Columbia Journalism School kids exploring "The Elements of Style" in hip hop form? Don't make that rap video.

The following email was sent out to the Columbia Journalism School new media alumni email list today. We post it not to mock the unfortunate sender, but rather to gently question just how well they're teaching "new media," over there.

Our J-School embed can only help us so much; he can't provide us with the brilliance that follows, in which you watch a class of Columbia J-Schoolers rapping over Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" about ethics in journalism.

The Columbia Journalism School had an extra-special visitor yesterday: someone who can actually offer jobs to j-school graduates. Hunter Walker, our blogger turned j-school student, reports on what his classmates think of their new boss.

We're still unsure about what Hunter Walker is getting for the $47,000 he's paying Columbia Journalism School, but we do know what writing for free for tabloid website Gawker gets you: a spot on an 11-minute Morning Edition panel. [NPR]

Time for another check-in with media-blogger-turned-journalism-student Hunter Walker. In his second week at Columbia J-School, he's got too much adrenaline rushing from his first forays into metro reporting to think about how he's gonna pay back that $47,000.

Hunter Walker recently gave up a lucrative career as a media blogger to enroll in Columbia's Journalism School. Today was orientation and a pitch for why a $47,000 journalism degree is a better investment than a year-long drug-and-hooker bender.

Ah, Columbia J-School, the antiquated educational institution where the young and naive go to chase their crazy Woodward and Bernstein dreams. Sadly, the students there are an unsanitary horde of crumb-infested vagabonds, according to a school memo forwarded to us.

It's so hard not to love Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch's evil henchman and honcho of Fox News and the new Fox Business Network. Here's his notable quotable from a Q&A with Rebecca Dana in the Wall Street Journal: People say, 'How can you? You didn't go to Columbia Journalism School, how can you run a news organization?' I say, 'I have two qualifications: One, I didn't go to Columbia Journalism School, so there's a chance I'll be fair, and, two, I never want to go to a party in this town, so there's nobody's ass I have to kiss.'"

The New York Review of Magazines comes out once a year, at the end of the second semester of Columbia grad J-school's magazine concentration. The 15 or so students in the course should all operate under the assumption (illusion?) that they will, upon completion of this course, get wonderful editorial assistant positions at Serious Magazines, like Esquire. Or the New Yorker! Or perhaps that's what they secretly dream; the crowd gathered at the Essex restaurant on the Lower East Side (take the 1 from 116th and B'way to 14th St., transfer to the F) last night seemed defensively glum about their prospects. Except for the ones who already had jobs, of course! That one is working at the New York Observer; this one at the Columbia Journalism Review; and that other one for one of those fashion trade mags.

The speaker at this year's Columbia J-School commencement is former Washington Post executive editor and current WaPo VP Ben Bradlee, he of Deep Throat knowledge and Pentagon Papers-publishing, as Columbia Dean of Students Sree Sreenivasan wrote in an email to students yesterday. But do all of the J-schoolers know who Bradlee is? Sreenivasan's email seemed to imply they sure might not.

We're hearing that two of the bright young things up at Columbia Journalism School were arrested last evening, after attempting to take video footage outside of the 33rd Precinct police station at 170th and Amsterdam for a story they were doing about the rise of crime in Washington Heights. The students were reportedly put in jail for two agonizing, torturous hours before being allowed to flee back to the safety of the computer labs at 116th and Broadway, where they would be able to regale their fellow budding journalists with tales of their courage, etc., in the face of the big, mean NYPD.

Meet Columbia Journalism School student Sheena Tahilramani, pictured at right in an apparently self-fashioned dress made of newspapers. We're not quite sure what, exactly, is going on with her website, other than lots of cleavage; she apparently refuses to believe the old "face for print" adage applies to her. So far, her career highlights include an internship at the L.A. Times and an appearance on Wheel of Fortune. All she needs now is a blog to start giving Julia Allison a run for her money.

Columbia Journalism School was thrown into a tizzy recently with the revelations that there had been improprieties surrounding the school's ethics exam. But now a couple weeks have gone by, and the news reports have slowed to a trickle. Of course, that doesn't mean that all is well in Morningside Heights. A tipster reports from the bowels of the J-school:

The Observer has the detailed rundown on the now-infamous Friday afternoon meeting at Columbia Journalism School, which reportedly left uber-prof Samuel Freedman (pictured, for good measure, at right) close to tears, and Columbia students ruing the day they turned down Northwestern. To wit:

A tipster reports, from the trenches of Columbia J-school, on the latest from the Great Critical Issues Scandal of 2006. Our tipster notes that Critical Issues Prof. Samuel Freedman "seems to be taking an inordinate amount of heat for this, with his picture accompanying every written word about this non-scandal [Ed. note: We took pity on Professor Freedman, so that's Columbia J-School dean Nick Lemann pictured at right]." The ins and outs of the "non-scandal" are a little complicated, and frankly, a little boring—basically, someone said that people were passing the questions around, which is verboten because it's an opinion test. Sayeth our tipster:

So, Columbia J-School students are unethical. Fortunately, they're being given another chance to prove that they're not mini-Jayson Blairs—but now the pressure's on, Media Mob reports:

• A group of Columbia journalism students allegedly cheated on an ethics exam. There go those cushy Voice gigs. [Radar]
  

In an earlier entry today, we mentioned that Village Voice staffers were dissatisfied because EIC David Blum "only seems to be interested in hiring well-to-do white girls from Columbia". Well, it might help if you're still at Columbia. A tipster tells us:

There is no more important training for a young journalist than a lesson in how to hold your liquor. And there is no better way to learn to hold your liquor than at an open bar you can't get from. Hence the annual Columbia J-School booze cruise, at which this year — this is our favorite part — it seems the cocktailing will begin at 4 p.m. Of course, while an open bar would be ideal, the j-school currently charges its students a mere $38,500 in tuition and fees, and so it can afford only a cash bar. And, even better, a "cash food bar" — unless students shell out six bucks for the buffet, they're stuck with only "chips and salsa, and crudite with herbed dipping sauce." Dress is "reporter semi-formal," which seems easy enough until you remember how reporters dress, and the full email announcement is after the jump.