Got a Question About The Chronicle? Ask the Editor

Thursday, January 10, at 12 noon, U.S. Eastern time

Jeffrey J. Selingo was named editor of The Chronicle in August 2007. Based in Washington, D.C., he directs a staff of more than 70 editors and reporters, online and in print. Jeff was previously assistant managing editor and a senior editor, overseeing The Chronicle's coverage of higher-education policy, campus leadership, and fund raising, as well as its surveys of presidents and trustees. He came to The Chronicle as a reporter in 1997, following reporting stints at the Wilmington (N.C.) Star-News, The Arizona Republic, and The Ithaca Journal.

A transcript of the chat follows.

Goldie Blumenstyk (Moderator):
    Hello and welcome back to the Brown Bag. We hope everyone had a restful holiday break. I'm Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer here at The Chronicle, and I'll be the moderator today for this chat with our new editor, Jeff Selingo.

With all the recent changes at The Chronicle (including those introduced last week in The Chronicle Review) we expect you have some questions, and Jeff is standing by to field those, or any others you might have.

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    I'm happy that we're able to do this and appreciate the interest in The Chronicle. It seems we have lots of questions, so let's get started.

Question from Sylvia, small engineering university:
    What types of changes in editorial content can readers expect to see with your leadership? Will smaller schools have the opportunity to have their achievements, studies and breakthroughs featured on the pages?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    I hope you're already seeing some of the changes on the Web and in our pages.

In November, we reorganized our reporting and editing staff to reflect the reality that higher education these days is cross-disciplinary in both academics and administration. So, for example, we created a beat that will focus on the role of colleges in economic development locally and globally. We expanded our coverage of academic work, adding a reporter who will focus on the job life cycle from grad student to postdoc to hiring to tenure.

My hope is that this restructuring will lead to more sophisticated coverage since reporters will be able to tie in various parts of the university in their reporting. We also know that readers are busy, so you will also see more news analysis in our pages and on the Web (it will be identified as such) that will help in getting to the bottom line in what something means to you or your institution. We also reorganized the paper (you can read more about those changes here: http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i16/16a00401.htm). Last week, we unveiled a new Chronicle Review, which has expanded its coverage of books, the arts, and intellectual debate. And later this year, our Web site will undergo a major revamp that will bring it a new look and many new features.

As for your question on smaller schools, I frequently hear complaints from readers about the lack of coverage for some segment of higher education, be it small schools, public colleges, institutions in the Midwest, community colleges, etc. There are more than 4,000 colleges in the U.S. To provide coverage on all of them is practically impossible. But we are the No. 1 source for higher-education news, a position that we worked hard to achieve over the past 40 years. To retain that position, we work hard every day to be sure our readers find something useful in The Chronicle for them. We want to be essential reading. So if you think you have something compelling that is not being covered in The Chronicle, let me know. You can e-mail me at jeff.selingo@chronicle.com. I can't promise you coverage, but I will at least hear every idea or suggest which editors you can talk with here.

Question from Goldie Blumenstyk:
    Jeff, I understand that you've received several e-mail messages (outside of this chat) and in fact, complaints -- from readers who don't like some of the changes we've made as part of the redesign of the newspaper. While some have said they like the new version of the index, This Week, a few others say they miss the traditional table of contents. Can you explain why we made that change?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    Increasingly as I met our readers in recent years the one thing I would consistently hear is that they love The Chronicle but they're just too busy to read all of it. They wanted us to give them the essential news in ways that were easy and quick to digest.

So we redesigned the front page to include multiple stories, more like a traditional daily newspaper, to give readers a sense of what we thought was the most important news of the week. Inside, we redesigned the guide to provide you with a quick summary of the news of higher education, some of which you will be able to find more about elsewhere in the issue.

For busy readers, the change is meant to highlight the important news that is essential for them to know about immediately in case they can't get to the rest of the issue quickly.

The fact of the matter was that in recent years we never listed every single story that appeared in the paper in the guide. So in some ways, it was incomplete.

Question from Goldie Blumenstyk:
    You've also been hearing complaints from readers who say we now have too many "jumps" -- stories continuing from the front page to a page inside, as well as too many stories that start inside and still continue to another page. Some readers says they're finding this need to turn back and forth in our pages, well, annoying.

