MBAlmer: Fake News for Real MBAs

It began, appropriately enough, with the surreptitious passing of notes in the back of class. Feeling uninspired one day, Gavin Shearer (MBA 2005) and Chris Meyer (MBA 2005) traded invented headlines - some satiric, some sophomoric - affectionately lampooning friends and favorite profs. The in-jokes got out, and soon someone suggested culling them into a fake online newspaper, a local version of The Onion.

Shearer, a self-described "life-long smartass" with a wealth of experience in web development and a history of writing comic press releases, decided to give it a shot. He built a simple web page and titled the masthead with a fusion of the degree and the old building that houses it.

Then one Thursday last fall Shearer took a deep breath and loosed the MBAlmer onto the Bull list, an online meeting place for MBA students and subscribing alumni. He was mortally anxious about its reception by students and administrators. "We had no idea whether people would actually like it," Shearer recalls. "And people really liked it. They liked it far more than any of us had any right to hope they would like it. Everyone asked when we were going to do the next one. There was no next one. This was it: Volume 1, Number 1."

Except that there was a next one. And a next one. Shearer and a growing cohort of comic-minded MBAs jotted down quips when they occurred, and crammed each quarterly edition of the MBAlmer with inside jokes and fictional tabloid headlines that read like Vaudevillian one-liners: "Yardstick-wielding MBA arrested at Hooters, proclaims 'You get what you measure!' " Or "Case Competition Triumph Attributed to PowerPoint Skills."

Others gags are more developed, such as the story about the MBAA president's proposed sweeping extension to the standing MBA Core Values of "excellence, integrity, involvement, innovation, collaboration and professionalism" to include "self-esteem, proof-read before sending, leave a little something in the keg, and don't microwave fish in the lounge." Or the special "Hail to the Dean!" section that marked the appointment of Dean James Jiambalvo with an exclusive Q & A on whether the Business School should outsource students and an item about a spike in Jiambalvo action figures ("The Dean Jiambalvo upgrade comes with a cape," Shearer says.)

Some jokes take a subtler path to the laugh. During Dave Burgstahler's brief stint as acting dean, following the departure of dean Yash Gupta for USC and then acting dean Vance Roley to the University of Hawaii, the MBAlmer reported: "Career Center Frustrated By Inability to Place Burgstahler."

Even the institution of management education itself has been the target of MBAlmer mischief. An article in last spring's issue investigated a growing crisis among corporate strategists who have found themselves incapacitated by years without a new Lucky Charms shape with which to frame their new theories and concepts. When asked to comment on the academic purloining of its inventive cereal shapes, General Mills spokesman Lucky the Leprechaun told the MBAlmer, giggling, "They're always after 'me Lucky Charms."

It does beg the question: is this the best use of an MBA student's time? "The human brain is not designed to do one thing and one thing only," Shearer says. "I can't tell you the number of times I was working on projects that require deep thinking and just hit a wall. And you can go for a run. Or you can write comedy. One hour of that helped me get my other work done more effectively."

"In the absurdity of the business school workload, you need a release sometime," adds Andy Boyer, a wry second-year MBA who has inherited the MBAlmer editorship from Shearer. Shearer and Boyer are not the only ones in need of comedic release. Multiple writers are now submitting story ideas, creating the necessity of editorial meetings. MBAs anticipate each new issue, and laugh over its in-jokes and droll headlines over a beer in the lounge. It's a satire growing in stature. And it's threatening to become, dare we say, an integral part of the UW MBA experience.

"This Business School draws very creative people from a lot of different backgrounds, many of which share a sophisticated Northwestern appreciation of humor," says Shearer, now in the employ of Microsoft. "If the MBAlmer still fills a need in the program's psyche, nothing would make me happier than to see it still clicking in 2015."

"It demonstrates that at this School, at least, just because you're in business doesn't mean that you can't have a sense of humor." Boyer adds.

Even about yourself. A headline in Boyer's first issue at the helm paid homage to his predecessors at the expense of his own incoming editorial regime: "Outgoing class thinks new MBAlmer 'Kind of Stinks.'"

Return to September 2005 MBA Alumni News