Garrett Young in Africa: leading a fight for better health

Of all the Daily Pennsylvanian alumni scattered across the world, Garrett Young '06 has a singular distinction.

He's one of the few veterans of 4015 Walnut Street living in Africa, and the only one in Swaziland, where he leads a five-member team from the Clinton Health Access Initiative working to improve the health and lives of people in the tiny, land-locked kingdom.

It's a life Young never envisioned when he was a senior at Penn and had "not a clue" about what he would do after graduation. 

Young, 28, grew up in Concord, N.H., majored in History at Penn and served on two DP boards -- as City Editor in 2004 and Managing Editor in 2005.

"I considered journalism, but had a sense (rightly or wrongly), that the only way to pursue it was in a small town somewhere," Young said in a Gchat from Swaziland. "I knew nothing formal about business at all, and so I thought that doing something in the business world would be useful."

"I had a sense I wanted to be DC, but I didn't want it to be political," he added. "I thought that a management consulting-type job would give me the skills to approach problems in a useful way that was different from the way that I had otherwise learned to think."

Young landed a position in Washington with the Corporate Executive Board, a consulting firm. He found his work there interesting and challenging -- and a true learning experience -- but after four years, he yearned for something different.

"I got to the point where I realized I didn't feel like spending all my time helping large companies, but I enjoyed problem-solving and the logic required for that kind of work," he says.

Chris George trades desert heat for DC Humidity

After living in the desert for almost six years, Chris George '05 is coming to the nation's capital.

George, a former DP executive editor and design editor, was recently hired as a News Designer at The Washington Post, after working at The Arizona Republic since 2006.

"By getting to jump in and design the front page so soon, I'll work with some of the paper's biggest stories, the kind of work I'm most passionate about: hard news and in-depth journalism," George said in an email. "I'm excited to be working for a news organization that has so much influence, that can draw so many talented people to work for it, and that devotes its resources to producing premium content. And it's fun to be in Washington, especially during a presidential-election year."

His day-to-day work is focused on print pages for the A section of the newspaper, including the opportunity to design the Post's front page two or three times per week.

While George is excited about the move to Washington, DC, he said it was a tough decision to leave The Arizona Republic.

Randall Lane orchestrates Warren Buffett/Bon Jovi duet

Randall Lane '90, editor of Forbes Magazine, has spent the past several months pulling together a conference of more than 100 of America’s greatest entrepreneurs for the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy, a private discussion of ways to help solve the world’s most intractable problems. The magazine will detail results of the historic meeting, which took place Tuesday in New York, this fall.

But Lane couldn't delay publishing on the forbes.com website a once-in-a-lifetime moment from the end of the conference -- "mostly because of a plethora of camera phones," he quipped -- a duet between Warren Buffett, playing ukulele, and Jon Bon Jovi, on accoustic guitar.

Both philanthropists spoke at the conference, and Bon Jovi co-hosted the closing reception. "Knowing that Buffet played the ukulele," Lane wrote, "I asked him to join Bon Jovi for a song and he accepted, with one caveat: that they play 'The Glory of Love'. Buffett learned the ukulele 60 years ago, he told me, as a way to court girls." Upon finding that the Bette Midler song was one of only a few Buffett knew by heart, "having Jon learn the lyrics to that seemed a lot easier than having Warren bone up on the chords for 'Livin’ on a Prayer' or 'Wanted Dead or Alive.'"

Read Lane's full post, and watch the video of what he terms "the wealthiest supergroup of all-time" here.

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DP Alumni summer get-togethers underway

The first-ever summer of coast-to-coast DP Alumni get-togethers across the country is now well underway, with gatherings having taken place in four cities during the last two weeks of June. The events aim to bring together alumni from different generations, as well as current DP staff members doing internships, in each city. While the turnout in some cities has been on the small side, "it's a start," says DPAA President David Burruck, "and hopefully something we can build on in future years."

The first two get-togethers took place on June 20 in Boston and San Francisco. Los Angeles followed the next day, and Washington, DC closed out the events for the month on June 26. Two additional cities will hold get-togethers in the weeks ahead: Philadelphia on July 18 and New York on July 24.

Here are brief reports from the events which have taken place:

Alumni Feature

Sara Levine: from 34th Street to the Food Network

The description on Sara Levine's '06 tumblr page says it all: "Editor. Writer. Blogger. Cook. Passionate about all things food."

