Higher Ed. Publishing and Rough Seas

by P.D. Lesko

In this issue of the magazine, we take a look at The Chronicle of Higher Education. The newspaper, which has been covering higher education since the 60s, has undergone some changes recently. What prompted the inquiry is the fact that I really love statistics and numbers. Every year, I receive media kits from other magazines, including The Chronicle, stuffed full of information about how the particular publication will help me marketing my product to college faculty.

Over the course of several years, I noticed that the number of faculty readers who subscribe to The Chronicle fell off. I have never thought of the newspaper as a competitor, but rather a colleague in the business of higher education journalism. I was concerned. The Adjunct Advocate and The Chronicle might write about the same happening, but our respective slants would be quite different. Quite simply, the Adjunct Advocate isn’t a magazine which covers news stories relating to administrators and full-time faculty-unless those news stories have a link to part-time faculty. However, I believe it is crucial that both sides of the story be reported. Where would higher education reporting be with The Chronicle of Higher Education?

I can’t begin to tell you how sad I was when LinguaFranca ceased publication after over a decade in the business. I had the pleasure of meeting publisher Jeffrey Kittay, and working with his staff members on a regular basis thanks to an advertising exchange between our two magazines. I thought LF one of the most solidly written magazines I’d ever read, period. I liked its editorial mission and its honesty. I feel the same way about The Chronicle of Higher Education.

It is an honest and extremely well-written publication. The reporting is fair and balanced (though focused primarily on the issues of administrators and full-time faculty), in my opinion. I have been delighted to see the publication devote more energy to the coverage of part-time faculty news both in print and on-line. To me, it’s not as important which of our publications prints the story, but that ultimately the news is reported. Part-time faculty deserve to be recognized professionally, and the issues that impact their careers deserve to be reported on regularly.

Given all this, I asked free-lance writer Christopher Cumo to investigate just what was going on. Why is The Chronicle losing readers and revenue? Do the editors plan to attract more part-time faculty readers through continued expansion of editorial content pertinent to part-timers? The result is a feature which, I believe, looks candidly at higher education’s journalistic giant. As I suspected, the answers to these questions will interest part-time faculty.