Higher Ed Media

University Affairs, Canada’s publication about higher education (or post secondary education as it’s said up North), unveiled earlier today its new web and magazine redesigns.

If you want to learn more about this combined redesign (very nice integrated approach between print and web by the way), go read this blog post by Leo Charbonneau.

And, here are the traditional before and after screenshots:

BEFORE

AFTER

University Affairs – The most trusted news source for Canada’s universities | University Affairs

I’ve been following the print vs web issue for some time now – as many of you, I’m sure.

It’s a known fact that the newspaper industry is in big trouble. And, the decision for The Christian Science Monitor – a century-old paper – to go web-only, at the exception of a weekend magazine, is another proof that things are changing as explained in “Christian Science Paper to End Daily Print Edition,” an article published yesterday on the NY Times website:

Before The Monitor, a handful of small papers had shifted away from print. This year, The Capital Times in Madison, Wis., went online only, and The Daily Telegram in Superior, Wis., announced it would publish online except for two days a week.

Longtime readers “love coffee and a newspaper. So do I,” Mr. Yemma [CSM Managing Editor] said. “There’s nothing like it. But everyone, sooner or later, is going to have to make the transition, and that’s recognized.”

Announcing the transition 6 months before it happens, the Christian Science Monitor is doing a great job explaining the decision in a complete Web package including several articles, a letter to the readers from the managing editor, a video and several slide shows.

Now, the question is: will higher ed magazines and other news-oriented publications follow or is it an opportunity for them to remain the only print pieces people will receive in the mail? What do you think?

My third UB column for 2008 is now available in the June issue as well as online: “Magazines: Gone Digital, Going Paperless?”

You’ll find in this column 4 tips from several of your peers (including Karl Bates from Duke University and Bonny Griffith from Ithaca College) to get you started.

With the help of this blog’s readers and the members of Higher Ed Experts, I’ve also compiled a list of some good examples of digital magazines/newsletters published by higher ed institutions.

You can find this list – that I’ll keep updating (send your links to karine@collegewebeditor.com) – at www.collegewebeditor.com/digitalmags.

If you want to learn more about the topic, you should also consider attending “Stop the Presses: Why and How to Go Digital with your Magazine,” a 3-webinar series scheduled on June 24, 25 & 26, 2008. For more information and to register, just visit www.higheredexperts.com/stopthepresses.

By the way, if you are a University Business reader who has just discovered collegewebeditor.com, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email.

Yes, you’ve read my headline correctly: bloggers editing and fact checking the main media outlet covering higher education in the US.

So, what do I mean exactly?

In the past weeks, two posts from two different higher ed bloggers have questioned some of the facts reported in two different articles published by the Chronicle.

• Andy Shaindlin from Alumni Futures explained in his post “Should Universities Create Facebook-Style Social Networks?” he was interviewed and (mis)quoted for a piece published in the April 25 issue of the Chronicle and titled “Colleges Create Facebook-Style Social Networks to Reach Alumni” (subscription required):

  Despite what the article claims, I swear I did not tell the reporter that “social networking is definitely hot.”

  What’s kind of funny about it is that I was also contacted by the reporter who wrote this piece. He had found information about Elon University’s DIY social networking website (mentioned in the article) on my blog. Nothing funny here, you’re thinking. Actually, what’s funny about it is that I remember saying what was attributed to Andy a bit before tipping the reporter about what Carleton College (mentioned in the article) was doing.

• Then, Monday, Brian Niles from The Recruiting Revolution pointed out something a bit more troubling in his post “Chronicle Survey Summary Misleading”.
  Last Friday, in a post on this blog, I shared with you my surprise and doubts about the fact that podcasts were used 3 more times than email in admissions offices as a recruiting method according to The Chronicle Survey of Undergraduate Admissions Officers (subscription required). Well, Brian went a step further and contacted the Maguire Associates, the firm that conducted the survey on the behalf of the Chronicle and here’s what he found out as explained in his blog post:

  On May 2nd the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) published a summary of research done by the Maguire Associates that gave the impression that only 5% of colleges in the study utilized email as a recruiting and communication tool.

  Unfortunately, this information is very misleading – in fact, grossly inaccurate.

  In an email exchange with the two researchers who did the study, I was told today that the Chronicle summarized the answers provided in an open-ended “Other” option, in which some participants listed “Email” as an answer. Email was not one of the options to choose from.

I get edited and fact checked all the time by my readers (which is very good as I don’t have an editor to do that job on this blog – wait a minute, it’s because I’m the editor here ;-), and I really appreciate it.

What’s really interesting about these 2 small incidents is that they are indicative of a bigger trend.

