Category: news

The end of Newsweek: A turning point for magazines?

A collection of recent Newsweeks, which sit, unread, on my desk.

Today’s announcement by The Newsweek Daily Beast Co. (yes, that is the company’s real, official name) that it is ceasing publication of the once-venerable newsmagazine Newsweek probably comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the recent history of that magazine. When Newsweek was acquired by The Daily Beast in 2010, the publication was already struggling. Then Fareed Zakaria, who was probably Newsweek‘s biggest franchise, jumped ship to join TIME magazine. Editor-in-chief Tina Brown “seemed to continually push the Newsweek half of Newsweek/Daily Beast to the back burner—when she wasn’t cooking up desperate, attention-seeking covers,” writes Dashiell Bennett in The Atlantic Wire’s coverage of today’s announcement. Brown’s sensationalism is something I mentioned in a recent blog post about Newsweek‘s coverage of the state of higher education.

So now, Brown and company are transmogrifying their publication into an all-digital something-or-other to be called Newsweek Global. Writes The Newsweek Daily Beast Co.’s CEO Baba Shetty, the “single, worldwide edition” will be “targeted for a highly mobile, opinion-leading audience who want to learn about world events in a sophisticated context. Newsweek Global will be supported by paid subscription and will be available through e-readers for both tablet and the Web, with select content available on The Daily Beast.”

The demise of the print version of Newsweek was inevitable, I suppose. As Slate’s Matthew Yglesias points out, a weekly newsmagazine is no longer relevant in today’s always-on digital world.

In the era of print newspapers and nightly TV news, newsweeklies provided the extremely valuable function of timely up-to-date coverage of news and culture that didn’t rely on you literally checking the same news source every single day. The Internet in some ways exacerbates the dysfunctionalities of the daily news cycle by promoting relentless over-hyping of everything that occurs, but Google makes it trivially simple to just find a news story from Monday if you’re interest in reading about it on Thursday. There’s no need for a digest format and if you do great original reporting you want to publish that reporting as soon as possible not sit on it for two days to wait for a magazine distribution process.

I’m going to miss my print version of Newsweek. But Yglesias is right. It’s no longer relevant. The last two issues have been lingering on my “to read” pile for days, untouched. The commentary is really the only thing worth reading anymore, but after Zakaria left and they brought in Niall Ferguson, the quality has slipped, in my opinion.

Anyway, the folding of Newsweek may signal a turning point for the magazine industry. Or perhaps it’s just the latest chapter in the decline of print, precipitated by the Internet. General-interest media are losing ground to special-interest media, and that trend will likely continue.

Maybe this new Newsweek Global will thrive and set a shining example for higher ed to follow. All-digital alumni magazines, anyone?

Why it’s important to share your news via social media

More proof that social media is altering the way news is consumed and distributed: A recent study of news consumption trends from the Pew Internet and American Life Project points to the growing socialization of news content.

For people under 30, digital — and social — is the preferred method to share and get news content, according to the Pew study, which says that one-third of people under 30 get their news from social networks. A slightly higher percentage of that age group (34 percent) watched TV news, but only 13 percent read print or digital newspaper content.

Translate this to the higher education sphere. All colleges and universities are media organizations to some degree. Some institutions are more sophisticated than others, but we all generate tons of content, and we push it out through newsletters, alumni publications, our official websites and our social media platforms, to name a few. Since one-third of the under-30 demographic gets their news from social media, it stands to reason that at least that proportion of our under-30 stakeholders — young alumni, current and prospective students, younger faculty and staff — will follow suit. In fact, it’s a good bet that an even greater proportion of the under-30 people connected to higher ed institutions use social media to get their news.

How are we taking advantage of social media to share our news?

Are we leveraging our Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn sites to distribute news from our university?

News-sharing should be a key component of our digital content and connection strategy. Let’s not toss out the good ol’ alumni magazine yet, but let’s think about how alumni news could — and should — be shared via social media to meet the preferences of that under-30 group of alumni. Let’s think about how to reuse content from the employee e-newsletter to communicate with our younger faculty and staff. Let’s remind ourselves that students don’t check email as often as they check their social media accounts.

Let’s start thinking about social media as more than a marketing channel. Let’s look at it as a news distribution channel as well.

#highered as bad investment (or, the song remains the same — or does it?)

