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Thursday April 6, 2017 vol. CXLI no. 37
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ON CAMPUS
Steinberg ’99, former Four U. students receive Goldwater Buzzfeed president, scholarship discusses media future By Hunter Campbell staff writer
By Abhiram Karuppur associate news editor
When Jon Steinberg ’99 was a freshman, the University had just installed broadband in all of the dorms — things like Amazon Pantry and Hulu weren’t even yet imagined. Steinberg, the former Buzzfeed president and chief operating officer, discussed the future of media and how viewership habits among millennials are changing the media landscape. In a lecture titled “The End and The Beginning of Television,” Steinberg began by explaining how quickly technology has come to impact people’s daily lives since the time he first arrived on campus. “Nobody had a mobile phone, and internet technology was not a thing,” he said. “The computer science building ... was not that busy, and there weren’t a lot of people taking computer science classes.” Steinberg, who is now the founder and CEO of Cheddar, a new video media company, explained that he describes
the current media landscape as multiple “bets,” since new entrants to the industry have to make a bet on what the next big platform or technology will be. He noted that the founder of modern cable, John Malone, once told a banker who wasn’t convinced that cable was going to be successful that “conventional wisdom is usually right and seldom profitable.” Steinberg noted that the takeaway from this quote is that people should pursue ideas that “are not right” because will be profitable. He said that everyone is living in a post-TV era, and displayed statistics showing the median age of viewers on certain channels. According to the Economist, viewership among 18-24 year olds has declined 45 percent over the past six years. In contrast, viewership by adults over 65 has grown by a smaller percentage. “Despite the facts being undeniable, they are so shocking that people think they couldn’t possibly be true,” Steinberg said. Another striking statistic
was the median age of viewers on specific news channels, and Steinberg showed that the median age of MSNBC viewers was 63, while CNBC had a median viewership age of 67. “Half the audience is dead, right?” he joked. Steinberg added that a small fraction of viewers on CNBC and MSNBC are below the age of 54, but despite this, these networks still pull in close to one billion dollars of revenue every year from cable companies. These cable companies pay networks based on how many customers have access to these networks, not on the number of people who actually watch the shows. “I want to pick a business that does a billion dollars a year that nobody watches,” Steinberg said. “That sounds like a good thing to compete with, for me.” He said that the bet that he is making is that in the future, nearly everyone will be watching two categories of content. One will be similar to Netflix, HBO, Amazon — long-form dramas, comedies, See STEINBERG page 2
IMAGE BY ABHIRAM KARUPPUR
Jon Steinberg ’99, the founder and CEO of Cheddar and former president of Buzzfeed, gave a lecture called “The End and The Beginning of Television.”
Four University students — Jonathan Lu ’18, Omkar Shende ’18, Sally Jiao ’18, and Lamia Ateshian ’18 — will be recipients of the 2017 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. These students are four of the 240 total scholarship recipients out of a field of 1,286 nominees nationwide. The scholarship is awarded to outstanding candidates in the STEM fields who want to pursue vocations in which they can apply their skills to advancing innovations in the public interest. The recipients of the scholarship are undergraduate sophomores and juniors who intend
to have careers in engineering, the natural sciences, or mathematics. Scholarships are available for either one or two years, with a maximum of $7,500 in need-based aid given per year. The four University recipients each received one-year scholarships.The recipients can use the scholarship to cover tuition and room-and-board fees next year. Lu ’18, who hails from Fremont, Calif., is concentrating in computer science and pursuing a certificate in statistics and machine learning. “I chose both of these just because broadly they’re very useful, and also I’m a quantitive person,” Lu said when asked about why he chose these topics of study. See GOLDWATER page 2
S T U D E N T A F FA I R S
Whig-Clio hosts debate on prison divestment By Audrey Spensley staff writer
The American Whig-Cliosophic society hosted a debate on Wednesday, April 5, on whether the University should divest from private prisons. The ultimate vote was 24 for Whig, who supported divestment, and 12 for Clio, who were opposed. Much of the debate centered on the ethical or political implications of divestment from private prisons. Whig argued that the University should divest because of the morally egregious nature of private prisons, which they said profit from a system of mass incarceration and institutionalized racism. “The larger argument is the endemic problems of private prisons, namely the incentive to profit off of incarceration,” Whig debater Rohit Dilip ’19 explained in an interview. Clio countered that divest-
ment is only justified in the case of unequivocally immoral investments. The University has previously divested in two cases — one involving apartheid in South Africa and the other due to the genocide in Darfur. Clio argued that the question of private prisons is political rather than moral, and that the University should not make investment decisions based on the political views of a percentage of the study body. The Whigs countered that the University’s investments are never apolitical and that issues which are political are also moral. They further argued that the University should act consistently with its informal motto “in the nation’s service.” The debate also focused on the strength of student body support for divestment and whether student support should be a factor in the deciSee DEBATE page 2
NEWS AND NOTES
Slaughter ’80, Gast GS ’84, Rubin ’65 to receive honorary degrees staff writer
Three University alumni — Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80, Alice Gast GS ’84, and Donald B. Rubin ’65 — will receive honorary degrees and speak at commencement ceremonies this May at Indiana University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Chicago, respectively. Slaughter, former Dean of the Wilson School, will speak at Indiana University’s commencement. Slaughter is currently the President and CEO of New America, a nonpartisan think tank that works to combine research and outreach with political engagement. From 2009-2011 Slaughter served as the director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State and was the first woman to hold the position. She is a
professor emerita of politics and international affairs at the University. Slaughter was thrust into the public eye in 2012 when she wrote a widelyread article in The Atlantic titled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” concerning the complex obstacles faced by mothers who are in positions of power in their work environments. Gast will speak at the University of Notre Dame’s commencement and receive an honorary degree in engineering. Gast earned both her master’s and doctorate degrees from Princeton and later conducted research at Stanford University. Her work has focused on understanding chemical reactions that occur on the surfaces of complex fluids. She is a co-author of the textbook “Physical Chemistry of Surfaces,” which has provided students with new
ways to consider colloid phenomena. Gast served as Vice President for Research and Associate Provost at MIT and later as President of Lehigh University. She is currently the President of Imperial College London. Rubin will receive an honorary degree from the University of Chicago at the school’s commencement ceremonies. Rubin’s work pioneered new statistical methods for analyzing incomplete data. Rubin’s findings, outlined in books like “Statistical Analysis with Missing Data” and “Multiple Imputation for Nonresponse in Surveys,” are well-known topics of study for statistics students all over the world. Rubin is currently a statistics professor at Harvard University, and completed his undergraduate studies at Princeton University, where he concentrated in psychology.
COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80 will speak at Indiana University’s commencement and receive an honorary degree from the school.
In Opinion
Today on Campus
Columnist Liam O’Connor advocates for a subtle name change to West College, and Contributing Columnist Daehee Lee calls on Princetonians to be better leaders than South Korea’s corrupt elite. PAGE 4
4:30 p.m.: The panel “Reporting on the Front Lines in Greece — and New Jersey” will take place at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 6, in the Simpson International Building, Room 144.
WEATHER
By Claire Thornton
HIGH
62˚
LOW
43˚
Thunderstorm! chance of rain:
100 percent