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Since shifting from Medill’s money-making Media Management Center to take over the entire school in 2005, Lavine has alienated a lot of NU faculty (and alums) by acting with little regard for faculty governance to rewrite the curriculum and more closely integrate Medill’s two wings — its journalism and marketing programs. So it’s not so surprising that he would tout a marketing course. He wrote that a Medill junior had told him: “I came to Medill because I want to inform people and make things better. Journalism is the best way for me to do that, but I sure felt good about this class. It is one of the best I’ve taken, and I learned many things in it that apply as much to truth telling in journalism as to this campaign to save teenage drivers.” It was a message that couldn’t possibly have suited Lavine’s purposes any better.
Spett then recorded an interview with Lavine saying he’d taken the quote from an e-mail from a student whose identity he now couldn’t remember.