She's been combining her love of food and writing ever since she was a child growing up in Chevy Chase, Md. 

She remembers taking vacations with her "food-loving family," when the entire itinerary would be based on what, and where, they would eat -- and she would detail each trip in her personal journal. 

"Looking back on those journals, they are hilarious," she says. "All I wrote about were the meals."

At Penn, Levine combined her two loves as the food section editor of 34th Street Magazine. And she is doing it today, as a blogger and editor at Foodnetwork.com with a special pedigree -- an associate's degree from Le Cordon Bleu North American Culinary School.

"The best part about my job? Writing about food," she says.

Levine is second generation DP. Her dad, Lee Levine '76, served on two DP boards, as DP managing editor and 34th Street editor. "I remember wearing DP tee shirts as a kid -- it was always a part of my life," she says.

Jeffrey Goldberg watches Chris Christie watching Springsteen

Many DP alums have attended a concert on Bruce Springsteen's latest worldwide tour, but one DP alum got to see "The Boss" with a notable guest.

Jeffrey Goldberg '87 attended Springsteen's concert in Newark, NJ as a guest of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Goldberg chronicled the evening in the July/August issue of The Atlantic, where he is a national correspondent.

In the piece, Goldberg, a former DP Executive Editor, details the level of Christie's intense Springsteen fandom.

"This concert is the 129th the governor has attended. His four children all went to Springsteen shows in utero. He knows every word to every Springsteen song. He dreams of playing drums in the E Street Band," he writes.

However, Goldberg describes the tension between the Republican politician and the Democratic singer.

"Just because we disagree doesn't mean I don't get him,” Christie tells Goldberg. "I get what he's trying to express and advocate for, I just don't agree that those are the most-effective policies for our government."

To read the full piece, click here.

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Howard Gensler: on the Big Screen at last

Howard Gensler '83 has had a near life-long desire to write for the movies. Today, his 40+ year quest comes to fruition, in the form of the movie "Hysteria", which opens across the US. (The film actually debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last fall, and has played in other countries, but June 1 is the major US roll-out.) The movie, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy, Rupert Everett, Felicity Jones and Jonathan Pryce, is based on an original story written by Gensler about the invention of the first vibrator in the name of medical science Victorian England.

Gensler is a long-time Entertainment Editor and gossip column writer at the Philadelphia Daily News. At the DP in the early 1980s, he was 34th Street Editor and then DP Editorial Chairman.

In a story Gensler wrote for the Daily News, he describes the long, twisted path from conception to the big screen, which stretched out for more than a decade. "I wrote a brief outline of the story and a lengthier 15-page version. The goal was a romantic comedy that mixed Merchant-Ivory "Remains of the Day" repression with Mel Brooks," Gensler wrote. "People loved the idea. And then nothing happened. For years."

Although the eventual screenplay was written by others, and Gensler was a mere bystander during a week of filming in London two years ago, he did get to attend the red carpet premier in Toronto last September and watch the finished film in front of a live audience with the movie's stars and director.

Although he has worked at many film festivals and interviewed countless stars and directors, Gensler wrote that "for the first time, I understood why filmmakers have that euphoric, glazed look when they debut their movies. The odds of making it from conception to reception are so slim it’s like running a marathon in a potato sack."

Read the rest of his amusing first-person account in the Philadelphia Daily News.

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Alumni Day 2012

Dozens of DP alumni spanning many generations visited the DP offices during the paper's annual Alumni Day open house in May.

The first person in the door was a member of the 50th reunion class, and one of the DP's most celebrated alumni: Nobel-prize winner Dr. Michael Brown '62. Brown recalled his involvement in one of the seminal moments in DP history, when the DP broke from being controlled by the men's student government. The paper's first-ever joke issue in 1962 dealt with the men's student government resisting the DP's desire to allow women to work for the paper, and called for the abolition of the student government. That lead the University to suspend publication of the DP, until a national uproar caused the University to reverse course. In the aftermath, Brown, who had been Features Editor, replaced ousted DP Editor-in-Chief Melvin Goldstein for the few weeks before a new Board took the helm.

From Brown to members of the graduating 2012 class, alumni visited with each other, with members of the DP's professional staff, and looked for changes -- or absence thereof -- in the DP offices.

