Cornell Blog: An unofficial blog about Cornell University

In a Cornell Daily Sun article today, Andy Guess writes about the recent co-sponsored reporting trip to China. His main complaint is that by sharing funding between Cornell and the Sun, a state of co-dependence is created which might influence objectivity:

Ideally, of course, Cornell would pay for none of the trip. A newspaper sharing costs with the subject of its coverage is an unusual arrangement, to say the least, and would never happen under normal circumstances.

To me it seems an arrangement of convenience. In today’s global services-oriented world, someone needs something a company can provide, so they contract it out. Rawlings needed a Sun reporter to follow the story, so Cornell found one from the Sun, and cosponsored them. It’s about the results, which are much important than the financial means used to obtain them.

Guess goes on to explain why the financial arrangement disturbs him:

Because the most important issue of all is the one fingered back in 2003 by The Sun’s editorial board: objectivity. The Beijing coverage simply begs the question of what sort of access was being granted to Geng, and whether she was being influenced by her handlers from the Cornell administration.

To me this seems like an entirely different issue than the financial issue. We have two facts:

1) Cornell paid for this China trip (in part)
2) The reporting was about Cornell figures

To me, this doesn’t imply that Cornell would have the power to block access to the Sun reporter. And more importantly, when you look at this, you should first ask, “What incentives would Cornell have in sponsoring a Sun reporter.” At this point, you see that Cornell and the Sun’s desires are united and synonymous. All they both want is to have good coverage of the groundbreaking educational agreements made in China. So where is the incentive for deception?

In case you haven’t noticed, CU Info just got a facelift from the redesign team. Unfortunately, I am a big critic of web work in general, and this in particular is no exception. If you take a look a look at their new design, you’ll notice two things:

1) It’s a lot prettier than the old one
2) The functionality is exactly the same

What’s the point of reworking one of Cornell.edu’s most popular pages if you’re not going to add some cool enhancements or a better workflow, resplendant with AJAX-y goodness and user-sensitive customizations?

There be girl scouts on Ho Plaza…