By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 11/27/12 6:45pm

Book Parties

Evan Cornog and Victor Navasky. (Photo credit: Brendan Fitzgerald)

Columbia University Press Celebrates The Art of Making Magazines

If you came to New York expecting book parties to be tame, dignified affairs held in dusty university clubs, where distinguished older gentlemen talk about editors of yore over cocktails and lamb chops, well, your expectations would have been met Monday night at the Columbia University Press launch of The Art of Making Magazines.

The anthology was culled from 10-plus years of lectures by notable magazine editors by Victor Navasky, editor emeritus of The Nation and the director of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism magazine program, and Evan Cornog, the dean of Hofstra University’s School of Communications. Read More

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 10/10/12 4:44pm

Goodbye to Some of That

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Departing Columbia J School Dean Nick Lemann is Looking Forward to Some Time Off

Columbia Journalism School Dean Nicholas Lemann announced he is leaving his post via email this morning. Deanships come in five year increments. Mr. Lemann is stepping down after his second term. He will return to Columbia after taking a sabbatical, during which he plans to work on an a book (he hasn’t decided on the topic) and contribute to The New Yorker, where he is a staff writer. In a phone conversation with the Observer between meetings this afternoon, Mr. Lemann said he’s looking forward to the time off.

“I entered the workforce three days after graduating from college and I’ve been working ever since,” he said. Read More

By Michael Calderone 2/12/07 12:00am

Off the Record

Times CEO Plans “Town Meetings” at the Globe to Address Downturn

On Jan. 31, Janet Robinson, chief executive of the New York Times Company, opened an earnings conference call by addressing the bad news first: a $648 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2006.

The Times Company wrote down the value of its New Read More

By Alexander Rose 10/16/06 12:00am

Sequel to the Civil War, With Resonance Today

O.K., here’s a quick Choose Your Own Adventure to test your political savvy.

You’re the President of the United States, it’s September, and over in Iraq, various gangs of thugs are driving around murdering and terrorizing a certain community, which has, naturally, created some militia outfits to defend itself. Bear in mind that after Read More

By Max Abelson 7/03/06 12:00am

Hampered by His Own Irony, Bing Misses a Fat Target

“How long will it take for him to descend into self-parody?” Stanley Bing asks 10 pages into his epically meaningless 300-page meditation on the art of corporate bullshitting. The answer is: Not very long. If Mr. Bing could back off a bit from his hideous self-consciousness, or have more fun with such an easily fun Read More

By Staff 4/27/06 2:03pm

Kaavya, the New Jews, and the Serial Meritocracy

Something else bears mentioning re the Viswanathan story. Just about everyone is an Asian-American. David Zhou, the kid from the Crimson who went on national TV after he broke the story is Asian-American. Viswanathan is of course an Asian-American. So, I’m guessing, is my horse, Jon Liu of the Independent (who has teamed Read More

By Gabriel Sherman 12/06/04 12:00am

Off the Record

The old debate about the value of a journalism degree became slightly more interesting with the creation of the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, and the Monday-afternoon appointment of Stephen B. Shepard, the current editor in chief of BusinessWeek, as its new dean.

The school is scheduled to Read More

By Philip Weiss 7/21/03 12:00am

‘Bye, Meritocracy! O’Connor’s Opinion

The meritocracy has been around for nearly 60 years now, but the moral claims that were made for it at the beginning have all but vanished. That is the news contained in the Supreme Court’s recent decision on affirmative action in the Michigan Law School case: The meritocracy’s days may actually be numbered.

For the Read More