Among the mini-reunions of DP alumni in the office: Randi Marshall '97 (left) and Evelyn Hockstein '97. Marshall, a former DP Assistant Managing Editor, is currently a reporter at Newsday in Long Island, NY. Hockstein, a former DP Photo Editor, is a Washington, DC-based photojournalist who has lived for long periods in Africa and Israel working for The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and many other publications.

Another nice aspect of the Alumni Day open houses is when editors from different class years have a chance to meet, sometimes for the first time. Pictured at the top are three former DP Executive Editors: Juliette Mullin '10, Jeff Greenwald '07, and Lauren Plotnick '12. Mullin is a staff writer at The Advisory Board, a Washington, DC-based consulting company. Greenwald is a financial analyst at Capital One in Richmond, VA. Recent grad Plotnick will begin work for a Washington, DC consulting company later this summer.

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Alumni Feature

Zach Levine on the road

Former DP Sports Editor Zachary Levine '07 is getting a taste of what it's like living out of a suitcase. "I think I am in hotel rooms 120 nights a year," he says.

Levine is getting to see America -- or more precisely, America's baseball stadiums -- as the lead Houston Chronicle reporter covering the Astros.

"It's an exhausting job but at the same time it's a rewarding job," he says.

Levine, 27, first worked for the Chronicle as a summer intern after his sophomore year at Penn. He was assigned to the Chronicle's website, working for the sports department.

The Chronicle, like most newspapers, had little sports content online beyond the stories that were in the Chronicle's print edition. That changed by the time the Chronicle hired Levine in 2007 after his graduation. He was a website producer, a job that allowed him to do a bit of everything, from posting breaking news to editing the sports blogs.

Eventually, Levine got a blog of his own. "I was a math major, so they gave me a blog where I could write about statistics … supplementing the coverage by the beat writers to use statistics to take an analytical look at things."     

Because statistics are such an integral part of baseball, Levine found himself writing more about baseball than any other sport. His editors began sending him to the ballpark to write stories for the print edition, and last year, he was named the Astros beat reporter.

Popova named to 'Most Creative' list

DP alum and influential blogger Maria Popova '07 was recently named by Fast Company as one of "The 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012."

Clocking in at No. 51, Popova, a former DP advertising representative and assistant advertising manager, was recognized for her influential blog, BrainPickings.org. Fast Company wrote: "Maria Popova is a self-proclaimed 'curator of interestingness.' Her blog and Twitter feed is read by the Who's Who of the media, marketing, and ad worlds."

The top spot on the list this year went to Ma Jun, Director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. Jun was followed by Facebook's Head of Consumer Marketing, Rebecca Van Dyck, and Adam Brotman, Chief Digital Officer at Starbucks.

Click here to see the full list. For a profile of Popova, click here. For the latest blurb on the DPAA website about Popova, click here. 

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From the President

DPAA summer get-togethers in 7 cities coast to coast

Want an excuse to meet up with your old friends from the DP? Looking to network with other DP alums in your city? Well, the DPAA has organized a way to do both!

The Daily Pennsylvanian Alumni Association will be hosting a series of summer get-togethers this summer in seven cities across the country. These will be informal, after-work happy hours where all alums, as well as current DP staffers, are encouraged to gather, network and maybe even have an adult beverage or two.

Events are currently scheduled in seven cities across the country: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, DC. If you are interested in hosting an event in a city that is not listed here, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

For details on the time and location of each get-together, click on your city below, or view the list on our Upcoming Events page (under the "About Us" menu above). On the event detail page, you'll also find the name and email address for the DP alum in your city who is coordinating the event, if you have questions, or want to volunteer to help in any way. (And let me extend special thanks to all the DP alums who helped schedule these events!)

Please take a minute to click the link to RSVP if you are planning to come, or even considering coming, to any of the events. Although there is no formal registration required, it helps a great deal to get an idea how many people may be planning to attend. Equally important:reach out to any fellow DP alumni you know nearby, and encourage them to join you at the get-together. The more, the merrier.

We look forward to having lots of alums gather for what we hope will become an annual DPAA tradition.

-- David Burrick '06

Boston: Wednesday, June 20

Chicago: Thursday, August 2 [canceled]

Los Angeles: Thursday, June 21

New York: Tuesday, July 24

Philadelphia: Wednesday, July 18

San Francisco: Wednesday, June 20

Washington, DC: Tuesday, June 26

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Bissinger tours to promote personal book

For DP alumni who didn't catch him on the Today Show Tuesday, there will be many opportunities to see Buzz Bissinger '76 in person the next few weeks, as he tours the country to promote his just-released new book, Father's Day: A Journey into the Mind & Heart of My Extraordinary Son.

