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By surprise, sans Harry Potter. Media Digest Nov. 18, 2010

Surprise, motherfuckers. I can’t be contained. I was like, “Gee, the responsible thing would be to sleep, wake up tomorrow, write your articles, do your part, dot your ‘ts.'” Then I realized working until almost midnight in a coffeehouse can compromise your ability to sleep, and sometimes you just can’t get to bed without saying your piece.

This one’s going to be truncated though. Forgive me if I can’t be bothered to give two Crispy Ducks about the umpteen Emerald articles today about the new Harry Potter movie. You think I’m kidding about that, don’t you, you fool? Just the bare essentials today.

That means the heady business of how our University is run. Last weekend, UO Matters had a post about how Oregon University System Chancellor George Pernsteiner’s idea of “the principle of shared sacrifice” via furloughs and faculty pay freezes is a 19 percent raise in his contractual compensation. A new column by the Oregonian’s Steve Duin reveals that OUS even released inaccurate figures on his salary to the media, and made his new contract retroactive to July 2008 about a month after Pernsteiner asked employees to take furloughs, although he also took a voluntary pay cut unrelated to his contract.

UO Matters is in one of those moods, predicting the demise of higher education and providing some spine-tingling figures on where a lot of college-educated people end up (hint: think waiters).

Smoking’s going to be banned, too, but you knew that already.

The Emerald has a positive profile of the new public records officer at the UO. Verbano has problems reporting this kind of thing. In my day, the obstacle to reporting on the UO administration was that nobody in the administration would talk to you. Now it’s their opponents. A profile of Denecke can’t be complete if it doesn’t include the fact that the man with whom she does most of her dealing thinks “she was actually hired to prevent the release any public records.” But that man doesn’t go on the record, by name, which I understand and think is justified, but it’s too bad Emerald readers, who aren’t necessarily passionate enough about university governance to follow a blog about it don’t get to read the whole story. Too idealistic of me? Definitely.

Oh, and the ASUO’s decided it doesn’t want my august colleague reading its e-mails. More about that later.

  1. CJ says:

    Alex: Cool bro, but you know I got your back. *FLEXES NECK*

    Don’t take any guff from swine.

  2. CJ –

    Thanks, but I can fight my own battles.

    “FTB” –

    I think you’ve misunderstood what I wrote. I was sympathizing with Verbano. Don’t stoop to name-calling.

  3. Franklin Bains says:

    This was not me.

    I have a feeling this was Stefan Verbano, regarding the fact that none of my articles were mentioned and that comment was regarding an article he wrote.

    For the record, I agree, CJ.

    I need to stop commenting on the Commentator Blog in the ODE office.

  4. CJ says:

    Sensitive much, Franklin? Are you gonna cry big crocodile tears because someone criticizes your paper’s articles? Jesus, grow a pair. If you can’t take harsh words (and they weren’t even that harsh), get out of journalism right now.

    Alex is one of the best reporters to make his way through the Emerald’s diseased office in a while. I’d take one Alex over the current entire news desk any day.

  5. Fizzle T. Bizzle says:

    Tomchak: Besides the fact that your knee-jerk reaction to anything dealing with administration is to call “bullshit,” you might also want to proofread your blog posts for BASIC grammatical errors…

    “she was actually hired to prevent the release any public records”

    I don’t know if this is you trying to quote your off-the-record source, or it is the source him/herself, but get your modifiers and prepositions right…

    At least make an attempt to illustrate your pathetic opinion coherently. Also, if you would have been the one having the conversation with Mrs. Denecke, you might have thought otherwise. But no, you read some glorified piece about something they are actually doing right and you need to be a nihilist because you can’t actually do the reporting yourself. You are a bottom-feeder.

    Just the facts, ma’am……

  6. Lyzi Diamond says:

    Would have liked to see an Andrew Hitz Hipster Potter column.

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