Michael Oliva walks into the student newspaper office in the Pryzbyla Center just before 2 p.m. and checks his e-mail. He's got class in a few minutes, but the sophomore at Catholic University, business manager at The Tower, needs to check in on how advertising revenue is looking this week.

"It's not good," says Oliva. "National ads are down across the board and on campus departments who need to slash their budgets see the advertisements as expendable."

The phone rings, Oliva hopes it's an ad.

"Tower office," he says as he picks up the phone. It's the dean of students office. They're running down a letter to the editor on the editorial last week.

"Why not just e-mail it? Now we've got to re-type it," says Oliva. "We should start charging for letters to the editor," he jokes.

Today they're reviewing for a midterm in class, so he hustles out the door.

Junior Kelsey Flynn is selling tickets to this weekend's performances of Godspell in the lobby of the Pryzbyla student center. The musical is put on by student organization Center Stage.

"It's a bunch of stories of the life of Jesus taking place on a playground," said Flynn.

Sitting at the table with her is Michael Pratt, who is snacking on goldfish crackers. Soon, Rev. Robert Schlageter (better known on campus as Father Bob) stops by, and Pratt tries to throw goldfish into Schlageter's mouth, but misses.

Across the lobby, the Latin Alliance is selling assorted baked goods.

Student organizations are hard up for money right now - the Student Fee Board is practically out of money for the semester (just over $2K left in their account, according to one Student Association member) and student leaders are scrambling to figure out how to pay for their events.

On a school-wide level, CUA's endowment has dropped significantly and the University has a temporary freeze on hiring in addition to budget cuts.

Read More "Godspell, Broke Student Orgs., and Costly Donuts" »

Professor Holger Zaborowski, Dr. Z for short, leans up against the chalkboard. Wearing a navy blue sportsjacket over a green v-neck sweater, he starts up a discussion in his Tues-Thurs 9:35 a.m. Philosophy of Religion, a familiar topic to students at Catholic University.

Today, the focus is on the concept of God - Dr. Z. plays moderator, a Brian Williams with a German accent (Williams went to CUA for a brief period before transferring to GW, but the University still likes to lay claim to him).

So what's the proper analogy for the concept of God? The conversation in a wide classroom offered up a few: Read More "God v. Hannah Montana, Chinese Soap Operas, and Made-up Animals" »

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Over at why.i.hate.dc, a local D.C. blogger has declared war on local D.C. blogs, and written a sarcastic list of tips for creating a successful neighborhood blog (which if you follow, "you should find yourself linked by DCist and The Washington City Paper in no time!").

One anonymous commenter joked that he/she was "so inspired I'm going to start a Brookland neighborhood parody blog."

My first post will ask readers to join me in an email writing campaign to Whole Foods corporate headquarters asking for our own store.

Next, I'll review the new coffee shop opened by two gay men who just returned from wintering in Vieques, and who import "fair trade" Ethiopian coffee direct from the source.

Jokes aside, it raises a legitimate question: where is Brookland on the blog scene? Both the Brookland Blog (which has an old post about the ever-entertaining Brookland listserv) and stop, blog, and roll have been inactive since the summer, leaving a huge gap for an intrepid blogger to fill. Sure, there's the Brookland Heartbeat, but that only comes out every other month. Read More "Where the Brookland Bloggers At?" »

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A shotgun-wielding man with a bandanna across his face robbed a Catholic University student in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven early Saturday morning, according to a release from CUA's Department of Public Safety [PDF]. The release describes the suspect as a black male, 21-27 years of age, 5’9’’, 160 lbs., and wearing dark clothing.

Read More "Shotgun-Wielding Man Robs Catholic U. Student in 7-Eleven Parking Lot" »

Darrow Montgomery / City Paper

College Rag Wrap-up: Your weekly roundup of what’s new(s) in D.C. college papers (and blogs). Each Monday, City Desk summarizes the most interesting stories from college oriented newspapers and blogs in the area. Links are compiled by City Paper intern Ryan J. Reilly, who is an editor at Catholic University’s student newspaper, the Tower.