The book, his very personal story about his relationship with his 28 year-old mentally retarded son, has debuted to excellent reviews. Entertainment Weekly gave the book an "A" rating, calling it "gorgeous and brutally honest." The Houston Chronicle review calls it "a really good book, no matter what its genre" which "delivers a level of humanity that is both breathtaking and elemental. Buzz Bissinger has delivered such a work, an honest, sometimes brutal, look at his life as the father of a savant."

Bissinger, a former DP Sports Editor and Editorial Page Chairman, was featured in this past weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer. Written by DP fellow DP alumna Amy S. Rosenberg '84, the piece paints a picture of the author:

Scottoline featured in NY Times

Lisa Scottoline '76, the best-selling author and former DP Photo Editor, was featured in last weekend's New York Times in an article about how e-books have changed the lives of professional writers.

In the piece, Scottoline explained how new trends in digital publishing have caused her to increase her yearly outputs of thrillers from one book a year to two.

“It used to be that once a year was a big deal,” she said. “You could saturate the market. But today the culture is a great big hungry maw, and you have to feed it.”

Scottoline has written over a dozen best-sellers, including Final Appeal, which one the 1995 Edgar Award for "Best Paperback Original Mystery." She also writes a column called "Chick Wit" for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Click here to read the entire piece from the Times.

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Heald writing new TV comedy

TBS has unveiled its annual TV development slate and this year, there's a new show penned and produced by DP alum Josh Heald '00.

The show is called "Most Likely" and is executive produced by TV personality Conan O'Brien. TBS described the show as follows:
"It has been ten years since high school, and the former 'most likely to succeed' star student returns to his hometown after losing his job. He winds up working for the former (and still) 'most popular' jock in this mismatched buddy comedy penned by Josh Heald."

Heald, a former 34th Street Editor-in-Chief and Culture Editor, wrote the story and screenplay of the 2010 feature film "Hot Tub Time Machine" and wrote 2011's "Mardi Gras: Spring Break." (In the picture at left, Heald is seen accepting an award for "Hot Tub Time Machine" at the 2011 Comedy Awards in New York.)

Click here to read about the announcement of the show.

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A team full of Ken Rosenthals?

It's not every day when an entire team of professional athletes dresses up to look like you. But that's exactly happened this week, when Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Rays dressed up to look like DP alum Ken Rosenthal '84.

This past Thursday, when the Rays traveled to Boston for a series against the Red Sox, the entire team dressed as nerds, donning suspenders, glasses and bow ties. The bow ties were a tribute to Rosenthal, a sideline reporter for Major League Baseball broadcasts on Fox. Rosenthal sports a bow tie on each broadcast for the charity bowtiecause.org.

"I am totally cool with all of this," Rosenthal, a former DP sports editor, told the Tampa Bay Times. "I'm really flattered. Honored is not too strong a word."

The Rays will make a donation of $3,000 to various charities as a result of the stunt.

Click here to see pictures of the team dressing like Rosenthal.

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Charles Ornstein interviewed on public radio

For the past two years, Pulitzer Prize-winning DP alum Charles Ornstein '96 has been investigating the influence of pharmaceutical companies on medicine, as part of investigative news non-profit ProPublica.

Ornstein's reporting, along with colleague Tracy Weber, has revealed close ties between medical societies and drug manufacturers and has led to changes in conflict-of-interest policies at universities and medical institutions.

Oregon Public Broadcasting recently sat down with Ornstein, a former DP Executive Editor and Assistant Managing Editor, to talk about his reporting.

When asked what he is currently investigating, Ornstein told OPB, "We are curious about doctors’ prescribing practices and whether patients have concerns about drugs that were prescribed to them by their doctors. Were the drugs you were prescribed appropriate, both therapeutically and financially?"

To read the entire interview, click here.

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Bissinger book to the silver screen

Buzz Bissinger '76 is no stranger to having his works turn into feature films.

In 2003, his article in Vanity Fair about former DP editor Steven Glass '94 was turned into the movie "Shattered Glass". The following year, his book about a Texas high school football team, Friday Night Lights, was adapted into a film with the same name (and later a television series).

Now another book by Bissinger, Three Nights in August, is being turned in to a film with the shortened name of "Three Nights". The film, which will loosely follow a three-game series in 2003 between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs, will also be written by Bissinger. It will star Billy Bob Thornton and Edward Burns.

