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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2013
Daniel Chomsky currently teaches in the political science department. | LUIS FERNANDO RODRIGUEZ TTN
DANIEL CHOMSKY Political Science professor chats about being Noam Chomsky’s nephew and raiding the archives of the New York Times. TAYLOR FARNSWORTH The Temple News Daniel Chomsky, a political science professor at Temple, has had politics ingrained in his life since childhood. Chomsky not only grew up with an immediate family shrouded in politics, but also has Noam Chomsky, the famous linguist and historian, as an uncle. Having grown up in Philadelphia, Chomsky attended Temple before moving away to Northwestern University for graduate studies. Chomsky then moved back to Philadelphia so he could do his graduate work in the New York Times’ archives where he studied how media institutions make decisions. Chomsky found himself back in Philadelphia where he was given the opportunity to teach at his undergraduate alma mater, and has been teaching here since Fall 2000. The Temple News: Can you explain a bit about your family background? Daniel Chomsky: Well, my interest in politics comes
from my family. My family was always very political and that includes my parents and my uncle as well. They gave me an interest in politics and we talked politics around at home. One of the things people ask about my uncle – [Noam Chomsky] – they say, “Well what is he like?” I think they have this assumption that he’s not like other people, that he is different in some way. And my answer is that he is just like everybody else when you interact with him. So while on a basic level my interest in politics comes from just the world which I grew up where everyone was interested in politics. To me it just seemed completely normal. TTN: So what brought you back to Philly after graduate school? DC: I was doing my doctoral work in Chicago, at Northwestern. I became aware of a source of data, I do work on the mass media, and somebody, I think it was one of my dissertation advisers, had heard second hand that it was possible to get access to internal documents from the New York Times. Nobody there had done academic work on that and really nobody was aware that you could do that. So that meant doing work in New York and I was working on the world of mass media and particular historic events and how mass media make decisions and the relationship between mass media and society. When I found out that this might be possible, I looked into it and I ended up doing a lot of work in the New York Times corporate archives, collecting data from the New York Times corporate archives. Since I had ties to Philadelphia, and New York was expensive, I basically came back here and commuted up and back to New York. So that’s what brought me back, just the opportunity to do research closer to town. That decision was a good one – not coming back to Philadelphia, so much as this opportunity to work in the New York Times’ archives. [It was] a really valuable opportunity. As far as I could tell, nobody had done this kind of work. This is kind of like a micro study. I tried to figure out how media institutions make decisions. Other people had gone about that in different ways, but nobody has really made use of these internal memos to figure out how media institutions make decisions. That was a really useful opportunity that has been essential to my work since graduate school. So coming back to Philadelphia was just kind of an accident, and getting a
job at Temple was really just an accident. I was here finishing up my dissertation, and they needed somebody. I believe it was an immediate need for a short-term replacement, so that’s how I got the job here. TTN: How long were you doing your research at the New York Times? DC: Well I was in the archives for, the answer really is, however long I could stay. It turned out that when I found out that I could do this work in the New York Times’ archives, they weren’t really set up to have researchers come in, though I guess a couple people had gone in to look at documents. This was a back office away from the main operations of the New York Times where they just collected these old records. I told them what I wanted and I had people write on my behalf saying that I would be responsible. So they let me in, and once I was there and realized what kind of valuable collection this was and how much interesting material I could get out of it, I stayed as long as I could. I kept giving them excuses to let me stay. They were getting more and more suspicious about why I was hanging around and I tried to get as much as I could before they were going to kick me out. I got the sense that my lease was running out. I guess I was there off and on over a matter of half a year or something like that. When the official biographers of the Times’ owner’s family were moving in to write an official history of the Times’ owners, my welcome was running out. Now, most of this stuff is more easily accessible now that the Times has moved most of their material out of the Times’ offices and it is now available at the New York Public Library. If [only] I had known that that is how it was going to end up, and how much easier that would have been. Taylor Farnsworth can be reached at taylor.farnsworth@temple.edu.
Website aims to improve book resales Ryan Epp and Devon Greider are working to change the way Temple students buy textbooks. NICOLE SOLL The Temple News Even as a freshman, Ryan Epp knew there was something wrong with the way students bought and sold textbooks on campus. The bookstore prices were considered by many to be too high and students had a difficult time getting an equal return when they tried to sell their textbooks at the end of the semester. Epp said he saw plenty of flyers floating around on campus and Facebook posts online offering textbooks at lower costs, but no way for students to see them all. “I thought there should be a better way than that,” Epp, a senior computer science major, said. That’s when Epp came up with the Temple Student Book Exchange. The idea was to create a website that would act as a central location for students to trade, buy or sell textbooks. Instead of searching Facebook groups or scouring campus for posters, students would come to the website and be able to find what they were looking for with one search. Epp talked to several friends about the idea, one being his roommate and friend since high school, Devon Greider. Greider, a senior broadcasting, telecommunications and mass media major, showed great interest in the project and agreed to be Epp’s business partner. Epp worked on the website design while Greider focused on promoting the site, which they released this past December.
According to a U.S. Department of Education Study done in 2007, the average student spends between $700 and $1,000 on textbooks each year. Although both Barnes and Noble and Zavelle Bookstore will buy back textbooks, it’s only for a fraction of the cost. “You buy a textbook for $100 dollars, sell it back for $40 and then the bookstore turns around and sells it to someone else for $80,” Greider said. The Temple Student Book Exchange, also known as TU Book X, has a simple premise: In bold print on the website, the owners promise “to save you money and make buying and selling your textbooks as easy as possible.” The website creates a free market where students can exchange, buy or sell books at lower costs than bookstores and without the shipping fees and waiting time of online sites. To sign up, all students need is a Temple email account and within minutes they can start listing textbooks or searching for the ones needed for the semester. Although users are free to put their contact information on their profile, interested buyers can also message them directly through the site to set up a meeting to sell or exchange books. Textbooks currently on the site vary from law to biology to finance to psychology. To see if a book is listed all users need is the title, publisher or ISBN number. Since this is the website’s first semester in action, Epp and Greider are still trying to generate buzz. Epp and Greider said there are currently more than 350 books listed on the site and a little more than 250 users. They’ve had some help from the Facebook group TU Memes endorsing them, which resulted in their heaviest days of activity, but they’re still hoping
Similar to Craigslist, TU Book X allows users to sell books at their own price and search for books they need posted by other users. more students will learn about the website and check it out. Epp and Greider said they encourage anyone who’s looking to buy or sell textbooks to check out the site because the service can only get better when there are more users and more books posted. “If you’re buying or selling books there’s no place better to be,” Epp said. The students have no plans on expanding their site to other schools yet. Although they’re open to it, they know Main Campus best and want to work out the kinks of the website before moving on.
Epp and Greider are also in the middle of changing the name of the service because “TU” is a trademark of Temple University, which they have no official affiliation with. For now, students can still find the them on Facebook at Temple Student Book Exchange or through their website, TUBookX. com. Nicole Soll can be reached at nicole.soll@temple.edu.