Media mogul John Kluge (who you may remember gave CC a ridiculous amount of money) has announced that he will subsidize yet another of Columbia's fine institutions--the Journalism School. A paltry $20 million of his 400 mil gift to the university will go to finishing the J-school's $100 million Second Century campaign. The money also guaranteed that Columbia will receive some money ($5 million) from Leonard Tow.

Now that the J-school has so much cash on hand, they won't be too disappointed to look at the stock prices for the Times or the Post over the past month. Print journalists--beware!

Our new friends at this J-School blog have spotted a TV schedule for tonight's forum on one of the trailers on Broadway. Industrious aspiring journalists that they are, they have summarized the preliminary order of events. What you need to know:

• The candidates will not speak until 8 p.m. (McCain) and 9 p.m. (Obama) respectively. Each has about an hour for their speeches.
  
• The preceding hour will be mostly taken up by introductions of various kinds, including New York Governor David Patterson (who apparently plans to introduce a new service initiative) and Tobey Maguire (best known for playing fictional Columbia student Peter Parker).
  
• PrezBo's intro will be at 7:30.

To see the rest of the schedule (including a photo of the actual minute-by-minute sheet), head on over to that J-School blog.

Do you increase Columbia's net worth? Or should the admissions officer have accepted Joe State in your place?

Capitalism: keeping America on top! What's that you say China? You are going to launch the Bird Nest into space?

Money: keeping the J-School on top! But are there going to be any newspapers left?

Manhattanville's consumer confidence decreases: losing property and can't afford public transit. But worry not, fair reader, Prezbo did a little work while chilling in Vermont.

Bwog just got shut out of the Journalism School auditorium where they're formally handing out the medals, but the Pulitzer Prize committee has just announced its winners, each recieving a cool $10 grand.

The guest list read like a who's who of journalism: a J-School dean, the Associated Press Executive Director, a former TIME magazine Editor-in-Chief, publishers, professors...and Walter Cronkite. The audience was probably more illustrious than your average lecture-hall crowd, too. Only one person there had any executive power to do anything, but free speech is always good, right?

The "Media Reform" buzzword has been bandied about liberally in the last few years, but even those leading lights of journalism weren't able to come up with a definition of what it really means at today's Media Reform conference, a succession of panels convened in the J-School's third floor auditorium. The venerable Walter Cronkite, speaking to a reverential silence that overlooked a decline in his diction since his days on the air, intoned against the "sound bite culture that turns political campaigns into political theater," while Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen warned of a "crisis of democracy" brought on by media consolidation (although his own Seattle Times company owns six papers in two states). The main contrarian, Northeastern University professor Ben Compaine, argued for a pure free-market approach--but noted that he felt like "Ahmadinejad walking into a synagogue in Tel Aviv" sitting in a room full of public interest-oriented scriveners.

Winner of a bronze medal at the 2002 Olympics, figure skater Timothy Goebel, 25, (the first American to land a quadruple jump in competition, and the first skater in the world to land a quadruple salchow) is enrolling at GS this Fall. Now that he's broken all the records, Goebel will strip off the flashy spandex to don a tailored suit. He plans to major in finance and pursue a career in investment banking.

At least he realized his childhood dream before selling out.

In other news, Columbia researchers have been paid close to $17 million to research arsenic.

And there's a nasty squabble brewing at the J-school. Two editors quit managing a website associated with the Columbia Journalism Review after funding was cut in half to give more money to the print mag. New media proponents are outraged.

Thanks to Prem Mittal for the tips.

At promptly 3 pm at the Graduate School of Journalism, Sig Gissler,

administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, announced the 2006 winners. By

announced, I mean that press kits that had a list of winners and other

information about them were made available to those present. And by those

present, I mean approximately ten journalists and a dozen other people

affiliated with the school. All of the journalists then proceeded to open

their cell phones and read the winners to their respective news

organizations. Overheard: "Yes, you were a finalist in Public Service.

Bye." "You've never heard of Mike Luckovich? I don't know what rock you

live under."