The New York Times is reporting some big news for Marcus Brauchli, the positively dapper gentleman pictured to your right. Brauchli, CC '83 and Spec alum, is on the brink of being named the executive editor of the Washington Post. He was formerly the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal but resigned in April.

In other masthead turnover news, fellow Spec alum Andrew Martin, CC '08, and some other kid from Brown are the next up in IvyGate's roster of rotating summer editors. Martin and Kid From Brown are replacing Nina Shield and Kid From Harvard.

Gather round Columbia, it's time to re-welcome IvyGate into our browsers and into our hearts. Naturally, it has returned dressed to the nines, with a new WordPress redesign and fresh-faced summer editors. Bwogger Justin Vlasits favors the mouse over chalk-underlines in the new masthead (see above), while a Yalie friend of Bwog noticed that clicking on the chalky names re-directs readers to posts about that school.

Now let's meet the man and woman behind the summer incarnation of IvyGate 2.0. Why look, it's hometown favorite Nina Shield (BC '07), and some rising sophomore from Harvard. After introducing herself, Shield puts together a nice little wrap-up of all Vag-related happenings. She is the first Columbian to helm the good ship IvyGate since the legendary days of Chris Beam and Nick Summers. (Oh, and Andrew Nusca, a former summer editor, was a J-Schooler.) Go Lions.

Bwog was partly saddened and partly relieved to see that the founding editors of Ivygate are handing the reins over to younger blood--nobody should really be running a college gossip rag when they're more than a year out of the game (and now they won't have to face defeat again). Besides, they're off doing much more exciting things: former Spec editor-in-chief Nick Summers has been assigned to cover the Hillary campaign for Newsweek, while B&W alum, V112 writer, and senatorial sexpert Chris Beam continues to illuminate at Slate. We'll miss their collegiate musings, momentary disloyalties aside.

Meanwhile, the new kids look promising--one of them ran the Daily Pennsylvanian's 34th Street magazine, which served as the inspiration for the one-year-old Eye (happy birthday!). And now they've got competition...but yeah, not really.

Cheers, guys!

- LBD

In the spirit of symbolic welcome, NSOP is throwing a party for the class of 2011 on the site where many others before them waited in lines and were herded through stations: Ellis Island. Like the whole thing.

An NSOP insider has informed us that the children will be transported via chartered ferry to the patriotic tourist attraction, where they've rented out the immigration center and surrounding lawns. Welcome to America?

In other news of the weird and/or nifty: New York's public transit patrons must not mind gaggles of drunk Columbians. Ivygate has the scoop on Chinese feuds. And a very dear Bwog grandmother is now blogging for them!

- LBD

The New York Post, which was trolling around facebook and e-mail aliases for sources yesterday, fingered the assistant Comp Lit professor whom students accused of giving away answers, in characteristically rabid fashion.

Spectator confirmed and has an interesting story to go with it.

The Daily News gave it two inches.

Ivygate thought it was all hilarious and ennobled a few good comments.

The New York Sun talked about other schools' problems.

Oh, Rupert Murdoch...

P.S. If you're in a petition-signing mood, there's a facebook group!

Wow, that was fast. Those self-deprecating charmers over at Ivygate, BW alum Chris Beam and former Spectator Editor-in-Chief Nick Summers, have landed a nomination for a 2006 Weblog award in the Educational category (!). In a field of ten, they're currently trailing only www.michaelberube.com--now ask yourself, which one will actually help you get through the next two weeks? Click on over and vote, and when you feel like checking on how they're doing, vote again. Because we all like to see snotty college grads come out on top.

Plus, check out Chris' paternal death match!

You know it's true: your professors are hot. Well, maybe not all of them. But, if like most of the rest of us, you've ever been sitting in class and were suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to have Molly Murray or Anders Stephanson come out from behind the lectern and give you a private tour of her/his office, whispering sweet bits of poetry and foreign policy in your ear, here's your chance to let the world know. IvyGate, everyone's favorite pan-ivy gossip blog, is running a contest to find our esteemed league's hottest profs. Who will it be? Bwog certainly hopes that the eventual honors will go to a Columbia intellect; with Simon Schama, Janaki Bakhle, Elizabeth Amann, and myriad others on our side, surely we have enough "talent" to clinch the title.