Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

Felix Dennis, the billionaire publisher of Maxim who was the first person to say the word “cunt” on live British television, cut right to the chase last night at the Columbia Journalism School.

“Let’s get the murder thing out of the way,” he said in his refined British accent, alluding to his outrageous, and subsequently retracted claim in The Times of London on April 2 that he had killed a man 25 years ago.  read more »

At the Columbia Journalism School on Wednesday night, David Simon, the former crime reporter and creator of HBO’s massively popular urban drama series The Wire, didn’t waste any time before he started blasting his ex-bosses at The Baltimore Sun, the overall quality of American newspapers and, harshest of all, newsrooms that are more concerned with winning prizes than with maintaining sophisticated and nuanced coverage.

“To explain the who, the what, the when, the where, the how—that’s easy shit. It’s even easy shit if you caught someone with their hand in the till, if someone’s doing something overtly wrong,” said Mr. Simon, who was soft-spoken, but seemed to enjoy dropping a few choice expletives. “The why is epic. The why is where journalism becomes an adult game.”

But, he continued a few minutes later, “The why will not get you a prize. Where was their dick caught? That shit will win you a prize.”  read more »

After about an hour, there seemed to be no more questions for him, so Newsweek editor Jon Meacham turned to his audience—about 100 graduate students at Columbia journalism school—and said he had a question for them: Did anyone in the room read Newsweek or Time? There was a small, awkward rumbling before finally, a man shouted, "No!"

Mr. Meacham scanned the audience for his quarry and then asked the journalism student, clad in a black turtleneck, whether he read The Economist. Yes, he did.  read more »

The paranoia was arresting at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism on Friday afternoon, Dec. 1. It wafted out from the Lecture Hall, where about 200 graduate students from a "Critical Issues in Journalism" class faced allegations of cheating on a final essay test.

Two girls scrambled to the door when they spotted reporters lingering in the hallway. One shrieked, "So they can just stand here and listen to everything?" The department intern, guarding the entrance with her trusty V.I.P. student list, shooed reporters away from the door. Word made it to dean of students and moderator Sreenath Sreenivasan within minutes and he (falsely) announced that reporters were "recording" the meeting, according to Barbara Fasciani, director of communications and special events for the J-School.

There were rumors and speculation. A student had contacted administration and accused classmates of cheating on an open-book, take-home final exam. Students accessed the test online over a 30-hour period and had 90 minutes to complete it once they logged in. Reportedly, one student submitted the test in 32 minutes. The administration revealed no names. Fasciani said the ambiguity of the situation and the anonymity of the source has students on edge.

Most students ducked reporters' questions as they exited the meeting. "There's no story here," one said.

"The more you guys write about it, the more the value of our $60,000 degree goes down the drain," another student said.

Maybe they were just rushing off to start working on the new final essay question, due this Thursday in hard copy. But the most popular response to reporters' inquiries was a phrase normally dreaded by journalism students: "No comment."

This was strange. Even stranger is that a student would cheat on a pass-fail essay test in the first place. Motivations are few. Were students trying to screw over Samuel Freedman, the Times columnist and class professor? Was it that oft-blamed culprit, Ivy-league pressure? It's not unreasonable that students might see their Columbia degrees as golden tickets to a tour of the media factory--a field that may be reducing more positions than it creates.

David Callahan wrote in his book "The Cheating Culture" that the obsession about advancing in the world "can easily justify the dishonest means." A plagiarism slip here, a source fabrication there--factor in a curmudgeonly professor for a required class and you may acquire a case of cheating on a take-home final.

But cheating on an ethics test only gets you kicked out of school and shamed by the media. And according to some students, the administration isn't trying hard enough to find the alleged cheaters, and whether it was two or ten of them, they want them exposed.

"There's not enough digging going on here," one said. "I don't want to sit next to someone who cheated on the test." She also surely doesn't want people thinking she is one of the tricksters. Another student pleaded with reporters: "You have to believe one bad egg doesn't spoil the whole bunch." —Gillian Reagan

First (and now second) reports are filtering in of today's meeting at the Columbia School of Journalism, which was called by University staff because of suspicions that students somehow cheated on an ethics class exam. (The Friday section of the class "Critical Issues in Journalism" was compelled to attend today's 1:45 p.m. meeting, reported yesterday by Radar online.) Update, 3:30 p.m.: Some students have left the session. The journalism school administration has asked its journalism students not to talk to journalists, according to Gillian Reagan, our reporter at the scene. (Update: Some students have rejected that description of events, including in the comments below, and say they were not specifically told not to talk to the press. That is addressed more completely here.) In the meeting, no students confessed to cheating at the exam. The administration received a tip-off email regarding the exams and began to investigate. The suspicious activity is that the test--which is a take-home short essay test--was returned by at least one student in only 32 minutes.

A new (and seemingly extremely loaded) essay question has been distributed to the class.

Exam Essay Question III:

Write an essay of up to 500 words addressing the following situation:

You are the executive editor of a newspaper. You receives a tip from a credible source that one or more unspecified articles in recent editions of the newspaper contain fabricated material. No more detailsare given. Although word of the allegation quickly spreads through the newsroom, no one on the reporting staff admits to responsibility. As executive editor, what are your concerns and what do you do? Why? What are your expectations of the staff's reaction to the situation and your response to it?

Be sure to justify the actions you choose to take.

You are allowed to use your own brain and whatever other nonhuman sources you want in preparing this essay, but you are not allowed to discuss it with other human beings.

The essay will be evaluated as part of the final exam. It is due by 5:00pm, Thursday, December 7, and should be placed in the box labeled "Critical Issues Essays" in the deanery on the 7th floor.

The memos leading up to today's meeting follow.  read more »