Higher Ed Journalism: New Realities

This week's must-read is subtitled "How media coverage has evolved--and how campus administrators should respond" and written by Council of Independent Colleges President Richard Ekman. It very thoroughly covers the last decade of changes in how pertinent news - within and about higher education - gets generated and reported: "Growing public skepticism about higher education, reported widely in the media, has changed the journalistic styles of The Chronicle, Inside Higher Ed, University Business, USA Today, and other mainstream media. When legislators or federal officials know they can score easy points with constituents by issuing broadsides on matters of higher education policy, these politicians do half of the journalists' work for them. The education press has been criticized for not being very interested in publicizing serious and significant achievements of individual institutions, consortia, or whole sectors of higher education unless these achievements reverberate in larger policy circles."