I wasn’t sure just how much hand-wringing would be required of me when I saw the cover of the latest is of Newsweek magazine. The title of the cover story — Is College A Lousy Investment? — would suggest that a higher ed marketing person like me should worry.

Then again, I thought, this is Newsweek, and editor-in-chief Tina Brown loves to play the role of provocateur, especially with dramatic cover imagery and headlines that lean toward the sensational. Recall just a few weeks ago that the magazine shocked conservatives and liberals alike with its Hit the Road, Barack cover story. And a few weeks before then, for its cover story about the world’s great restaurants, used a photo of “phallic asparagus dangling suggestively above a woman’s open mouth, lips parted just so.” Rather strange, too, that the “asparagus issue” also carried Newsweek‘s college rankings, including a listing of those deemed most affordable in terms of cost, debt load and ROI. And now the story’s all about a “lousy investment.”) And of course, who can forget Annie Leibovitz’s infamous nude and pregnant Demi Moore cover shot for Vanity Fair back when Tina Brown ran that magazine?

Plus, we’ve all heard this song before, haven’t we? The chorus of woe about college becoming less and less valuable to Americans. Even the Newsweek piece itself notes: “A lot of ink has been spilled over the terrifying plight of students with $100,000 in loans and a job that will not cover their $900-a-month payment.” Some of that ink came in the form of an article carried by (Newsweek‘s chief competitor, TIME, published more than 3 years ago: Is College A Bad Investment? Only the adjectives have changed.

So I figured that the cover title was yet another ploy by a magazine desperate to remain relevant. And I didn’t worry much about paying attention to this latest in a series of cries about the higher ed bubble.

But I should pay attention. And so should you. Because the bubble is real, folks. Technology is leveling the playing field. In another recent news report — this one about massive open online courses (or MOOCs, as they are clumsily labeled) — Mary Beth Marklein, the higher ed beat writer for USA Today, refers to a recent report from Moody’s Investor Service “calls MOOCs a ‘pivotal development’ that has the potential to revolutionize higher education.”

Yes, we’ve heard this song before, right? Dylan Wilbanks makes that point quite well in his “death wish” blog post from June.

But read on, please. This, from Marklein’s article:

MOOCs also have the potential to radically alter a centuries-old business model, one that for most institutions has depended on increasingly higher tuition. …

Moody’s sees several likely revenue opportunities, including advertising and licensing. Eventually, it expects that students will have to pay some costs. …

As for colleges and universities, the big financial winners will be brand-name universities who seize the opportunity, the Moody’s report says. It also says their elite reputations will allow their residential campuses to flourish. In contrast, less selective schools will likely see a decline in student demand, and colleges with small endowments will be particularly at risk, unless they find a way to participate. The embrace of online education by elite institutions also will help “reduce the stigma” of distance education, and put new competitive pressure on for-profit colleges, which have dominated the distance-education sector, Moody’s says.

Yet another recent piece on this topic, The Siege of Academe, in Washington Monthly, puts our situation in some historical context, but confirms the Moody’s report that we are at a pivotal moment:

This hype has happened before, of course. Back in the 1990s, when [Netscape creator Marc] Andreessen made his first millions, many people confidently predicted that the Internet would render brick-and-mortar universities obsolete. It hasn’t happened yet, in part because colleges are a lot more complicated than retail bookstores. Higher education is a publicly subsidized, heavily regulated, culturally entrenched sector that has stubbornly resisted digital rationalization. But the defenders of the ivy-covered walls have never been more nervous about the Internet threat. In June, a panicked board of directors at the University of Virginia fired (and, after widespread outcry, rehired) their president, in part because they worried she was too slow to move Thomas Jefferson’s university into the digital world.

The ongoing carnage in the newspaper industry provides an object lesson of what can happen when a long-established, information-focused industry’s business model is challenged by low-price competitors online. The disruptive power of information technology may be our best hope for curing the chronic college cost disease that is driving a growing number of students into ruinous debt or out of higher education altogether. It may also be an existential threat to institutions that have long played a crucial role in American life.

So as I read these pieces — reported in mainly traditionally print-and-paper-based media that are struggling to adjust to a new world — I wonder how well we in higher ed are doing in our adjustment. Worse, I suspect, than the news business or even the recording industry. Back to Dylan Wilbanks’ question: “Do we [in the higher ed business] hate higher ed? Do we want it to die a horrid death? I’m starting to wonder if we do.”

And the band plays on, as we wring our hands.