Producer John Loar recently told Variety that he was inspired to make the movie after the success of "Moneyball" last year.

"Ours isn't really about the front office, but it's very helpful to us that a baseball movie did so well," he said.

For more on the film, click here.

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Bissinger's new gig: radio talk show host

Buzz Bissinger '76 has certainly has had a busy spring.

He released a personal book about his relationship with his son. And it was recently announced that he will be writing the screenplay for the film adaptation of his book Three Nights in August.

Now Bissinger, a former DP Sports Editor and Editorial Page Chairman, has added the role of radio host to his already packed schedule. On June 25, he began hosting an afternoon drive show (3-7 p.m. daily) on Philadelphia CBS station Talk Radio 1210 WPHT (1210-AM). The show is co-hosted by longtime Philadelphia radio host Steve Martorano.

"This will be my first regular full-time gig on radio,” Bissinger told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Actually [it'll be] my first time I've worked for someone in 20 years."

Click here to read more about Bissinger's new job.

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New David Cohen book: conservative politics, liberal ideas

New books from DP alumni authors seem to be pouring off the presses these days. Hitting the bookshelves on May 2: a new non-fiction work from David B. Cohen '81: Left-Hearted, Right-Minded: Why Conservative Policies Are The Best Way To Achieve Liberal Ideals.

Cohen, a Los Angeles attorney, is a self-professed former liberal who served in the Bush administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior and as a member of President Bush’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.At the DP, Cohen was a reporter and City Editor.

From the publisher: The book starts out as a political memoir with two protagonists: Liberal Dave, the person that the author was in his youth, and ConservaDave, the person the author ultimately became. Liberal Dave was a typical American kid -- if by 'typical' you mean a Jewish Samoan being raised by a single mother in an extended working class family. The author takes us on an amusing journey in which Liberal Dave, a staunch progressive with little tolerance for conservatives, eventually becomes a conservative himself -- without abandoning the concerns and ideals he held as a liberal. We get to listen in on debate between Liberal Dave and ConservaDave on a wide range of issues, including capitalism, Occupy Wall Street, Steve Jobs, taxing the rich, and much more. The book then moves into an issue-by-issue demonstration of its central thesis: that conservative policies are indeed the best way to achieve liberal ideals."

"I'm not trying to argue with liberals, who are well represented among my dear friends and family," Cohen says. "I'm trying to start a conversation. In the book, I try to support conservative policy positions using arguments that would have resonated with me when I was a liberal."

Cohen tells the DPAA that "the book talks a good deal about my time at the DP -- including when my good friend, Dom Manno, wished death on President Reagan. I hope our members, especially my contemporaries, will find my recollections accurate and entertaining."

[Editor's note: DP Alumni can browse and purchase books by fellow DP alumni in the Amazon-powered DPAA Bookstore. To see the latest from David Cohen, and hundreds of other books from DP alumni authors, visit the DPAA Bookstore. Purchases via this website provide a small contribution to the DPAA.]

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Elfin on the future of journalism

David Elfin '81 recently sat down with CollegeMagazine.com to talk about the state of journalism today. 

Elfin is currently a columnist for 106.7 "The Fan" in Washington, D.C. after having worked as a sports beat reporter for The Washington Times for 23 years (most of them covering the Washington Redskins). He spent 12 years on the Board, and two as president, of the Pro Football Writers of America. At the DP, he was a sportswriter for four years as well as sports editor for 34th Street Magazine.

He railed against amateurs breaking news online, even though they don't have the contacts, conduct the interviews, or have the training and experience of professional journalists. "You could sit in your dorm room, never having interviewed a player, and your opinion on cyberspace is equal to mine. That to me is a little scary," he said.

The idea that anyone can be a journalist due to blogs and Twitter, Elfin argues, is "bad because I still think it’s a profession. It’s not just some fly-by-night thing. This is something I’ve devoted my whole life to basically and to think that you might have an amateur breaking the news -- how would you feel if you had an amateur cutting you open in surgery or an amateur designing a bridge?”

As for the future of journalism, Elfin said it depends on the current generation of young adults. "You have gotten used to the idea of not paying for content. Well, who do you think makes the content? I don’t know what the future is because no one wants to pay anyone to do anything. Everyone wants it on the Internet and wants it free. So until that stops, why would you go into journalism?”

