Walking past my roommates flopped over the living room couches, coming up for air between high-pitched bursts of laughter, I stopped to identify the source of their hysteria. Holding court from the table, one of them was reading aloud headlines from CU Nooz, Cornell’s latest online “news source.” By following in the footsteps of satirical media like The Onion, CU Nooz speaks to Cornell students as no other campus publication can.
Almost any topic is fair game for the site, where anonymous authors contribute phony articles about campus life. Outrageous headlines such as “Gannett Health Services Distraught to Learn ‘The Clap’ Not Fun Dance Move” and “Student JA’ed for Murder” take humorous potshots at the serious content produced by the likes of the Daily Sun and the Cornell Chronicle. An Op-Ed entitled “How to Nail a Career Fair” gleefully skewering the generic advice disseminated by Career Services by asking, “Proficient with Microsoft Office? Prove it. Throw some clip art in that resume.”
Launched this fall, CU Nooz is to the Daily Sun as “The Daily Show” is to CNN. Headlines like “Cornell to Build Literally Everywhere Possible on Campus” and “German Language Dept. Tries to Overtake Russian Language Dept., stopped by Ithaca Winter,” cast a humorous—if somewhat insular—gaze on campus.
Of course, CU Nooz isn’t for everyone. The site has been criticized by the news and gossip website IvyGate as “heavy handed” and “hideously unfunny,” perhaps due to its dependence on current, Cornell-specific knowledge. The campus community also turned on the site in the wake of an article entitled “Administration Secretly Kind of Disappointed No One’s Used the Suicide Nets Yet.” After the piece sparked outrage from students, alumni, and campus media, the editors quickly issued an apology and removed it from the site.
CU Nooz is run by two seniors in the sketch comedy group Skits-O-Phrenics with a staff of two dozen regular contributors, though outside submissions are accepted. According to an interview in the Sun, they aim to publish at least one article a day. With each one, the site gets a bit closer to creating a consistent voice and becoming a dependable source of humor and a commentary on the modern student. Like this gem, prompted by a real-life case where University was found liable for more than $200,000 for accidentally destroying equine genetic material: “Law School Breeds Hyperintelligent Horse Lawyers.”
— Brooke LaPorte ’14