Lazy journos calling

Sometimes we think we’re being clever or creative, when in fact we’re just being lazy.

We who write for a living sometimes think we’ve hit upon some ingenious pop-culture reference for a headline, lead or phrase to weave into our story or blog post. Too often it falls flat.

I know this because I’ve tried this technique, here and elsewhere. Sometimes it works. Other times it’s too clever — the joke is so far inside that I’m the only one who gets it. Many times we’re part of a herd of lazy writers who think in cliches.

Such is the case for about a zillion journalists right now, as we prepare for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

“London Calling” — the title song from the Clash’s 1979 album — has become a favorite phrase among headline writers lately. It has quickly become hackneyed.

Here’s a small sample of recent headlines about the upcoming games:

Maybe it’s testament to the continuing influence of that 1979 album that “London Calling” has become such a popular phrase for today’s headline writers. (Many are probably my age and remember the album and song well.) More likely, it’s just a slothful way to try to infuse our headlines with a bit of pop culture zing (from a 33-year-old album).

But the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony is  still weeks away. So I’m afraid we’ve got a lot of “London Calling” references ahead of us. You’d think one or two enterprising journalists would take the time to search Google, see that the phrase is overdone, and maybe come up with a fresher pop culture reference.

To those distressed journos who are struggling to come up with something more connected to today’s pop culture landscape, I am happy to offer my assistance. So call me, maybe?

Image: Cover of the Clash’s 1979 album London Calling. Photo by Pennie Smith. The photo depicts Clash bassist Paul Simonon destroying his instrument on the stage of the Palladium in New York City in September 1979. (More info.)

Duke’s opinion page spotlights faculty expertise

The op-ed page has been a staple of newspapers for decades, home to syndicated columnists and guest contributors who share a broad array of expertise with a paper’s readers. Many colleges and universities have been successful in placing articles by their own academic experts in the op-ed pages of prominent newspapers. Duke University is one such institution. Duke’s office of news and communications regularly distributes faculty-authored articles monthly to 20 major newspapers across the U.S. and Canada.

Recently, Duke unveiled an op-ed page of its own online. The opinion section of Duke Today shines the spotlight on the campus’s essayists and essays.

Screenshot of Duke Today's opinion page - today.duke.edu/opinion
Screenshot of Duke Today's opinion page - today.duke.edu/opinion

Keith Lawrence, director of media relations for Duke’s office of news and communications, shared more insight about this initiative via a recent email exchange.

Higher Ed Marketing: Why did Duke decide to create this site? Briefly, what is your vision for the opinion section of Duke Today?

Keith Lawrence: Duke has an active service that distributes faculty op-ed articles to newspapers across North America. Dozens of our professors have worked with us to publish their articles in major papers through this service and other channels. More recently, a growing number of our professors have embraced social media, such as Facebook, blogs and Twitter. We launched this new site to capture in one place all of the incredibly rich content they’re producing – not only to highlight them personally, but also to advance Duke’s mission of “knowledge in service to society.”

HEM: Who is your main audience for this site and what results are you hoping for from that audience?

Lawrence: The audience is varied. We’re hoping faculty, staff and students will visit the site regularly, and we’re also promoting it to alumni, parents and others. Duke’s Office of Federal Relations will share pertinent content with government officials. As with Duke’s popular site on iTunes U, we hope this new opinion site will also find an audience with people who don’t have a personal connection to Duke but are interested in ideas and intellectual content they can’t find elsewhere.

HEM: Duke has built a strong presence on the nation’s op-ed pages over the years, thanks to your op-ed service. As traditional newspapers struggle with declining readership, what is the future of your op-ed service?

Lawrence: We believe op-ed pages at major newspapers will continue to play a vital role for the foreseeable future. Millions of people who care about the news still read these pages, which exert significant influence on policy makers and opinion leaders. We have no intention of scaling back on that front.

Simultaneously, we’re pursuing new channels, such as through social media, to reach people, especially younger audiences. This opinion site pulls together our older and newer approaches, combining the articles faculty have written for traditional op-ed pages with the opinions they’ve begun writing for blogs and other new forums.

HEM: Is there anything else you’d like readers of this blog to know about the site?

Like the rest of your audience for “Higher Ed Marketing,” we’re always looking for better ways to help our university tell its story. We hope your readers will take a minute to check out our site and share with us any thoughts or suggestions they have about it. We know we can learn from them. I can be reached at keith.lawrence@duke.edu.