Never meta-friend like you before - Metacritic founders Marc Doyle (left) and Jason Dietz. Photo by Philip Channing

Issue: Winter 2005

Alumni & Friends

Who’s Doing What & Where

Meta-Successful

Trojans Jason Dietz and Marc Doyle turned lawyerly anomie into Internet innovation with the founding of Metacritic.com.

It’s true – everyone’s a critic. At least that’s how it can seem if you’re a hapless moviegoer on a summer Friday night, trying to choose from among the half-dozen films all deemed “one of the summer’s best!” in full-page newspaper ads.

But a pair of industrious Trojans found a way to cut through the information inundation. In January 2001, Jason Dietz ’94, JD ’97 and Marc Doyle JD ’97, along with partner Julie Doyle Roberts, launched the Web site Metacritic (www.metacritic.com), which takes published reviews of movies, music, video games and books, distills a critic’s viewpoint into a score from 1 to 100 and spits out an average, or “metascore” – all on a free, easy- to-use site that Time magazine deemed one of the “50 Coolest Web sites” of 2004.

The business world clearly agreed. In August, online media company CNET acquired Metacritic for a sum that some industry observers estimated to be in the low seven figures. Not bad for three former lawyers who launched the site with little more than their computers and a bright idea.

Doyle and Dietz met during their first week at USC Law School in the fall of 1994, when a quick bite at Carl’s Jr. marked the beginning of a close friendship.

At the time, Dietz was quick to see the potential of the Internet. “I still remember that during my first week of law school, I walked down to the brand-new Leavey Library and its basement computer center and used Mosaic and the World Wide Web for the very first time,” Dietz recalls. “Shortly after that, I started trying to learn HTML, and I eventually had my own very rudimentary personal Web site on the USC servers.”

After graduation, Dietz went off to work as a lawyer at accounting firm Arthur Andersen, while Doyle joined an entertainment law firm in Century City. But neither was happy.

“We loved law school, we loved ’SC, but we weren’t really looking forward to the thought of practicing law,” says Doyle.

It was Dietz who provided their out. “I actually woke up with the idea [for Metacritic] one morning while in a Houston hotel room, where I was on a business trip,” says Dietz. “I thought about how there were starting to be a lot of reviews published on the Web, and about how it would make sense to have one site that collected all of those reviews in one place.”

Eventually Dietz, who had already left Arthur Andersen for a job as a Web designer at an Internet consulting firm, came to Doyle with the Metacritic idea; immediately enthused, Doyle decided to quit his firm. He took a day job as a teacher and administrator at Santa Monica’s Crossroads School and spent the rest of his time helping Dietz get Metacritic off the ground. In late 1999, they brought on Doyle’s sister, Roberts, another ex-lawyer; she and her husband put up the bulk of the cash for the start-up. “Jason and I provided mostly sweat equity,” Doyle says.

At first, they found working on Metacritic as tedious as slaving away in the corporate world. The three, with help from family members, pored over thousands of published reviews to create prototypes for the site. None took a salary, instead pouring every dollar earned from advertising and revenue-sharing deals back into the site.

But as lifelong pop-culture consumers, the three knew they were onto something. Even before the site went online, they would consult their own prototypes before deciding whether to see movies like Star Wars: Episode I. “We thought people could use this information, based on our own experience,” Doyle says.

Unsurprising, then, that the end result is a hit, with 40,000 unique visitors each day. Users are greeted by an eye-pleasing homepage with a host of links to the movies, books, albums and games in current wide release. Click on one and you’re jumped to a page with capsule information and a clearly marked Metascore, color-coded to identify whether the reviews are generally good (green), generally bad (red) or mixed (yellow). There are also links to the reviews, the scores Metacritic’s staff has assigned to each and an excerpt from the review meant to encapsulate the critic’s opinion.

The result is a pleasant transparency. Take, for example, 2005 Best Picture Oscar winner Million Dollar Baby. The New Yorker wrote that the film had “a beautifully modulated sadness that’s almost musical” (Metascore: 100); Salon.com thought it to be “a compendium of every cliché from every bad boxing melodrama ever made” (Metascore: 20). On balance, critics loved the film; its Metascore was 86, making it Metacritic’s 10th highest-rated movie of 2004.

The reviews of Metacritic have been much more uniform. Named by Entertainment Weekly as “the Web’s best film review site,” the site has won the favor of some of the industry’s toughest critics, including Roger Ebert and Wall Street Journal film critic Joe Morgenstern, both of whom are regular visitors to the site.

