Will the Columbia-Stanford Announcement Start a Bi-coastal Trend?

Today’s announcement that editor and author Helen Gurley Brown is spending $30 million to establish a Media Innovation Institute linking Stanford Engineering with Columbia Journalism is interesting in several ways
   

1. Stanford and Columbia each lost out to Cornell, which teamed with an Israeli school, in the recent contest to build a high caliber engineering campus in New York City.  Should Stanford and Columbia have teamed in an effort to outbid Cornell? 
2. In the announcement, Helen Gurley Brown says, “It’s time for two great American institutions on the East and West Coasts to build a bridge.” How much bi-coastal cooperation now exists among major universities?  Will that be a future trend?
3. Both Helen and David were publishing types, with David being a Columbia J-School grad.  What and/or who stimulated the Brown’s interest in journalism about engineering?  Or is this more about the engineering of journalism?  

For more about the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, see the joint Columbia-Stanford announcement.

-- Jeff Bogart