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    In order to get multiple stories on the front page, jumps are inevitable. Our hope is that the story is worth reading so that you will continue to the jump. On the inside, there have been some cases where we have jumped over stories and we're trying to minimize that. I agree such inside jumps are annoying.

Question from Paul Heaton, Northwestern Michigan College:
    Dear Mr. Selingo, The last time I read The Chronicle regularly it did not seem to cover community colleges to the same extent that it covers four-year colleges and universities. Is that still true and, if so, are there any plans to change that? I believe that community colleges serve about half of all the students currently in higher education, so thanks for considering this obviously self-centered question from one of your biggest fans.

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    Paul, good to hear from you. I'd say The Chronicle has been inconsistent in its coverage of community colleges over the years. We used to have one dedicated reporter cover community colleges, but in many ways that didn't make sense. There are 1,000 two-year institutions in the U.S. enrolling more than six-million students. We didn't have one reporter covering just private four-year colleges or one reporter covering just public four-year colleges. While every reporter was essentially responsible for making sure community colleges were also covered as part of their beats, it rarely happened because we had that dedicated reporter.

So when we reorganized the staff, as I mentioned above, we decided that every reporter needs to think about two-year colleges as part of their beats. As a result, I think you will see more and better coverage of community colleges in the coming months. If you don't, let me know.

Question from L. Wood of George Mason:
    When will chronicle.com become a free web site much like all the other news sites on the web?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    On many campuses, including George Mason U., we are free. George Mason, along with more than 700 other four- and two-year institutions, has a Chronicle site license, which means that anyone on their campus network can access any part of the Chronicle Web site without a password. The number of colleges with site licenses is growing every month.

Yes, many other news sites are free on the Internet, although many of them are mainstream media, like daily newspapers, that don't provide detailed information and analysis about a specific industry to a segment of the population, like we do.

I don't know if we'll ever go free, but personally I think one of the mistakes that newspapers made a decade ago was to give away their content on the Web. Until then, many of us paid 25 cents or more a day to read a daily newspaper. Gathering information costs money -- there is a cost to sending reporters to Iraq or on the presidential campaign trail. You don't see many bloggers actually in either place. Now the public expects this information for free and we see around the country daily newspapers making major cutbacks in their coverage as a result of falling circulation and declining advertising. In the end, that's a threat to a democracy and the idea of a well-informed public.

Question from Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College:
    I know news organizations are facing some tough decisions in the digital world -- with readers wanting their news faster and free. Will The Chronicle do as the NY Times recently did -- take down the subscriber wall? I have frequently wanted to share a Chronicle piece with someone outside academia (or link to it in a blog) and have to provide a summary and reference, which in most cases a non-academic will not follow. I recognize this change might harm subscription revenue, but it certainly could allow Chronicle content to reach a wider audience.

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    Barbara, as I mentioned above, on many campuses there is no subscriber wall. For everyone else, you can share an article with non-subscribers through our "e-mail this article" feature. It creates a free link to non-subscribers that you can also use in your blog.

Question from Elizabeth, Upstate NY:
    What is the threshold for the Chronicle to report on gifts to colleges and universities? Is it the monetary amount or the nature of the donation? Are there hard rules, or is the Chronicle flexible? Thank you.

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    The threshold for inclusion on our gifts list (http://chronicle.com/stats/big_gifts.htm) is $50-million. Otherwise, we do not have a threshold. We typically write stories on big gifts, but like to know about all gifts, especially those that have an interesting story attached. In higher-ed, most fund-raising professionals want to know how a college snagged a donation, so we find those types of stories are interesting to readers.

Question from Katie Kilfoyle, SunGard Higher Education:
    What is the Chron's approach to covering technology? e.g., how do you identify/decide what's newsworthy? where do you look for sources?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    We're obviously interested in technology that affects higher ed. So we don't, for example, cover Apple's product announcement of a new iPod. But if professors are using this iPod to teach by podcasting lectures, or do research, then we will cover it. If a new networking initiative will affect Internet access for colleges, or affect their business practices, we'll cover that. If technology is driving changes in social behavior on campus, we'll cover that. We like to get tips on news from wherever we can: institutions, conferences, journals, individuals, and companies.

Question from Stephen Johnson, U of South Dakota:
    What happened to "In Magazines" section (or whatever it's called) of your daily messages? It was my favorite segment and now it appears gone. Thank you.