In the coming months, Metacritic expects to add a section for television reviews, but fans shouldn’t expect the CNET deal to change the site’s fundamental charms. Metacritic remains a remarkably streamlined operation, with only four full-time employees. Much of the grunt work of reading reviews and assigning scores is handled by part-timers and fans who offer to read reviews on a contract basis. And each of the three founders still reads and scores hundreds of reviews a month.

“Our little team has worked so well, with all of us putting 100 percent into it,” Doyle says. “It helps to know that there’s no egos and that the person on the left and right of you is working just as hard as you.”

– Shashank Bengali

Q&A:

Illustration by Tim Bower

Continental Pride

USC has gone south of the border. In May, the university officially unveiled its newest international office in Mexico City, Mexico, and hired Mexico City native Ana Villegas ’00 as its inaugural director. Here the Cinema-TV School graduate opens up about the office’s raison d’etre, her sundry duties and the serendipitous career path of a onetime film editor.

Why was the Mexico City International Office established? We have a strong presence in Asia, but I think the university also wants to broaden its perspective and grow its presence in Latin America, the other half of the Pacific Rim. We also have a great alumni organization here in Mexico, which I am sure helped very much in the process.

In what ways do you think this office fills a void? USC has the largest population of foreign students of any university in the United States, and eight of our top 10 sending countries are in Asia; Mexico is about number 25. I think we want to see to it that the best and the brightest students coming out of Mexico know about, consider and hopefully go to USC. I also hope we can increase the number of students coming from Latin American countries.

What drew you to the director position? I have always been a true Trojan, and when I left Los Angeles two years ago to return to Mexico, I missed being close to my alma mater. To be able to be in my home town and at the same time be so close to USC is definitely a dream come true.

Can you describe what your typical workweek entails? Right now I am out of the office a lot because I am meeting with the most prominent high schools and universities in Mexico City and in the suburbs. Usually, I will be in the office answering e-mails, phone calls and arranging meetings and events for alumni; trying to make bilateral agreements between USC and the public and private sector in Mexico; and guiding future students on their application forms. We are a multi-task office, with the priority to help USC locally in any way, shape and form we can.

What event or accomplishment are you most proud of thus far? We had a tremendous grand opening. Selma Holo, director of the USC Fisher Gallery, came down and led a wonderful discussion about the role of museums in society, along with a former minister and Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico professor, Gerardo Estrada. Gustavo Castro, a Ph.D. classical guitar student in the USC Thornton School of Music, provided entertainment. In total, we had nearly 150 people help us open up the office.

What were your career plans when you graduated? Did you ever imagine you’d end up in the position you are now? When I graduated, I became an editor and worked a couple of years doing so in Los Angeles. I even opened my small editing house. After I decided it was time to go back home, I had been away for seven years. I continued editing and managing a small post-production house in Mexico City until I was surprised and very honored to be chosen to direct the USC International Office in Mexico. It was truly the best thing that has happened to me, as now I feel all my skills can make so much good for USC and Mexico. I could not be happier with my choice.

School Praise

Photo by Philip Channing

“Roads” Scholar

Paul Cummins, co-founder of the Crossroads and New Roads schools, believes progressive education should not be left behind.

Pull into the New Roads parking lot and you know you’re at no ordinary K-12 private school. A billboard in front broadcasts the message “Still War Everyday,” and the students milling in the schoolyard seem to represent nearly every ethnic group imaginable.

This clearly unconventional school is yet another brainchild of Paul Cummins MA ’63, PhD ’67, an educational maverick who has devoted his life to transforming the way we think about learning.

Cummins came to USC for his master’s and doctorate in English when he was already a full-time English instructor. It was during his Trojan years that he began focusing on his lifework: educational reform.

“As I became more and more familiar with disparities in education that not only persist but have perhaps gotten worse,” says Cummins, “my internal disdain for unfairness began operating at full throttle.”

His first foray into alternative education came with Crossroads School, which he co-founded nearly 35 years ago with “five basic commitments,” according to the school’s Web site: “to academic excellence; to the arts; to the greater community; to the development of a student population of social, economic and racial diversity; and to the development of each student’s physical well-being and full human potential.”

Cummins is no longer affiliated with Crossroads – he was headmaster until 1993 and worked with community outreach until 2003 – but still speaks proudly of the fact that the school“spends $22,000 per pupil per year, while LAUSD spends $7,000.

“Does that make a difference? You bet. Why are we willing to spend $35,000 per prisoner but not $20,000 per student?”

