So you're a few hundred grand in debt and fresh-faced in the big city -- or, if you're a Columbia grad, just happy to get out of Morningside Heights -- with a B.A. in Comp Lit and, I don't know, hopes and dreams. Even if your semesters reading Baudrillard don't have any practical application, you figure that your degree must at least carry some weight, right? Right?

Erroneous, my friends.

Doree Shafrir's Observer article, "Ivy League Slaves of New York," is pretty self-explanatory by its subtitle: "America’s best and brightest are unpacking their gilded diplomas and getting to work as assistants in New York’s media dens, pinching themselves at their good fortune. Suckers!"

It appears that many graduates are coming to New York with visions of a swift ascent in a shiny media universe, but are quickly shot down. In fact, a certain brand of diploma might actually work against you:

Ms. Marcus explained that her former place of employment had a policy about not hiring anyone who had gone to an Ivy League school, because 'they didn’t want people whom they could perceive as a threat.' (The evidence bears this out somewhat: Ivy League grads do seem partial to cashing in via book deals; Lauren Weisberger, the author of The Devil Wears Prada, graduated from Cornell, and [Bridie] Clark is a Harvard alumna...)"

Well, if your Ivy League credentials are holding you back, you know our favorite fallback option: nepotism! Kidding(ish). Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone feeling a little post-New Year's awards fatigue yet? Us neither! That's why we're spreading the good word about U.S. News & World Report's latest attempt at relevancy. The magazine's equal-opportunity education blog, PaperTrail, has opened up voting in four categories: Story of the Year, Newsmaker of the Year, Best College Paper Columnist, and Best Alternative Media Outlet. (We were disappointed to learn that you can only vote once, despite the poll's seemingly infinite ballot supply.)

Frankly, the last category is all we really care about here. So far, Wesleyan blog Wesleying (you might remember them from this) is absolutely tooling the Ivy runners-up, Columbia's Bwog and Harvard's Gadfly and Pablog. Don't know who to vote for? Watch the finalists beg for your love here, here, here and here. Guys, a word of advice? Trust us, pleading only backfires.

Non-Endorsement: It's hard to pick a favorite, because they're all talented. But whatever you do, DO NOT VOTE for Pablog. Don't vote for Pablo Torre's stupid-genius site name; don't vote for his always-on funny; don't vote for the fact that he unearthed this. Nope, under no circumstances should you vote for Pablog.

People just can't get enough of this blogging game. As if suddenly everyone got something to say about Ivies. Seriously. It's frightening. (Remember the prophecy?.)

So it was only a matter of time, really, before the bureaucratic heffalump that is The Harvard Crimson got on board. The Plympton Street broadsheet gave birth to triplets this week: Pablog, Lehman's Picks and Ivy Links, all about sports, all kind of hard to tell apart at this point.

But the real new family member is Ivy Infusion, a "Web Exclusive" chameleon that has us scratching our heads. It looks like a blog ... And snarks like a blog ... But it's published once a day as a full article? A Crim-ed assures us it will soon adopt a "more traditional blog format." Whatever. We're already dropping trou for the thorough caning we expect to receive at the hands of their scoop-tacular reporters.

We'll be reading, fellas. Try not to break the needle on the insularometer.

Bonus: The Crimson shows us some love.

The Daily Pennsylvanian is usually ahead of the Ivy newspaper curve, a trend they continue by debuting a couple new Web features for the fall: "The Spin," a sandbox for DP columnists; and "On the Ground," a rolling man-on-the-street thing, where the street is an email list of students with nothing better to do than sit at a computer and write one-liners about stuff. (We asked to join immediately.)* 

They join the sportsblog "The Buzz," and unfortunately ... they're pretty funny. We wish them only ill will and failure. There's only room in this town for one irregularly updated, substandard blog, DP, and we aim to be that one.

*UPDATE 2:47 p.m.: Deputy Editorial Page Editor Eric Obenzinger writes: "Sure! ... I think it would be really cool to have you all on the On the Ground roster." Oh Eric, you poor, poor fool. You'll regret this generosity in no time.

One of the worst things a non-tenured professor can do is start a blog. At best, he will earn the bemused pity of his students. At worst, it will ruin his career.

But every thousand years or so, along comes a professor with just the right combination of attitude, intellectual prowess, and raw sexual energy to pull it off. That's right: Lawrence Lessig, B.A, B.S., M.A., J.-mother-fucking-D. Just try talking shit about his blog--he will hear it from all the way over in Palo Alto, pause his pool game for as long as it takes him to kill you with his mind, and then sink the eight ball corner pocket shot he'd been lining up when you made that fatal decision to mess with the Less. And if you were about to bring up something about Stanford not being an Ivy, don't even go there. The man's CV is longer than your double-spaced, wide-margined bio will ever be. When this dude testifies before the Supreme Court (Napster, Microsoft, Net neutrality), you know which way Kennedy will swing. "Law" is part of his name, for Chrissakes. Dissent is not an option.

Seriously, though--Lessig is currently "off the grid," but his blog archives are well worth checking out. His post categories include "good law" (free speech, free music, "Free Culture"), "bad law" (Internet regulations, piracy crackdowns, antiquated patent systems), and, bless his heart, "just plain silly." If you want a primer on the issues that will shape the media in the coming decades, but law school isn't your bag, then read this blog. 

The guy clearly loves the exchange of ideas, and the potential of blogs to facilitate discourse gets his blood pumping. He even created an Anti-Lessig Wiki for people who disagree with him (notice it's empty). But the rise of blogs and amateur journalists is not 100% good news, he writes. The problem "is not bloggers tempted by ad revenues. It is instead the emergence of the equivalent of tabloids in blog-space: commercial entities whose sole purpose is to generate ad revenue, who do that by being as ridiculous and extreme as possible." Larry, please. We do this because we love it.