Anyone entering one of the many restaurants in Providence, R.I., is likely to end up sitting next to out-of-town parents visiting their sons and daughters who attend nearby colleges. That's because Rhode Island has one of the highest (the local chamber of commerce says the highest) concentration of colleges and universities in the United States.
Given that higher education commands a huge payroll in the city, you might assume that the local newspaper, The Providence Journal, fields a team of higher-education reporters. But the ProJo, as it's dubbed in Providence, lacks even one full-time higher-education reporter. Staff cutbacks in the last two years have left the education reporter, Jennifer D. Jordan, covering statewide elementary- and secondary-school issues, adult education, preschool, and higher education.
The situation at the ProJo is not unusual. As the Internet continues to drain readers and advertising, newspapers are left with no choice but to cut back on coverage. Many papers have settled on higher education as an expendable beat.
In Jacksonville, Fla., the reporter who covers kindergarten through high school is expected to help out on higher education when possible. Similar coverage can be found in Charlotte, N.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; Montgomery, Ala.; and Savannah, Ga. At the National Education Writers Association, which represents education reporters and editors around the country, the e-mail list for elementary- and secondary-school reporters buzzes with activity while the higher-education list lies mostly moribund.
The financial challenges at all newspapers are daunting. Something has to go. Coverage of elementary and secondary schools is closer to readers' hearts, editors argue. Higher education, by contrast, generally operates better and involves lots of out-of-town students. So out goes the higher-education coverage. At many papers, the only reporters covering colleges and universities write about basketball and football.
But while editors have to make tough choices about coverage, they may not be walking into this choice fully informed. In the knowledge economy, many low-skill jobs require at least a two-year degree. Increasingly, the only path to a middle income is through higher education; a high-school degree simply doesn't suffice.
Thus, college becomes the new high school, a near must-have degree. That explains in part why the number of college students keeps rising: Nationwide, there are 18 million now, and that figure is expected to climb to 20 million in the next eight years. The questions from families sending children to college come in torrents: How early do I need to start saving? How can my kids get into their first-choice college? Will I have to go into debt? Should I consider a for-profit college? Will my child be safe on the campus?
Given the vast numbers of students who attend colleges in their own state, those are local readers asking those questions about nearby colleges — and not finding answers, at least from their local newspaper. It's even worse to ignore community colleges, which are every bit as much of a local story as elementary and secondary schools. Because newspapers rarely report on them, many parents are unaware of the alarmingly high dropout rates at some community colleges.
Also lost from diminished local reporting about colleges and universities are the contributions that local newspapers can make to national reporting on higher education. Just about the biggest scandal in higher education in recent years, the revelation of improper relationships between colleges and student-aid lenders, was partly reported by regional reporters. In Iowa, The Des Moines Register found that a state-affiliated nonprofit organization was paying off colleges that marketed its loans to their students. In Florida, The St. Petersburg Times told the story of students at the University of Miami who never applied for federal student loans but discovered the university had applied on their behalf, turning over confidential student information to the lender Sallie Mae.
Newspapers should also consider the role of higher education in the local economy. In many cities, the university is one of the biggest employers in town. Would Memphis's newspaper, The Commercial Appeal drop its coverage of the massive FedEx operation there? Not likely, but there's no full-time reporter who covers the University of Memphis and other nearby colleges. And in medium-size cities, universities are often the largest sponsors of cultural events. If residents learn to look elsewhere for cultural coverage, how is that good for the newspaper?
Finally, the financial health of a newspaper can't improve unless a community grows, and the community won't grow unless it has an educational edge. There's a reason why high-tech centers sprang up near Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That's also why the governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, is spreading alarm about the declining prestige of the State University of New York system.
Academic and intellectual news from colleges may get picked up by newspapers one way or another. But what about the link between higher education and economic development, between colleges and an educated work force?
As for assigning K-12 reporters to cover university news when possible, that's a nonstarter. Elementary and secondary schools have a way of sucking up the time of any reporter assigned to cover them. Besides, higher education is a different animal: The economics and organization are not the same, and the private role is far larger.
Colleges don't seem to be as worried as they might be about the lapsed coverage. Sure, it would have been nice if the ProJo had written a story about the University of Rhode Island scoring well in the new rankings on student satisfaction, but the university, like other higher-education institutions in other places, often tries to work around that lack of coverage by going online: It sends out the news on its 50,000-strong Internet newsletter. Says Linda A. Acciardo, the university's director of communications and marketing, "We can get the people who care about us in a direct way, more so than having to be totally reliant on the media to get the word out."
Thus, the Internet, which triggered many of the cutbacks in news staffs to begin with, appears to be drawing newspapers deeper into irrelevancy, which can only lead to more shrinkages. Not a good cycle for newspapers to be caught in.
But the challenges are not limited to newspaper economics. Colleges should not feel entirely comfortable that their powerful Internet-based communications systems will get the job done. Sure, they will reach students, faculty members, and alumni, but will they make new friends and supporters? New donors, for example, get harder to find when you're chatting only within the "family." And in an era when state and federal lawmakers are talking tough about bringing accountability to higher education, college leaders may find advantages in helping shape those early public conversations — debates that will spill out on the pages of local newspapers.
For all those reasons, college leaders have powerful incentives to put together their best arguments for continued local coverage — admissions concerns, economic impact, cultural events, educated work force — and request a sit-down with the managing editor and city editor. There's a lot to talk about.
Richard Whitmire is president of the National Education Writers Association and an editorial writer for USA Today.
http://chronicle.com Section: Commentary Volume 54, Issue 20, Page A36
