Farewell!

Folks — I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed reading this newsletter, because I’ve certainly had a blast writing it.

Our epic, four-year run comes to a close today, and this is the last email we’ll ever send. Since starting the newsletter in 2022, it has grown from a little-known email list to the leading news source on campus read by nearly 12,000 subscribers.

I’m proud of our reporting that provided crucial information about layoffs, campus crime, and lawsuits. But more importantly, we did a lot of dumb stuff. Like when we…

• Orchestrated a school-wide “Moron of the Year” vote and mailed the trophy to Carol Folt.

• Discovered a cybersecurity flaw that let you spoof emails from any USC address — then sent ourselves a thank-you note for the trophy from Folt.

• Briefly feuded with a USG candidate who wanted to turn USC’s water fountains into beer fountains, before breaking the news that he was disqualified from the election for dropping too many F-bombs.

• Broke the news that two pranksters were behind an email to the student body that claimed Rick Caruso would be USC’s next president. KTLA fell for the prank, then had to cite us in an on-air correction.

• Built a database of USC Rate My Professors reviews, to the outrage of many faculty.

• Calculated the definitive USC frat rankings using AI tools. The California Post dubbed me the “campus AI nerd” for this.

• Bought beongsookim.com and attempted to ransom the domain for exemption from WRIT 340.

• Got Cannabis House to sponsor our annual tuition-guessing competition with a $500 gift card, causing much pearl-clutching among readers.

Every newsletter we’ve ever published is archived on a revamped morningtrojan.com — misplaced snark, failed jokes, and all. I hope the archive can continue to serve as an important record of the last four years at USC. The site includes a page of very kind testimonials by readers. You can submit a comment at this link if you’d like to add to it.

We owe many thanks to Anna Hsu, my longtime proofreader who also graduates in a few weeks. After commencement, she’ll move to the Bay Area to work for Apple as a software engineer.

I’m staying in Los Angeles, where I’m reporting investigations for L.A. Material, a new news outlet founded by a loaded roster of L.A. Times veterans. On Monday, you’ll start receiving L.A. Material’s excellent newsletter, but if you don’t want to receive free reporting from some of the city’s most brilliant journalists, you can unsubscribe at the bottom of this email.

I’d love to keep in touch. I’m on LinkedIn and Twitter, and my best email address is tomo.chien@lamaterial.com. If you’re reading this in the far future, you can find my most up-to-date contact information on my personal website.

Thanks for sticking with us all these years. Farewell, and take care!

— Tomo