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    We ended the Magazine & Journal Reader in mid-December for several reasons. Among them were the dwindling popularity of the feature (measured in page views) and the sense that our many blogs had to some extent superseded the Magazine & Journal Reader. (Like the Magazine & Journal Reader, the blogs typically summarize a magazine or newspaper article.)

The one type of Magazine & Journal Reader item that remained popular was any article about research on higher education itself. We will continue to write about those articles, but cover them as regular news stories.

Question from Katie Kilfoyle, SunGard Higher Education:
    Hello, could you give a rundown of what beats the various reporters are covering? I'm interested in beats relating to technology. Thank you

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    Go to this page to see a full listing of beats: http://chronicle.com/contact/staff.htm Click on Science & Technology for tech beats. Josh Fischman is the senior editor of our tech coverage. He came to us last year from U.S. News & World Report. He's always looking for suggestions and ideas. Readers can e-mail him or me.

Question from :
    How do you go about determining the changes in your edit coverage -- do you have a reader panel or other focus groups?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    We conduct regular surveys of subscribers, from which we glean a lot of information. We also recently conducted a survey of online readers. We don't have a focus group or a standing reader panel, at least not yet. We do, however, meet regularly with readers who attend higher-ed conferences. For example, we played host to a dinner of scholars at the recent MLA meeting in Chicago. I'm meeting with a group of college presidents at the ACE meeting next month in San Diego. In those settings, we get many story ideas and feedback about The Chronicle.

Question from Richard Hall, Lovett School, Atlanta, GA:
    I am a high school English and American Studies teacher and a former administrator of many years; I enjoy reading all parts of The Chronicle. I would like to see more dissolving of the walls which separate secondary from college (and graduate) educationâ to the benefit of both parties. I'm thinking of matters of pedagogy, assessment, interdisciplinary curriculum, independent research, and "experiential learning," to name a few. Occasionally The Chronicle has directly attended to those issues; more often, we from the secondary world have to make the applications ourselves. Is there a chance that The Chronicle might be more active in this field? Thanks for your time

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    Among the new beats we created as part of the reorganization of the newsroom is one that focuses on the pipeline to college, including demographics and the connections between colleges and the public schools.

We agree that what happens in elementary and secondary schools is incredibly important to those in higher education. The reporter on that new beat is a senior writer here, Peter Schmidt. He has been with us for more than a decade and came here from Education Week, which of course, is the newspaper for K-12. Peter is also a leading expert on affirmative action and the author of new book on the subject called Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War Over College Affirmative Action. So if you have ideas on how we can better cover this subject, let him know.

Question from Don Heller, Penn State:
    Hi Jeff. My perception is that in the last decade, the mainstream media (both print and new media) has increased its reporting on substantive higher education issues. How has this increased competition affected The Chronicle? I know, for example, that you've beefed up the content on your Web site in the last year or so.

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    Don, great to hear from you.

In some ways, the competition in the mainstream media has increased, but only among a small segment, particularly places like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR. We do feel more competitive pressures from those publications, but still think we do a good job in beating them most days.

But as you know, local and regional newspapers are struggling. And in some cases they have decided to drop their higher-ed coverage. I just heard that happened in places like Memphis, Tenn., and Providence, R.I. In many cities, colleges are among the largest employers, so newspapers are essentially saying they are not interested in covering a major industry in their town. (Of course, they still cover the college sports team).

Question from Mark Harman, Elizabethtown College, PA, private liberal arts/comprehensive college:
    Over the years I have discerned a slight right-wing bias in the articles that appear in your otherwise excellent Arts and Letters online feature. Who makes the selection and why do right-of-centre authors/publications tend to predominate? Also, does The Chronicle receive support from any foundations or think tanks? If so, who are they?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    Denis Dutton is the editor of Arts & Letters Daily, and he makes the selections with his managing editor, Tran Huu Dung. From my perspective, Denis cites articles from a range of publications. You see plenty of links to a left-identified newspaper like The Guardian as well as articles from a more culturally conservative journal like The New Criterion. Over time the site manages to direct visitors to the most interesting reads on the web from a wide ideological spectrum.

As for foundations, The Chronicle was started with foundation dollars more than 40 years ago, but we no longer receive support from any foundations or think tanks.

