Editorial:

Biggest Handjob: J-School Buzz

The self-obsessed journalism capstone project misrepresents and overreacts.

Published May 5, 2011

The Maneater’s pick for biggest handjob of the year, an annual favorite in our newsroom, is the journalism capstone project J-School Buzz. ‘Biggest handjob’ may be a vague title, but, essentially, this is what the title implies to us: Self-serving, misplaced and lacking valuable purpose.

J-School Buzz’s content illuminates the sad state of journalism, with content driven by what the editors think will get the most page hits (likely because they offer the site’s stats for viewing on the website and need to make it look like it’s being read).

What do we get as a result? A sticky sock of journalism gossip.

A prime example of J-School Buzz’s general uselessness comes in the form of its response to an email about a PR opportunity at McDonald’s from the J school’s Career Services department. J-School Buzz responded to the email on its website as if some atrocity had been committed (How dare we learn of a job opportunity at McDonald’s!).

Professor Mike McKean, who approved the site as a capstone project, summed up the ensuing backlash against J-School Buzz rather well when he said the article was, “cheap pageview whoring.”

Not only was it cheap, but it was also in incredibly, perhaps disturbingly, poor taste, particularly from J school students. What makes them think they are better than a public relations job at McDonald’s, which is not only a job, but also acknowledged as a good corporation toward its employees? J-School Buzz’s arrogant, classist rant about how offensive it is that a career services department would tell students about a job opportunity is offensive to the myriad of people who would love to have a job and to the rest of the J school students who have to deal with this blog misrepresenting student journalists.

Also, for the love of God, stop calling us The HumanEater. It’s not even clever.