Today, nobody (including your college, university or even you president) can expect mishaps, mistakes or even major crises to stay hidden or unnoticed for long, because millions of eye balls (or a dozen of keen observers) are “monitoring” your institution and can share what they uncover with the world on their blogs, via facebook, myspace, twitter, etc.

I had a very interesting experience this morning presenting a session about higher ed podcasting in the US to a room full of people at the University of Warwick in the UK.

No long flight or dreadful jet lag required (but no nice sightseeing in the UK either :-).

I did my presentation using WebEx and my dear webcam. What was really neat about this experience was the fact that Tom Abbott, Web Manager at the University of Warwick — who invited me to present in the first place at the Podcasting for Education conference — took the time to set up a webcam in the room so I could see the audience as well (and they even clapped at the end, really nice people ;-).

Next best thing after being there.

The goal for this presentation was to share an overview of the most interesting higher ed podcasting initiatives, so I can’t say that I presented any earth-shattering concepts. However, I took the time to pull together a good list of web links on delicious that you might find useful.

I also recorded the 35-minute presentation followed by a quick Q&A. Just let me know if any of you would like to get a link to that recording.

With the increasing popularity of this niche blog (and it’s not just my ego speaking, the web stats and Feedburner tell me that its readership has been increasing steadily) as well as my regular gig at University Business, I’ve started to receive more and more press releases and pitches from PR professionals.

While a few are really good – more about a couple of these later this week, most of them end up in my deleted email folder. Fast. Very Fast.

That’s one of the reasons I accepted the invitation to have a look at
Perfecting the Pitch: Creating Publicity Through Media Rapport, a book written by PR veteran Benjamin Lewis. Besides the fact that its cover features my favorite color, I wanted to find out if it was worth your time (and could save some of mine by improving the quality of the pitches I get).

Now that I read this 200-page book, I can tell you it is.

While I’m not a fan of the book review genre, I understand you probably need more than my word to see if there is something for you in this book. That’s why I’ve decided to introduce and inaugurate the “1-1-1 Express Book Review” with “Perfecting the Pitch.”

What on earth is this “1-1-1 Express Book Review?”

Well, it’s a simple concept I’d like to apply to any future book related to your professional interests coming my way (authors out there, hint, hint):

• 1 thing I liked or found really interesting
• 1 thing I didn’t like that much or found really long, dumb, boring, etc.
• 1 big take-away from the book

So, let’s apply this brand new “book review concept” to “Perfecting the Pitch:”

1 thing I liked: Chapters 4, 5 & 6 provide all you really need to know to make most reporters, editors and actually bloggers totally fall in love with you as a PR professional. By clearly defining what is pitching, its rules and what role it plays in the lives of journalists (and more and more bloggers), Lewis does us all a big favor. Moreover, some of the book recommendations are based on the results of a recent survey Lewis’ agency, Perception Inc., did with more than a hundred reporters/editors.

1 thing I didn’t like that much: In this book, Lewis spends some time (and pages) on “The Foundation of the Media Rapport,” for which he apparently registered a trademark. While I agree with what he writes — i.e. message, respect, skills and pitching are the four pillars of the media rapport, I don’t get the need for the trademark thingy.

1 big take-away from the book: So, I’ll break my own rules for this first review and will give you 2 interesting take-away:

4 questions to ask yourself to test the newsworthiness of your story idea (don’t need all of them, but the more, the better):
Is it timely?
Is it unusual?
Is it controversial?
Is it relevant to the majority of the audience of the (old or new) media you’re targeting?

A piece of really good advice:
Don’t send the same pitch to zillions of journalists or bloggers, but find out as much as possible about the journalist (or the blogger) you’re trying to pitch and customize your idea to its professional interest. Remember it’s all about long-term relationships, so make them (us) feel special.

Interested in the book?
Well, since I liked it, I asked if I could get an extra copy for the winner of a drawing among interested readers of this blog. And, I got it.
To get a chance to win this copy, just post a comment below. Why not share a story about your experience with pitching (you don’t have to if you haven’t any)? I’ll announce the winner this Friday and will get the book mailed to him or her.

As I mentioned in this previous post, “Don’t think the conversation is the message? Just look at how higher ed media have been going 2.0 lately,” I was interviewed last June by Andrea Jarrell:

Anyway, “the conversation is the message” has come back at me this week in an email exchange with Andrea Jarrell. She’s working on a follow-up piece for Currents focusing on the Web 2.0 denial syndrome (my words, hers were “fear and loathing in Web 2.0″) in higher ed communication offices.

I can’t wait to read Andrea’s article in the September issue of Currents, because she’s definitely right on target. People always fear change, and Web 2.0 is a big change for marketing, PR and communications folks.

For some, the denial stage — it’s just a fad — has just begun.

