IvyGate

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IvyGate logo, designed by Kyle Jaster
IvyGate logo, designed by Kyle Jaster

IvyGate is a popular blog and online news source covering news and gossip from Ivy League universities.

Contents

[edit] History

IvyGate was founded in 2006 by Columbia University alumni Chris Beam and Nick Summers.[1] The blog covers the "follies" of Ivy League schools, such as a Princeton University class president accused of setting a squirrel on fire, a University of Pennsylvania graduate student who turned out to be in prison, and a Yale Skull and Bones member arrested for burning an American Flag.[2]

IvyGate rose to prominence through its investigative reporting of the details of the "Impossible is Nothing" Internet meme, concerning an impossibly boastful video résumé produced by then Yale student Aleksey Vayner.[3][4][5] It was a nominee for the 2006 Weblog Award for "Best Educational Blog".

A small controversy arose in December, 2006 involving Beam's father, prominent Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam. The younger Beam had covered a Brown University professor who wrote prolific letters to the editor in the New York Times. Five days later the elder Beam covered the same story in his column, without attribution, leading to humorous but well-publicized complaints of plagiarism.[6]

[edit] IvyGate today

IvyGate continues to be popular with students and reports and break news stories of interest to them such as under-aged drinking.[7] The blog was the first to publish results of the US News and World Report 2007 college rankings.[8] It also recently broke the scoop on the disbanding of a Yale fraternity.[9]

The blog is now published by Beam, currently a reporter for online magazine Slate, and fellow Columbia graduate Nick Summers, a reporter for Newsweek magazine. It has a staff of three writers as of September, 2007.[10] It continues to receive nationwide attention and logs more than 10,000 visitors per day.[11]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Sharon Wang. "15 Questions with IvyGate", November 08, 2006. Retrieved on 2007-10-02. 
  2. ^ Chris Beam and Nick Summers. "Blogging the Ivy League’s Follies", the Harvard Crimson. Retrieved on 2008-08-29. 
  3. ^ McGrath, Ben. "Aleksey the Great", The New Yorker, 2006-10-23. Retrieved on 2007-07-05. 
  4. ^ Kaplan, Thomas. "Vayner faces public criticism", Yale Daily News, 2006-10-25. Retrieved on 2007-07-05. 
  5. ^ Michael J. de la Merced. "the Resume Mocked Round the World", New York Times. Retrieved on 2007-07-05. 
  6. ^ Michael Calderone. "Washington Post class gets graded", New York Observer, December 3, 2006. Retrieved on 2007-08-29. 
  7. ^ Nicholas Swisher. "Facebook ruins lives, destroys families", Brown Daily Herald, September 14, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-14. 
  8. ^ Jen Chung. Good News, Bad News for Columbia. The Gothamist. Retrieved on 2007-08-29.
  9. ^ Thomas Kaplan. "Beta chapter loses national affiliation", Yale Daily News, July 9, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-08-09. 
  10. ^ Impossible is nothing in the Ivy League. Jossip. Retrieved on 2007-09-14.
  11. ^ Jennifer Cchen. "Blogging Ivy Gossips", Northwestern Current Magazine, April 13, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-08-29. 

[edit] External links

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