Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia University’s journalism school, has seen plenty of debates about the impact of the Web on magazines and newspapers. Now Mr. Lemann finds himself embroiled in such a dispute.
The dean decided recently to halve the budget for CJRDaily, a Web site run by the Columbia Journalism Review. Much of that money, he argued, would be better spent on a mail-order campaign intended to draw subscribers to the magazine’s ink-and-paper edition. A jump in subscriptions, he reasoned, might help pay for the production of the Web version—which, like many online news sites, generates little revenue of its own.
The staff of CJRDaily isn’t pleased with the plan, though: Steve Lovelady, the Web site’s managing editor, and Bryan Keefer, his deputy, resigned to protest Mr. Lemann’s decision. "To me this sounds like something out of the 19th century," Mr. Lovelace told the Press Gazette, a British trade magazine. —Brock Read
