and, most ominously, Politico's John Harris is perfectly confident that whether the rest of the media falls apart in the next five years or not, Politico has "cracked the code" to success. Remember that one.


Rupert Murdoch's worth half as much as he was a year ago. Which is to say, a lot.


Have you contributed your Choire Sicha Book Title Idea yet? With a possible payout of $25, this is currently the most lucrative media job opportunity in New York.


Columbia is shaking up the curriculum at its journalism school to make it more appropriate for this fractious modern media age. Its new dean wants to "bridge the longstanding gap between the business and editorial sides of the journalism world." How about giving the first class on "The Economics of Journalism" for free, and then when students understand what an awful investment J-school is, they can save themselves tens of thousands of dollars right there by dropping out? Business!

Some enterprising young student took a picture of the Milk star and writing scholar dozing during at lecture at Columbia and sent it to TMZ, perhaps for a pretty fee. Franco was also Tweeted about while he slept out in the open in Bobst library at NYU, where he's also studying. So he's sleeping at both schools! Oh James. What would Lindsay think?

So what, is he out partying? Cracking the books too late? Narcolepsy? Chronic fatigue? What? What?? Look, James. If you need someone to come sit by your bed at night, and help you get a good night's rest, I'm sure there are plenty of people willing to do that. Though those same people are probably secretly hoping that you won't get any sleep, if you catch my drift. (Sex. I'm talking about sex.) So, maybe you'd better keep trying on your own.

Either way, goodnight moon.

So the piece is, I'm estimating, about a 2,500-word treatise for the Columbia Sundial about two antiwar groups on campus which is pretty much as boring as you would expect, considering the subject. But it was written by Barack Obama! He was a very wordy young man. But he found a way to work in the Steppin Razor:

Coolest president EVA. You know John McCain never quoted Peter Tosh! Or blew a fat spliff of Orange Hill while jammin "Legalize It" on a '45. And check out this deep shit:

Ha, well Barack was a normal pretentious Columbia student. I'll be. Read the entire thing here. [via Politico]

For example, one of our sources has heard that most major university endowments (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.) are down 25%-30% on a mark-to-market basis. Harvard is also reportedly trying to dump 1/3 of its private equity holdings to raise cash, which would be a seriously distressed move.

As a matter of fact Harvard—which has an endowment of almost $37 billion—is selling off $1.5 billion in private equity holdings, about a third of its total. And market rate now is only about 50% of their face value, meaning they are in serious need of cash. [And don't go too heavy on the schadenfreude, Harvard rivals; Clusterstock also hears that "a rumor is circulating that Columbia's endowment fund is illiquid [can't raise the cash it needs to fund current commitments]."]

What does it all mean? First of all, welcome to capitalism, Harvard students! Perhaps the young Marxists will finally start winning arguments with the B-school students in the lunchroom. Second, the school will have to cut back somewhere—major budget areas like new construction could get hacked. And maybe some of Harvard's notoriously generous financial aid, too! And yes, you teachers may have to actually confront students, in a classroom. Scary!

We've heard no rumors of this sort about Florida State University. Just something to consider. [Clusterstock]

The alumni office at Framingham State University recently sent out a fundraising letter that attempted to be cool and appeal to "Generation X" by using the word "blah" 137 times.

"Today, the fact of the matter is that deserving students need help to finance their education. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah," the letter said.

They raised $2,000. Will Framingham State ever make enough money to teach students the internet?

I never spent a single hour at Columbia School of Journalism, except when I gave a lecture to journalism students - and I was about as popular as a fire hydrant at the Westchester dog show.

It's only those who are lucky enough to work for Rupert Murdoch who know what I am talking about.

Wouldn't that mean "extremely popular?" I guess we'll never know.

Anyone who knows anything about academia knows that the neogothic architecture at the New Haven campus of Yale looks nothing at all like the neoclassical campus at Columbia.

It's true! Yale is gothic and château-esque, while Columbia is neoclassical and Washington National Mall-y. Surely the show's discerning and worldly audience will notice such audacity. What's next? Obama lived in Harkness? Anne Bogart is doing lovely work at Yale Drama? Balderdash! [Portfolio via Balk]

First of all, Krotov lets us know that what goes on in Columbia's student paper is important, if only because "the Spectator's circulation rate is greater than that of many 'influential' publications."

Furthermore, the original Spectator review of Gessen's book was "instructive in its failures," and he takes issue with this part:

[Gessen's] "inclusion of highbrow intellectualism perfectly characterizes [his] tendency to name-drop literary or philosophical figures ... Gessen is so earnestly immersed in this intellectual façade that it is easy to imagine him referencing Heidegger in everyday banter."

Or maybe Gessen includes all of that "highbrow intellectualism" to illustrate the divide between his characters' realities and their profound political ambitions, and the "intellectual façade" might have more to do with their own failures of political disengagement than their writer's Heidegger-referencing yuppie elitism.

PUBLIC SERVICE:
The Washington Post

BREAKING NEWS REPORTING:
The Washington Post Staff

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING:
Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker of The New York Times

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING:
The Chicago Tribune Staff

EXPLANATORY REPORTING:
Amy Harmon of The New York Times

LOCAL REPORTING:
David Umhoefer of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

NATIONAL REPORTING:
Jo Becker and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post

INTERNATIONAL REPORTING:
Steve Fainaru of The Washington Post

FEATURE WRITING:
Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post

COMMENTARY:
Steve Pearlstein of The Washington Post

CRITICISM:
Mark Feeney of The Boston Globe

EDITORIAL WRITING:
No Award

EDITORIAL CARTOONING:
Michael Ramirez of Investor's Business Daily

BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY:
Adrees Latif of Reuters

FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY:
Preston Gannaway of the Concord Monitor

Letters, Drama and Music Awards

FICTION
"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books)

DRAMA
"August: Osage County," by Tracy Letts

HISTORY
"What Hath God Wrought," by Daniel Walker Howe (Oxford University Press)

BIOGRAPHY
"Eden's Outcasts," by John Matteson (W.W. Norton)

POETRY
"Time and Materials," by Robert Hass (Ecco/HarperCollins)

POETRY
"Failure," by Philip Schultz (Harcourt)

GENERAL NONFICTION
"The Years of Extermination," by Saul Friedlander (HarperCollins)

MUSIC:
"The Little Match Girl Passion," by David Lang (G. Schirmer)

Special Citation:
Bob Dylan

Pulitzer Prize