IvyGate was a
blog and
online news
An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical.
Going online created more opportunities for new ...
source covering news and
gossip at
Ivy League universities. The site was written and edited by students and recent graduates.
History
IvyGate was founded in 2006 by
Columbia University alumni Chris Beam and Nick Summers. The blog covers the "follies" of Ivy League schools, such as a
Princeton University class president accused of setting a squirrel on fire, a
University of Pennsylvania graduate student who turned out to be in prison, and a
Yale Skull and Bones member arrested for burning an
American Flag.
]
IvyGate rose to prominence through its
investigative reporting of the details of the "
Impossible is Nothing"
Internet meme
An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...
, concerning an impossibly boastful
video résumé produced by then
Yale student
Aleksey Vayner.
It was a nominee for the 2006 Weblog Award for "Best Educational Blog".
A minor controversy arose in December 2006 involving Beam's father, prominent ''
Boston Globe'' columnist
Alex Beam. The younger Beam had covered a
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
professor who wrote prolific
letters to the editor in ''
The New York Times''. Five days later the elder Beam covered the same story in his column, without attribution, leading to humorous but well-publicized complaints of plagiarism.
Beam has written for the online magazine
''Slate'' and ''
The New Republic'', and his fellow Columbia graduate Nick Summers is an editor for ''
The New York Times''.
The blog was the first to publish results of the ''
U.S. News & World Report'' 2007 college rankings. It also broke the
scoop on the disbanding of a
Yale fraternity, and broke the Pi Phi Rush Guidelines controversy at Cornell. Adam Clark Estes, a former editor at IvyGate, was criticized for making fun of the death of a Cornell student who had died due to swine flu in 2009. It employs reporters and commentators throughout the Ivy League, though reporting is sometimes viewed as displaying favoritism.
IvyGate's last post was published in October 2015. In 2018, the site was taken offline. Its archives can still be found using the
Wayback Machine.
References
External links
*{{official, http://www.ivygateblog.com
American student news websites
Internet properties established in 2006