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Alan Schwarz & the 92-year-old bootlegger

New York Times reporter Alan Schwarz '90 was recently featured on influential media blog JimRomenesko.com. Romenesko interviewed Schwarz about recent front-page article he wrote for the Times about 92-year-old Hyman Strachman. 

Schwarz had heard from a friend about how Strachman was making bootleg DVDs and sending them to American troops stationed around the world. Schwarz was able to track down Strachman, who lives in Long Island, and talk to him about why he started his pirated DVD program.

"He was nothing but a delight," Schwarz, a former editor of the Weekly Pennsylvanian and Summer Pennsylvanian, told Romenesko. "He was charming, he was a fun story teller. He acknowledged what he did was illegal -- he wasn't oblivious to that." Romenesko details how Schwarz came upon the story, which Schwartz describes as the lucky happenstance of being mentioned in conversation with an old friend during their respective five year old kids' play-date. "As soon as she said, 'he’s a 92-year-old guy bootlegging DVDs for the troops,' I knew it would be on the front page of the New York Times."

To read the New York Times piece, click here. To read the Romenesko piece, click here.

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Lieber: High-Impact Writer

DP alums in the Dallas-Fort Worth area interested in writing should come see DP alum Dave Lieber '79 when he speaks at the DFW Writers' Conference on May 19th.

Lieber, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Watchdog columnist, will lead a session called "The High-Impact Writer," where he will talk about ways to write and create change in the world.

Prior to writing columns in Texas, Lieber got his start writing columns for the DP, where he was a reporter and editorial page columnist from 1975-79. He is also the author of several books. His latest, Bad Dad, was released last year, and Dave Lieber's Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong was released in a new 2012 edition earlier this year. 

For more on the Writer's Conference event, click here.

[Editor's note: DP Alumni can browse and purchase books by fellow DP alumni in the Amazon-powered DPAA Bookstore. To see the latest from Dave Lieber, and hundreds of other books from DP alumni authors, visit the DPAA Bookstore. Purchases via this website provide a small contribution to the DPAA.]

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Weddings: Rachel Feintzeig

Congrats to former DP Managing Editor Rachel Feintzeig '07 on her marriage to fellow Penn alum David Bennett April 28 in New Haven.

Feintzeig currently covers bankruptcy and restructuring for Dow Jones Newswires in New York. She also serves on the DPAA Board of Directors.

Check out the wedding announcement in the New York Times.

Maria Popova: curator of the Internet, defender of books

Maria Popova '07 is well known for her blog Brain Pickings, where she curates the Web for interesting stories, art and ideas. 

Popova, who worked at the DP as an advertising representative and assistant advertising manager, recently sat down with Findings (another new media website which allows readers to post clips of what they're reading and discuss them) to talk about about the future of books and the written word.

Papova argues for the continued existence of books in this increasingly digital age. Although the Kindle app on her iPad is her "weapon of choice", she said tries to read one "old book" for every new one she reads on her digital tablet. "Books, with their inherent pace and timescale, invite -- force, one might say -- writers to step back from that haste and reflect more deeply on what is being written, research it more thoroughly, deliver it more eloquently, argue it with better-substantiated conviction. Though books have a long history of being proclaimed dead, I trust they will endure, in one form or another -- it's simply too important to preserve that mode of arguing ideas."

Click here to read the full story.

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Sidman: Young & Hungry

Jessica Sidman '08 has been named the new food editor at Washington City Paper. She'll be writing food column for the weekly paper's print edition, and produce its "Young & Hungry" food blog.

In a blog post about hiring Sidman, the paper's editor wrote, "She's an immensely well-connected reporter who's been a scoop machine for Bisnow. She demonstrated her chops as an elegant, thoughtful writer in prior intern stints at Washingtonian, the Dallas Morning News, and USA Today. She's also a deeply entrepreneurial journalist: Recognizing that food is a big piece of the culture and the economy of a city, she conceptualized and launched Bisnow's dining newsletter—which today has thousands of subscribers. At Washingtonian, she shot video in addition to writing about food, a skill she'll bring to bear here as well. And she started her own blog about ice cream, The Frozen Fix."

At the DP, Sidman was a beat reporter from 2004-07. She also served as 34th Street Features Editor in Spring 2006 and Interim Assignments Editor in 2006. At the Washington City Paper, she joins another DP alum, Mike Madden '98, who is the paper's managing editor.

Click here to read an announcement on her hiring.

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