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From AJR,   January/February 2003

Chronicling Higher Ed   

By Carl Sessions Stepp

Carl Sessions Stepp (cstepp@umd.edu) began writing for his hometown paper, the Marlboro Herald-Advocate in Bennettsville, South Carolina, in 1963, after his freshman year in high school. He studied journalism at the University of South Carolina, where he edited The Gamecock.

After college, he worked for the St. Petersburg Times and the Charlotte Observer before becoming the first national editor at USA Today in 1982. In 1983, he joined the University of Maryland journalism faculty full time.

In the ensuing 30 years, he also has served as senior editor and book reviewer for AJR, writing dozens of pieces. He has been a visiting writing and editing coach for news organizations in more than 30 states.

     


The standard-setting publication about higher education operates out of plush, faculty-club-like offices in Washington, D.C., and thrives with a near-fail-safe formula:

Fill each weekly issue with breaking news, thoughtful essays, a little whimsy and gobs of news-you-can-use, from job listings to grant postings.

With some 95,000 subscribers and a claim of nearly half a million readers, not to mention a newsy Web site, the Chronicle of Higher Education has become an education institution in itself.

Mainstream higher-education reporters lean on it, and the Chronicle fortifies this relationship by providing them with friendly advice and free subscriptions.

Chronicle alum Kit Lively, who worked there for nine years and now is the Charlotte Observer's education editor, calls the Chronicle a major influence on education coverage, especially in alerting reporters to new developments and national trends. "I check it more than the wires," Lively says.

NPR education correspondent Claudio Sanchez credits the Chronicle with leading all media toward more careful examination of campuses, resulting in "higher education becoming more reflective about what it's doing and what it's doing wrong, how it's serving students and how it's serving society."

Scott Jaschik, editor since 1999, directs the Chronicle's editorial staff of about 60, assigned to such areas as research, faculty, government and politics, information technology, students and athletics.

Jaschik defines the Chronicle's goal as helping its readers in the higher-education community "understand the issues and do their jobs better."

The secret behind its reporting: "to ask a lot of questions and to go to the campuses."

The mission for its writers: balancing "timeliness versus writerliness," that is, breaking news versus analytical pieces.

In a typical week, the Chronicle comes as three tabloid sections: a front section for news, a magazine-style "Chronicle Review" featuring opinion and essays, and a fat "Career Network" section jammed with ads for faculty and administrative jobs.

One recent issue featured a cover story on how tighter visa rules are keeping foreign students out of the country. Then there was coverage of what the Republican-controlled Congress bodes for higher education; a controversy in the world of theoretical physics; how a student rock band is trying to move from the college circuit to the big time; and essays on subjects ranging from poor proofreading to "a moral code for a finite world." And there was the usual funkiness: a look at a course on cynicism from Diogenes to Bart Simpson.

The Chronicle also provides a Web update each day, free to subscribers, who are given passwords. The fact that "we're now a daily and not just a weekly" has required a big adjustment, Jaschik adds.

As with many publications, ads have fallen off over the past year, according to Jaschik, but in general the paper has been growing in newshole. One recent issue, for example, totaled 184 pages and sold for $3.75. A comparable issue for 1990 contained 120 pages and cost $2.75. The Chronicle is privately owned by its founder, Corbin Gwaltney, who remains its board chairman.

Over the past decade, the Chronicle has become more magazinish. The 1990 edition, for instance, presented five stories plus a news digest on the front page. Today's front pages resemble magazine covers, dominated by one large color photo keyed to a big story inside.

While most journalists and educators grade it positively, some find the Chronicle, like other media, overfocused on the elite schools rather than state, community or religious campuses. As he looks toward the future, Jaschik acknowledges the point.

"The trick for us now," he says, "is how to cover well the new audiences--community colleges, for-profit education--without abandoning in any way the elite audiences that have been with us all along."

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