NYU LOLcal

A self-important team of NYU journalism students is launching NYU Local, a “snarky” alternative to the never-read Washington Square News. The site will keep up-to-date on happenings around campus, and seeks to “make the NYU voice heard and recognized in the city for what it is: smart, witty, and even snarky.”

Say it with me now: LOL!

Time for a gross generalization:

There is nothing snarky about the Washington Square News, and there is nothing snarky about NYU students in general. I say this because I am an NYU student! 80% of my classmates are trust-fund-fed little bitches who seek only to step on each other in search of the Best Internships, the Best Apartments and the Best Outfits (cue: Urban Outfitters). I shudder to think of the kind of stories this “revolutionary” news blog will cover. (Sidenote: LOL at them thinking online journalism is this hip, fresh thing. Welcome to teh internetz, folks) It will be run by an elite cluster of students hoping to get their name splashed across a website due to their self-obsessed desire for a byline.

Forgive me if I reek of cynicism, but this is not the rage of the creative underclass. It is, as most things at NYU are, a participatory academic circle-jerk for rich kidz and gayz who want to be known in the media world, but don’t want to write about anything real. They want to be painted as the bohemian avant-garde by day, and return to their $5,000/month apartments by night. And that is what I cannot stand.

But perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps this new site will launch and pierce the crust of bullshit gossip and news perpetuated by sites and “publications” like Juicy Campus and the WSN. I hope, for the NYU J-School’s sake, that I am wrong. Because right now the Big Media is reading their mission statement and guffawing at the absurdity of spoiled brats pretending they know what news is. It’s why I transferred out of the J School, and it’s why I write this blog instead of for WSN.

I want to clarify: I disdain NYU Local for what I fear it may be, but I am totally open to them proving me wrong. And I do concede that as a free speech platform, NYU Local is a pretty good idea. I just hope that they use it as a vehicle for social and administrative change on campus, and that it doesn’t simply become an online mirror of the suspiciously nascent WSN.

-Jess

Update (Josh’s note): Nope, I hate them already.
From their home page: “when there is no Division 1 basketball, no green grass pavilion, no identifiable mascot, the college many of us dreamed about in high school can start to turn into little more than a collection of buildings scattered around a popular urban park.” Seriously? If you want to go to Rutgers, train tickets to New Brunswick cost $10.50 and leave Penn Station every hour. So shut up and appreciate the fact that your parents can afford to send you to a school in Manhattan.

Also, they don’t use capitalization on their home page. Because that’s so totally bohemian and cool and maybe how the kids write on these “blogs” nowadays! Also: they plagiarize.

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