In 1994, Cummins helped launch the New Visions Foundation with the aim of establishing independent schools offering top-notch education to a more diverse range of students; the foundation opened New Roads a year later. According to Cummins, its main distinction from Crossroads is that the latter’s “initial goal wasn’t the kind of radical diversity that New Roads has.”

Today New Roads is a truly integrated school, with 50 percent of its student body non-white and 60 percent on some form of financial aid. It is, according to Cummins, “a happy, well-functioning place where the kids are all mixed together and get along well.”

As executive director of the New Visions Foundation, Cummins continues putting his passions to work. He describes the foundation’s three main projects at present as focusing on at-risk kids: “trying to improve the educational system for incarcerated youth, placing foster children in independent schools and helping to create new charter schools.”

Meanwhile, as a consultant who advises schools on matters of budget, fundraising, curriculum and facilities, Cummins frets about the state of public education in California. Referring to educator Howard Gardner’s concept of multiple intelligences, Cummins says that “in the schools we measure only two – mathematical and verbal/linguistic.” Since not every student has aptitude in these areas, he says, the public schools end up “doing an enormous disservice to those kids.”

Moreover, he states emphatically, “the first thing we cut out of the budget is the arts. Self-expression is a fundamental human need. The inner energy of students to express themselves will come out – do you channel it into something positive and constructive or do you let the local gangs be the determining factor?”

When he’s not shaking up the halls of learning, or speaking out on another subject close to his heart – ecological justice – Cummins is a self-described “amateur poet,” his own outlet for self-expression. He’s also the author of several books, including a biography of music educator and conductor Herbert Zipper, who survived both German and Japanese concentration camps during World War II. Zipper became like a second father to Cummins and taught him the indispensable value of art: “It was the secret musical concerts in the latrines of Dachau that gave Zipper a reason to keep living.”

Cummins’ most recent book is Proceed with Passion: Engaging Students in Meaningful Education. Describing it as “an antidote to No Child Left Behind,” Cummins says the book is about “what is critical to reforming education – engaging students in meaningful issues” and moving beyond “the hollowness of test, test, test.

“When a student comes to school,” he explains, “and says, ‘I saw people sleeping on the sidewalk, why do we tolerate this?’ – that’s a teachable moment. And if the teacher says, ‘I’m sorry, but we’ve got a test next week and don’t have time for that,’ then you’ve lost something very valuable.”

Crossroads is now a prestigious school popular with celebrity progeny; a recent Vanity Fair article referred to it as “A-List High.” But whether or not Cummins’ ideas on education will ever merge into the mainstream is another matter. Still, as he puts it, “hope is a necessary condition for progress. I don’t see the issues being fully addressed at the state or federal level, but small grassroots organizations are doing brilliant, extraordinary work. If you give up, then you’re part of the problem.”

– Ross M. Levine

A Season in Photos

Photo credits: 1. Robin Underwood-Doty; 2. Rebecca O’Connor; 4. Tom Kozicki; 5. Kevin Lin; 6, 7. Patrick Holloway ’84; 8. Kristin Sanderson; 9. Dan Avila ’80

Trojan Summer Vacations

`From the cliffs of Yorkshire to the shores of Catalina, USC friends and alumni spent the warmest months seeing the world.

1. Cruisin’ to Catalina
The USC Orange County Presidents Council – representing all of the alumni groups in the Orange County region – hosted its first annual Fourth of July Cruise to Catalina Island to celebrate both the nation’s 229th birthday and USC’s 125th. Alumni, family and friends enjoyed a daylong program on Catalina culminating in a performance by the USC Spirit of Troy Marching Band in the island’s historic Casino Building. The festivities drew 250 attendees and raised more than $8,000 in scholarship funds for USC students. On the boat ride over, Sue McKeever ’61, center, shows both her patriotic pride and her Trojan spirit with, left to right, Alan Watts ’00, Ron Coehlo ’01, Daren Gress ’01, Liz Cordero and Tommy Pappa MBA ’00.

2. Southern SCend Off
A series of Scend Off receptions held around the world this summer welcomed newly minted USC students into the family fold, allowing fresh-faced Trojans to connect with fellow USC students as well as alumni before heading off to University Park campus in the fall. In July, Patrick O’Conner and Rebecca O’Connor ’81 hosted the Alumni Club of Atlanta’s SCend Off, celebrating incoming USC students with a traditional Southern barbecue and USC-themed goody bags.

