nickled and dimed [even as alumni]

I don't know if anyone else saw this, but it really raises the point that CAM should come free to all alumni, regardless of the administration's viewpoint of control. Anyone know a member of the Board we can yell at?

[cornell-magazine.cornell.edu]

The Cornell Alumni Federation is pretty much unanimously in favor of increased university support of Cornell Alumni Magazine and hopes to make a formal presentation to the board of trustees soon. Most other Ivy schools underwrite alumni magazines directly or through the class associations.

Cornell Alumni Magazine is supportive of the university generally, as we all are (generally), but at the same time is independent. It answers not to Cornell but the alumni federation, who want a device that chronicles the mostly good things Cornell is doing, but other events as well. Sometimes this indepdence ticks off the Ministry of Information in Day Hall, but so be it. IMO, one of Cornell's problems is geographic isolation, and Cornell perhaps thinks it can operate in a more closed, news-controlling environment than say Harvard or Penn (only Dartmouth among the Ivies is equally remote) ... because, well, it can. Without being too unkind to Gannett's local news-gathering outpost, I think it's harder to put one over on the Boston Globe or Philadelphia Inquirer than on the Ithaca Journal, whose last Pulitzer was in 1964 (which is one more than most small papers earn). Cornell gets less day to day scrutiny and it's from writers who are still honing their skills.

Cornell (Day Hall) freaked out when it learned CAM was going to write about the departure of Jeff Lehman. As Aric Press, outgoing head of the magazine's advisory board, noted, the story ran, the story provided information for alumni, it searched out multiple viewpoints (including some pointing to issues with Lehman) and Cornell remained standing the month after the story ran. Interestingly, when Jim Roberts, CAM's editor and publisher, flew out to Iowa to interview new president David Skorton, it was a two-way discussion and Skorton was clearly interested in hearing some unvarnished information about Cornell. If independent information is what Cornell's president wants, shouldn't alumni want the same?

At the same time, CAM is moving ahead into the Internet era -- we've decided this WWW thing is not going away -- and a couple of us with backgrounds in print and online publishing at Ziff-Davis, Time-Life, Conde Nast, etcetera, who are on CAM's board (not board of trustees; sorry) are starting to talk about what it would be like to have a serious and ongong online presence for CAM in a year or five years. There's an online presence now, but it's a placeholder for the future. Thoughts are welcome. PM me if you want. (I think the PM jokes have died off finally.)

CAM comes to my house and proceeds immediately to the trash without me ever paying for it. I have no idea whether this is anomalous behavior, but I was very surprised to see it is supposedly by "subscription" only.

Do you pay your class dues? The subscription is included in that.

Beeeej

Beeeej
Do you pay your class dues? The subscription is included in that.

Never a cent.

There were a few graduating classes who decided to buy subscriptions for their entire class, but I don't remember which. Yours could be one.

Beeeej

Why so negative? I actually enjoy reading the magazine and seeing what is going on on campus. It is always fun to see if I know anyone in the alumni notes at the end, too. Hockey isn't the only good thing at Cornell.

cth95
Why so negative? I actually enjoy reading the magazine and seeing what is going on on campus. It is always fun to see if I know anyone in the alumni notes at the end, too. Hockey isn't the only good thing at Cornell.

Right. And it's not as if CAM is feeding you the administration line.

Thats the issue at hand. Day Hall needs to realize that even though CAM doesn't read out their lines, it does more good than bad. I really think most alumni would really appreciate getting it for free instead of being asked to pay for it.

Not "it goes in the trash" as in "bad, magazine; feel shame." Instead, "it goes in the trash" as in "on the way across the room I look in the TOC and have yet to see anything that interests me."

In other words, New Republic, not National review.

Back when I paid my dues (Clinton era), CAM was wonderful. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the magazine. So much so, in fact, that on several occasions I almost paid my alumni dues just to get CAM again.

I would love it if they started distributing it for free.

I pay my class dues and I read pretty much every issue of CAM cover-to-cover. It is a rare article that I give up on in the middle. Making it available to all alumni would seem to have some advantages, presumably including increasing the advertising revenue due to the increased circulation. BUT, I really fear accepting a subsidy from the University. That can't be a stable arrangement, and the threat of reducing the subsidy will always be there, chilling the atmosphere and perception of independence.

David Harding
I pay my class dues and I read pretty much every issue of CAM cover-to-cover. It is a rare article that I give up on in the middle. Making it available to all alumni would seem to have some advantages, presumably including increasing the advertising revenue due to the increased circulation. BUT, I really fear accepting a subsidy from the University. That can't be a stable arrangement, and the threat of reducing the subsidy will always be there, chilling the atmosphere and perception of independence.

A handout that could be yanked at any time, it could have a chilling affect. But there are checks and balances. Alumni in well-placed positions would make their displeasure known if there were such a threat.

This is not like Congress subsidizing the Washington Post which then turns around and writes about Congressional scandals. CAM is more like a generally admiring friend of the family which occasionally points out foibles and in the final analysis is a positive influence.

Cornell gets thin-skinned about a bunch of things in CAM that are no bag deal, IMO. A year or two back, the magazine did a nice piece on all the construction projects on campus and at my suggestion (I think it was; anyway it's far enough in the past that I can take credit for it without being contradicted) it was more of a photo essay with captions than a long text piece. One of the sticking points for CAM was getting budget figures for each building and slated/actual completion dates. See, not every building came in on time or on budget, and CAM's printing that was, in Cornell's viewpoint, something perhaps better left unpublished. I know, you're thinking, "What horses' asses -- why don't they just grow up?", but then you're not thinking like a true bureaucrat. What's that line about academia: "The knives are so long because the stakes are so small."

Oh, one last thing: Alumni who get CAM give more money more often. No surprise there. It's just one sign of their interest in Cornell. But: Lately the Cornell Alumni Federation provided seed money to send CAM free to alumni who've been active in some way in past years but not in the past five or so years and, while it was a fairly small sample, the ones who got the magazine free for a while renewed their interest in Cornell by joining local Cornell clubs, going to events, or, -- this is the one that makes Cornell sit up and notice -- increased their donations to Cornell compared to a control group. In plain English, getting CAM means more money sent to Ithaca, and isn't that what Cornell is all about?

You leave me feeling a little better, but your comment about being "thin-skinned" is exactly what worries me. Perhaps that is just the administration, and the Board of Trustees is more stable. Is the model that CAM gets an ear-mark in the budget? The measurment of increased donations with increased contact is not too surprising, but is certainly nice to have documented.