The Chronicle of Higher Education Battles Rough Seas

by Chris Cumo

An essay in the The Chronicle of Higher Education can draw responses from readers throughout the U.S., Canada, France and Italy. Forget the nation-state and guys like Locke and Hobbes who wrote learned treatises about it. The Chronicle has no use for anything as parochial and antiquated as a country, but instead is an empire with a global reach. Any periodical this influential doesn’t just cover news: it is news. So it was with the departure of Managing Editor Doug Lederman and Editor Scott Jaschik at the end of May 2003. The move sparked recriminations and rumors, and numerous media pundits made mention of the shake-up. The editorial shake-up was preceded by a loss of subscribers and falling ad revenues.

Editor-in-chief Phil Semas joined The Chronicle as a reporter at the height of student unrest during the 60s. He retains a journalist’s fidelity to facts, and does not shrink from admitting that The Chronicle has lost subscribers and revenue over the past four years. Between 1998 and 2003, the number of subscribers dropped from 95,000 to 87,246, according to information from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Of these subscribers, in 2001 roughly 41,940 were college and university faculty. In 2002, the number of faculty subscribers slid 25 percent to 31,045. In 2003, the number of faculty readers rose to 34,898, according to The Chronicle’s media kits and editor-in-chief Phil Semas.

These numbers are not as clearly representative of the newspaper’s subscriber base as one might imagine. For instance, the Audit Bureau of Circulations permits periodicals to count as subscribers readers who are as many as 12 issues delinquent in their renewal. Before 2002, The Chronicle reported as subscribers those who were as many as eight issues delinquent, but in 2002 reduced the number of issues to five. The move cost The Chronicle 2,000 subscribers in Audit Bureau reports of 2002 and 2003, says Semas. Conversely, the Audit Bureau doesn’t permit periodicals to include on-line subscribers in their reports. This rule cost The Chronicle 4,000 subscribers in its circulation audit, according to Semas.

Whatever the exact drop in paid subscribers, Charles N. Davis a professor of journalism at the University of Missouri, Columbia terms it “a slow leak.”

Phil Semas counters that a decline in subscribers isn’t the measure of readers, and estimates a pass-along rate of three readers per copy, bringing the total readership in 2003 to 318,500. The pass-along rate is the number of times a received document (article, newsletter, brochure, report, etc.) is shared with other individuals. The number of paid subscribers, along with the pass-along rate attracts advertisers. Even so, the publication’s advertising and total revenues have been mercurial. Between 1998 and 2002 ad revenues rose from $31.6 million to $36.8 million, according to Advertising Age magazine. However, during 2002, total gross revenues declined 13.9 percent from $53.1 million to $43.9 million. At the moment, Chronicle officials see the drop as a fluctuation rather than a trend.

To put the subscriber and revenue figures in perspective, in 2002 Advertising Age reported that Scientific American grossed $42.7 million in revenue and reported 688,000 paid subscribers, The Atlantic Monthly grossed $37.5 million and reported 580,000 readers and National Geographic Traveler grossed $31.8 million in revenue and reported 721,000 readers. At the top of the revenue heap in 2002, People magazine grossed $1.19 billion dollars on a paid circulation of 3.6 million.

Patrick Clinton, a former editor of University Business urges caution. He explains that a drop in subscribers lowers printing and mailing costs, and should leave The Chronicle with a base of loyal readers unlikely to jump ship. From a stable base, publications can typically recoup loses by increasing subscription prices.

In 2002, The cost of a one-year subscription to The Chronicle rose from $75 to $82.50. This may have exacerbated the newspaper’s problems. The drop of some 4,500 readers between 2001 and 2002 was the largest in The Chronicle’s history.

Mention the subscription price of the newspaper to contingent faculty at your own risk.

“For ordinary faculty, let along part-timers and adjuncts, [The Chronicle] is way too expensive to be worth it,” complains Mindy Machanic, associate faculty at Walden University.

Other part-time faculty echo her dissatisfaction. Editor-in-Chief Phil Semas concedes that he can’t price The Chronicle low enough for contingent faculty. Even full-time faculty balk at the cost. University of Missouri journalism professor Charles Davis says he can’t afford to subscribe. Douglas J. Swanson, assistant professor of Communications Studies at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse funds his research out of pocket, and is not about to hike expenses by subscribing to The Chronicle.

But the problem goes deeper than price. Swanson senses danger in the growth of contingent faculty whose shallow commitment to higher education makes them unlikely to subscribe. Phil Semas echoes this point: among faculty those most likely to subscribe are department chairs and faculty who feel a deep loyalty to their institution or to higher education in general. University of Missouri journalism professor Charles Davis believes that the disappearance of these dinosaurs shrinks the pool of potential subscribers, which in turn, intensifies the Darwinian competition for readers. The result has been fewer Chronicle subscribers, the demise of LinguaFranca and, for a time, University Business.