Question from Don Wellingham, Community College of Phila.:
    I've always been a big fan of The Chronicle. But your Web site is a problem to navigate. I have problems finding stuff I know I've seen and the home page is confusing. Any plans to fix these problems and soon?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    We're aware there are some problems with logging on. We've added a box for you to check so that your user name will be remembered. You may still have to type in your password, but most modern Web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox, can be set to remember that as well. Additional improvements are coming that will make logging on even easier.

As for the Web site, we're in the process of basically rebuilding it from the inside out. That will allow us to offer readers plenty of new ways to interact with us. So I ask for your patience. We plan to unveil that new site later this year.

Question from Jason Hughes, Lynn University:
    Hi Jeff, Noticed some big changes to the Chron beginning in the fall with the intro of the new "Academic Life" publication - and more recently, in the number of blogs, podcasts, etc. the Chron's posting. Are you broadening your focus, or perhaps, just changing that focus?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    We're responding to a need by our readers to be informed quickly about major events that affect their jobs and lives. We also know our readers our busy, so they don't always have time to read a lengthy article. So like many other news outlets, we are trying to present information in many different ways -- through multimedia, blogs, and e-mail newsletters.

I don't think we're broadening our focus or changing it. We're just providing more coverage all around.

Question from Jaclyn Donati Grosso, Syracuse University College of Law:
    Dear Jeff: Are reporters still interested in shorter "trend stories", or in more in-depth reporting? Jacki Donati Grosso

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    We're interested in both. The new Chronicle Review, which made its debut last week, will now include in-depth reported pieces by our staff on ideas, people, and the arts. That issue had a reported piece, for example, on a philosophy professor at U. of Maryland-Baltimore County who studies the supernatural.

Question from Maryellen, Researcher in Higher Education:
    I've heard rumblings through my network that The Chronicle and Gallup Poll are forming an alliance to provide research oppotunities for institutions. If so, when will it be announced and what will it entail?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    You have good sources. There will be an announcement related to this on Monday. Check our Web site then for details.

Question from Joe, research univ:
    The CHE seems to have expanded into PD/conferencing initiatives in recent years, especially for CEOs IT leaders, and other senior administrators. How does that relate to your mission as a major news provider for higher ed, and does it reflect your moving into new competitive niches? What more might you be planning for the future?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    We do hold two annual events -- a Tech Forum, which will be held next month in Tampa, and a conference for top college leaders, which will be held this year June 8-9 in D.C.

The response to these events from our readers has been great, but I don't think we will ever become "a conference company." I see these as a companion to our core business as an information provider.

Why do we do them? I think the purpose is to deliver information in a new format, hear about trends to inform our future reporting, and to create a forum for key people to talk about the important issues of the day.

Question from Melissa Mayer, Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society of Community Colleges:
    Jeffrey, What changes do you have in mind for coverage of honors programming, leadership training, service learning and other student life issues in future editions of The Chronicle?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    As part of the reorganization of the newsroom, we beefed up our coverage of the student-life professional. We know that student life has become a central part of many institutions -- just look at the shootings at Virginia Tech last year, where student-life administrators were a key part of the braintrust of the top administration. So the answer is that we plan more coverage. If you have ideas, send them to Eric Hoover, a senior reporter, who covers that area, or Elyse Ashburn, who is the editor of our Students section.

Question from Steve, journalist:
    Jeff, do you foresee a day when there will no longer be a need for the paper edition of the newspaper? And where all content will be published online?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    If I knew the answer to that I'd be sitting on Wall Street picking stocks rather than here. I don't think anyone in the news media knows the future of print. Personally, I think there will always be room for print newspapers and magazines. Their death was predicted with radio and then television. The Web is different, but I think there will always be a need for people to read a physical product in print in order to better understand the world we live in.

Goldie Blumenstyk (Moderator):
    Folks, that's all the time we have. You all had some interesting questions. The Brown Bag returns next week with Wendy Woodward from Northwestern University, who will answer your questions about outsourcing e-mail and other IT services. See you then.

Jeff, any last words?

Jeffrey J. Selingo:
    Thanks for the great questions. I don't want to make this the only opportunity to interact with me. My e-mail address is jeff.selingo@chronicle.com and phone number is 202-466-1075, so feel free to call or drop me a line if you have a story idea, question, or complaint. I will try to get back to you as quickly as possible.