Academe and the Decline of News Media

We're watching the traditional business of "news" crash and burn. What effect will the decline of news media have on higher education? This series of thoughtful essays in The Chronicle Review could provide you some deep thinking over the American Thanksgiving holiday coming up: After noting that he would prefer newspapers without a government to government without newspapers, Thomas Jefferson added, 'But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them' . . . I talk to my students about the news every chance I get. They're so smart; they're so curious. I'm fascinated by how they get their news. What shocks me is that so many of them so rarely follow a story to its bottom. They can talk about anything, brilliantly, for five minutes."

Futurity: News From Leading Research Universities

This new information source publishes what is essentially an online magazine featuring research news from a long list of major North American research institutions. It sorts into four categories: Earth & Environment; Health & Medicine; Science & Design; and Society & Culture. Readers can comment on articles. RSS feed and a daily email newsletter are available. Well worth a look. It says this about itself:

Futurity began in March 2009 as the answer to a challenging question: How will the public learn about important breakthroughs at leading research universities as traditional news outlets continue to shrink?

The answer is simple.

Learn about them directly through an online news magazine that reports on discoveries in science, health, technology, business, society, and the arts. Expand the Web site’s reach through social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.

Futurity features the latest and most important discoveries from North America’s leading research universities—discoveries that will change the way we live, the way we work, the way we think.

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."

USA Today College Academics

USA Today has been working hard with its educational resources and we were treated, recently, to a guided tour around its website. If you, like us, have lost your way around the USA Today website when you try to find a place where its higher education stuff comes together, look no further than here!

In addition to the collection of Web-based resources, there is a weekly (Wednesday) email newsletter which you can sign up for. If you're directly involved in learning, you should know about its Collegiate Readership Program and about its easy route to copyright permission for USA Today content for educational purposes. Its Student Voices section is relatively new and promising.