3. Little Campers
USC junior Donovan Schafer (pictured, in blue) coaches campers on the ins and outs of archery during the 2005 Troy Camp session. Founded in 1948, Troy Camp has become USC’s largest and most diverse student-run philanthropy group, each year recruiting children from the USC neighborhood and nearby elementary schools for a week of hiking, swimming, sports and arts and crafts activities at Idyllwild Pines in the San Jacinto mountains. Social activities, tutoring and mentoring programs keep participating children involved with Troy Camp throughout the school year. This summer, 207 children and 72 counselors, including many USC students, took part in the program.

4. The “Other” Tommy
Leave it to Trojans to locate USC’s mascot across the pond. In August, USC alumni journeyed to Yorkshire, England, as part of the USC Alumni Campus Abroad Trojan Travel program and met up with the “Trojan” of York: a local retail-store statue bearing an uncanny resemblance to USC’s own famed Traveler rider, Tommy Trojan. Posing with Tommy’s Doppelganger are, from left, Melba Meador ’78, Richard Mittleman ’62, Karen Mittleman, John Torribio ’65, Ron Rector ’57 and Gary Hastings ’68. The travel group also experienced the magnificence of North Yorkshire, including the Pennine Hills, the North Sea Cliffs and the resort town of Harrogate. The Trojan Travel program offers USC alumni, family, faculty and friends the opportunity to visit more than 40 destinations around the globe throughout the year.

5. Golfing “Fore” Scholarships
On a steamy afternoon in July, alumni and friends of the USC Asian Pacific Alumni Association gathered at Friendly Hills Country Club in Whittier, Calif., for the second annual Scholarship Golf Classic. Joining the USC APAA golfers were pro Scott Simpson ’78 and USC athletic director Mike Garrett ’67. Following their golf rounds, players enjoyed dinner, a silent auction and words of gratitude from several USC APAA scholarship students. Pictured here, master’s of public administration candidate Russ Quan and incoming sophomores Annora Wang and Judy Chen show their Trojan Pride with USC APAA scholarship chair Sharon Ishida and scholarship donor George Hayakawa ’49.

6., 7. BAA Boosters and Benefactors
USC Black Alumni Association Emeriti Council members (top, left to right) Marva Smith Battle-Bey ’75, Michael Jackson ’71, MSW ’73, DPA ’78 and Miriam Long Simmons ’72 were among the guests attending the annual USC BAA board installation in August. USC political science professor Michael Preston presided over the installation, which also featured USC BAA president Reginald Jones-Sawyer Sr. ’79 (bottom, at left) pinning chief operating officer of Concourse Concessions Inc. and newest USC BAA board member Simeon Stewart ’92. Other attendees included Kathryn Shirley ’97, Monique Hunter-Dennis ’79, Pat Holloway ’84, Joyce Sumbi ’60, Jerry Foster ’75, Stephanie Farmer ’99 and Delvin Walker ’77. Founded in 1976 as the Ebonics Support Group, the USC BAA is preparing to celebrate its 30th anniversary in February 2006.

8. Thinking Globally, Gathering Locally
USC’s international directors paid a visit to the University Park campus this summer to kick off the USC 125th anniversary celebration and to learn about new initiatives for the upcoming school year. Based in five countries around the Pacific Rim, the international directors oversee USC’s initiatives with academics, strategic partners and alumni on a global level in conjunction with the University Park international office headquarters. Pictured outside Widney Alumni House are (from left) Taipei director Pei-Hsuan Chu MBA ’94, John Windler MBA ’93, Tokyo director Patricia O’Keefe MBA ’02, Jakarta director Holip Soekawan ’94 and Hong Kong director Catherine Leung ’98. (To read about USC’s newest International Office in Mexico City and its director, Ana Villegas ’00, turn to page 55.)

9. USC 63, Hawaii 17
In September, the Alumni Club of Hawaii gave a hearty “Aloha!” to mainland Trojans to kick off the 2005 USC football season. Clad in cardinal and gold Hawaiian apparel and leis, the Hawaii club members hosted a Friday night pep rally on Waikiki Beach, with USC football radio analyst Paul McDonald ’79 on hand as special guest speaker. On Saturday, guests reconvened near Aloha Stadium for a pre-game luau sponsored by USC Athletics. Pictured at center, USC Asian Pacific Alumni Association director Grace Shiba, McDonald and Hawaii Alumni Club president April Coloretti ’89 posed with committee volunteers. The USC Alumni Association also hosted its special traveling celebration of USC’s 125th anniversary, USC on the Road, in Honolulu on Thursday night, featuring a talk on the future of film by USC School of Cinema-Television dean Elizabeth M. Daley.