Read More "College Rag Wrap Up for Feb. 9" »

At every home game the Catholic University basketball team has played in the past 62 years, Francis E. “Franny” Murray has been cheering the Cardinals on from the sidelines. But Saturday was not a typical home game for the 86-year-old employee. This time, the long time equipment manager was on the receiving end of the cheers as the University named the basketball court in the DuFour Center in his honor.

Read More "‘Keeper of the Cage’ for 62 Years Honored by CUA" »

Ding, dong, Juicy Campus is dead.

It seems even the slimiest of web gossip websites cannot seem to make the cut in these economic times. JuicyCampus.com (which the Sexist wrote about here) is shutting down tomorrow, according to a press release sent out just after 12:30 p.m. today.

From Matt Ivester, Juicy Campus founder & CEO:

"Unfortunately, even with great traffic and strong user loyalty, a business can’t survive and grow without a steady stream of revenue to support it.  In these historically difficult economic times, online ad revenue has plummeted and venture capital funding has dissolved.  JuicyCampus’ exponential growth outpaced our ability to muster the resources needed to survive this economic downturn, and as a result, we are closing down the site as of Feb. 5, 2009."

Full letter after the jump.

Read More "Breaking: JuicyCampus Comes to an End" »

A People's History of the United States author Howard Zinn appeared at Busboys & Poets Monday night to promote and and search for investors for his film The People Speak. Zinn's appearance proved so popular that the progressive hot spot on 14th Street filled up 1 hour and 15 minutes before Zinn took the stage at 6:30 p.m.

Here are the highlights (after the jump): Read More "Howard Zinn @ Busboys & Poets: ‘Democracy doesn’t come from the top, it comes from the bottom’" »

GW Hatchet editor Eric Roper (Darrow Montgomery)

College Rag Wrap-up: Your weekly roundup of what’s new(s) in D.C. college papers (and blogs). Each Monday, City Desk summarizes the most interesting stories from college oriented newspapers and blogs in the area. Links are compiled by City Paper intern Ryan J. Reilly, who is an editor at Catholic University’s student newspaper, the Tower.

Read More "College Rag Wrapup: Constructive Criticism Edition" »

If Jeff Jarvis had his way, this post would not exist. In his new book "What Would Google Do?," Jarvis lays out a number of rules to help dead tree newspaper types and corporations in general face the new online reality--including "do what you do best and link to the rest."

Just like the newspaper industry he criticizes so frequently, What Would Google Do? seems like an attempt to make money off of content Jarvis previously gave away for free (his blog Buzzmachine apparently wasn't generating enough Google Ads revenue to pay the bills). Reading the book, one can almost imagine Jarvis opening up Google Docs, pasting in a series of blog posts, whipping out the thesaurus (or rather, firing up the search engine) and tapping out awkward transitions between each topic like a co-ed writing a thesis paper. That "link to the rest" rule, along with many other ideas Jarvis lays out, now has a catchier title then when it was a blog post titled Cover what you do best. Link to the rest. The general point is the same - in the age where everyone is a critic, why does every paper need a local critic? The link, writes Jarvis, changes every business and institution, but it's "easiest to illustrate its impact on news.

Read More "Attention Google Crawler Bot: JEFF JARVIS, WHAT WOULD GOOGLE DO?, READ THIS IT’S IMPORTANT" »

College Rag Wrap-up: Your weekly roundup of what's new(s) in D.C. college papers.

Today City Desk kicks off a new weekly posting. Each Monday we'll summarize the most interesting stories from college newspapers in area. Links are compiled by City Paper intern Ryan J. Reilly, who is an editor at Catholic University's student newspaper, the Tower.

Read More "College Rag Wrap-Up: Post-Inauguration Edition" »

Sasha Obama waves from inside the presidential limo during the inauguration parade. Photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Washington City Paper

Malia and Sasha were not the only kids having fun at the inauguration today—plenty of kids in the crowd as well. Here are just a few that were hoisted on their parents' shoulders to see the action.