Yet Editor-in-Chief Phil Semas hasn’t lost hope. He knows part-time faculty check the job ads and read the Career Network columns and essays on-line. The lure of these services may hook some adjuncts. Those who find tenure-track jobs may expand their commitment to The Chronicle by subscribing. This is speculative of course, and take into account the disconnect between the lives of part-time faculty, and The Chronicle’s content.

“I do not think that The Chronicle is the place where part-time and adjunct faculty turn for information,” says Susan Einbinder, assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Southern California. “It is perceived as a highbrow publication.”

Harriette Walker, an adjunct who in August 2002 lost her job at the State University of New York because of budget cuts, believes The Chronicle caters to administrators rather than to part-time faculty, a point Phil Semas contests. Since its inception The Chronicle has been the watchdog of academe, breaking news about the misrule and malfeasance of university presidents and other senior administrators.

Implicit in Susan Einbinder’s critique is the assumption that The Chronicle isn’t doing enough to attract adjuncts. An on-line search of the publication’s article database using the search phrase “part-time faculty” yields links to 43 articles published over the last three years. Of course, this doesn’t signify editorial apathy toward contingent faculty by any means. The Chronicle lists on-line ads for part-time and adjunct faculty separate from ads for full-time faculty. Monthly, on its Web page, readers will find “The Adjunct Track.”

Jeffrey Kattay, former publisher and editor of LinguaFranca and University Business, questions whether The Chronicle, at more than 200 pages per issue, can expand coverage to add more content for part-time faculty. The alternative would be to reconfigure the publication to include more information for part-time faculty in each issue without increasing the number of pages and as a result printing costs. Kattay doubts the wisdom of this course.

“The Chronicle doesn’t lose anything by leaving adjuncts for another publication,” says Kattay.

As is true of the shrinking pool of potential subscribers, other problems are beyond The Chronicle’s control.

“There’s no doubt that the collapse of the dot-com bubble hurt lots of publications,” says former University Business editor Patrick Clinton.

James Sterling, Chair of Community Newspaper Management at the University of Missouri, cites a decline in revenues across the industry not just at The Chronicle. Editor and Publisher and Publisher’s Auxiliary, the periodicals Sterling tracks, have gone from weekly to monthly publications and slashed the number of pages to cut printing and mailing costs in the face of falling revenues.

Equally important, state legislatures have slashed college and university budgets. Today’s public university has the look of a bleak landscape across which blows an occasional tumbleweed. Universities that aren’t hiring obviously aren’t buying classifieds, says Phil Semas.

Yet the number of classifieds elsewhere appears robust. John Ikenberry of HigherEdJobs.com reports an increase in ads from 23,752 between January and November 2002 to 26,473 between these months in 2003. Robert B. Townsend writes in the December 2002 issue of Perspectives, the newsletter of the American Historical Association, of a “slight gain” in job ads for full-time faculty. The American Institute of Physics reports an increase in job ads from 335 in 2000 to 509 in 2001, the most recent years on record. Geoff Davis, founder of PhDs.org, suspects that job ads have migrated from The Chronicle to other sources, particularly those on-line, a speculation Ikenberry’s figures seem to confirm. If true, the return of advertising prosperity may not bring a significant increase in the number of classifieds at The Chronicle.

Adversity seems to have steeled Phil Semas, who retains the conviction that no other higher-education periodical can match The Chronicle’s breadth and depth of coverage. The Chronicle has expanded its comprehensiveness by offering subscribers a daily e-mail bulletin, the only one in the industry with original content, according to Semas. The Chronicle digs deeper in more places and at more universities, colleges and community colleges for news, says former University Business Editor Patrick Clinton. Loren Ghiglione, Dean at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism thinks The Chronicle has plenty of snap, crackle and pop.

“The Chronicle is a must-read publication,” she says, “an interesting mix of gossip and news about people and longer think and opinion pieces.”

Former Managing Editor Doug Lederman believes The Chronicle is at its best as a hybrid between a newspaper and magazine with breaking news on-line and analytical pieces and features in print. In nature hybrids tend toward strength, stamina and longevity.

“The Chronicle is a money machine,” says former LinguaFranca and University Business Publisher Jeffrey Kattay, “a success story beyond comparison.”

Kattay’s perspective makes sense if one envisions The Chronicle as a global empire. Indeed, The Chronicle recently advertised on journalismjobs.com for two correspondents in Europe, implying an intent to enlarge its empire across the Atlantic. But even empires can stumble. One can’t know whether The Chronicle’s drop in subscribers and revenues is a harbinger of more difficult times to come. Subscribers and advertisers, if not classifieds, may return with prosperity, hopes Phil Semas. Be that as it may, there is still the Iron Law of Prices. Any increase in the number of contingent faculty will only swell the ranks of people who can’t afford The Chronicle.

Unfortunately, this isn’t good news for the Goliath that covers the news.