New Web Site for Academics Roils Education Journalism

Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman had covered higher education for years but on May 30, 2003, they found out that - in journalism - there's no such thing as tenure.
On that day, both Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman, the editor and managing editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, announced they were leaving the paper, where they had both worked for nearly 20 years. They did not explain why.


But now they are back on the beat, competing through a start-up with their former employer. Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman, along with Kathlene Collins, who worked at The Chronicle for 20 years, introduced last month an online publication, insidehighered.com. In doing so, Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman, who are both editors, and Ms. Collins, who is the publisher, are trying to become the first significant competition in higher education publishing since the intellectual-if-gossipy Lingua Franca folded in 2001.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has long been the giant in the field. Founded in 1966 by Corbin Gwaltney, a former editor at Johns Hopkins University who still owns the publication, it quickly established itself as a must-read for college administrators and faculty. The Chronicle now has a print circulation of just over 85,000 and its Web site gets more than 10 million page views per month.

Along the way, The Chronicle also earned a reputation for being stodgy and resistant to change. Jeffrey Kittay, the founder of Lingua Franca, now an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, says that The Chronicle regards itself as the paper of record in higher education, and that makes it an easy target.
"They fulfill a need," he said. "They aren't lazy; they've taken on a lot of responsibility. But they see themselves with certain constraints, that's why you get this love-hate relationship."

When Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman saw their relationship with The Chronicle end in 2003, there was speculation among the remaining staff that they had been forced out over differences with Mr. Gwaltney. Both Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman are circumspect when asked about their departure from The Chronicle.

"We had come to the conclusion that we and The Chronicle's owner had different visions about what the publication and company should be," said Mr. Lederman. Mr. Gwaltney was traveling and could not be reached for comment. Phil Semas, the editor in chief of The Chronicle, would only say, "We reached a mutual agreement they should leave."
Some of that different vision will be on display on insidehighered.com. The site features news and opinion pieces, plus links to many of the blogs about academia that thrive on the Web. "The impact of the blogs on higher education is huge," said Ms. Collins.

And, in contrast to The Chronicle, which is a print publication that publishes its content online, insidehighered.com is an online-only publication. The three founders all cite the desire for their site to be as easily accessible and democratic as possible. Insidehighered.com is free, with no registration required; access to most of The Chronicle's articles requires a password that can only be obtained with a print subscription, which costs $82.50 a year.

"A big part of our model is to try and reach everyone in higher ed - it means that everyone can be part of the conversation," said Mr. Jaschik. "We want grad students, young professors, people at institutions without a lot of money, in addition to people at wealthier institutions and senior administrators."

Scott McLemee, who worked at Lingua Franca and then at The Chronicle and has been hired to write a column for insidehighered.com, said he thought there was a big market in higher education that was not being served by The Chronicle.
"The Chronicle was traditionally oriented towards the administration - there was a brief period where it tried to reach a larger constituency, and then it retrenched," said Mr. McLemee. "They have no particular interest in reaching anyone else." It is still too early to know how much of the market insidehighered.com can capture. According to an estimate in the September 2004 Advertising Age, The Chronicle grossed $33 million in advertising revenues and $7 million in circulation revenues in 2003, although its total number of advertising pages for the year, 3,169, was down 14 percent from 2002.
Some of that ad revenue comes from recruitment advertising, and it is there that insidehighered.com and other well-established recruitment sites such as higheredjobs.com could pose a challenge to The Chronicle.

Within a couple of weeks, insidehighered.com plans to add a job search database, including some innovative features, like a searchable database of résumés and recommendations for applicants, that Ms. Collins says will facilitate the labyrinthine academic hiring process. "We are part of the entire recruiting process, not just that first step of posting the job," said Ms. Collins.
Mr. Semas of The Chronicle said that there was much on The Chronicle's site that was free, including the job search database and some of the chat forums. He also said that he was not alarmed by the new competition.

"We think that we already do a good job of covering higher education both in print and online, and provide a very popular job service for people in higher education, and we've been doing it since 1966."

From New York Times.By LIA MILLER