Earlier this month, I received a copy of the issue and was able to read “Fear and Loathing in Web 2.0,” a great feature article published in the September issue of CASE’s Currents also including some insights from 2 other higher ed bloggers: Andrew Careaga and Andrew Shaindlin (as you can see, Andrews are pretty well represented in the higher ed blogosphere ;-).

The online version of the article is usually only available to CASE members, but I asked nicely Liz Reilly, the editor of Currents, and she gave me (and you) a temporary access to this article until October 31st, 2007 so you can read the article even if your institution isn’t a member of CASE.

Something I really like about this piece is its conclusion (and not just because I’m quoted ;-)

Although the new Web 2.0 world announces the end of the controlled message, Joly says, the unmediated conversations of the blogosphere don’t actually conflict with integrated marketing. “If your integrated marketing strategy is based on what really makes your institution a good fit for prospective students, there is no balancing act. What will be published on blogs by your students will be along the lines of what can be read in your viewbook or on your Web site.” Think of it as staying “on concept” rather than “on message,” she says.

Rather than chucking the idea of brand out the window, today’s fifth “p” in marketing—participation—makes it even more important than ever for institutions to know who they are and what they stand for and to give their constituents ways to talk about it. Drevs emphasizes that Loyola’s blogs focus on key university brand traits connected to its Jesuit tradition and to pursuing global social justice. “Web 2.0 was the next big thing, but the university’s differentiation is not based on the technology,” he says. “It’s based on what Loyola is really good at.”

While there is a certain amount of risk in letting go of control, not letting go is even riskier. If you don’t take part in all these online conversations, Joly says, “people searching blogs for information about your institution will only find content created and published on other blogs.”

Put another way, if the conversation is the message, then opting out of the conversation is the real loss of control.

In “Facelifts for the Facebook Generation” published today in Inside Higher Ed, Andy Guess gives a good round-up of the web design trends in higher education:

As universities start to unveil the next generation of college Web sites, their efforts include a mix of approaches that tend to overlap. Lewis and other Web administrators note several trends:

* The Facebooking of college Web sites. Lewis said colleges were looking toward variations on social networking to keep in touch with students after they graduate and maintain databases for fund raising.
[...]
* Showing, not telling. Simon said that focus groups expressed a preference for more “showing” and less “telling”: in other words, less text and more photos and video.
[...]
* Blogs and more blogs. One way universities have found to more directly reach applicants is to find current students to blog about their lives on campus.
[...]
* Bringing lectures to your iPod. With iTunes U, institutions can post audio and video content at customized portals for anyone to download for free; with YouTube, they can create their own pages with streaming video. More colleges and universities are creating their own presence at these sites with the hope of reaching out to students at online venues they frequent.

* Leaving room for improvement. As redesigning Web sites becomes more of a multiyear, multistep ordeal, administrators are realizing that along with surface improvements, the content management systems underlying them need to be rebuilt from the ground up as well. As they design the foundations of their online platforms, the emphasis is on flexibility to make room for future additions. At Tepper, the system is equipped for features that aren’t even implemented yet, like allowing user comments and supporting tools for sharing and editing links, such as del.icio.us and Reddit. But for unforeseen improvements in the future, the database is robust enough for developers to build extra functionality — such as social networking.

Guess’s sources include Steven Lewis, HighEdWebDev conference committee chair (don’t forget to register today is you plan to attend, as it will cost you $100 more tomorrow) and Jason Simon (NC State).

If you attended one of my sessions about Web 2.0, seen my presentation files or read my article published in the March issue of CASE’s Currents, you might have a vague idea of where I’m going with the headline of this post.

But, if you don’t – here’s just a quick excerpt from the initial draft of the piece I wrote for Currents:

In 1964, Herbert Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian professor of English Literature and a communication theorist wrote Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In this book, he developed the theory that media have an impact on society beyond the content they delivered. McLuhan coined in this book the famous and sometimes over-used phrase: “the medium is the message.”

If McLuhan was still among us today, there’s no doubt he would have followed closely Web 2.0. Unfortunately, he died in 1980. As a result, we can only speculate on how he would have described this paradigm shift in communication.

Traditional media such as newspapers, radio or TV can deeply transform messages. With the rise of Web2.0-driven social media, the traditional communication schema — a message crafted by an organization and delivered via a set number of identified media to target audiences — has become obsolete.

Today, the conversation is the message.

I came up with “the conversation is the message” in August 2006 when I was working on the presentation for the CASE conference. I studied McLuhan’s work in graduate school, and his catchy phrase stuck after all those years (well, it was not THAT long ago).

Anyway, “the conversation is the message” has come back at me this week in an email exchange with Andrea Jarrell. She’s working on a follow-up piece for Currents focusing on the Web 2.0 denial syndrome (my words, hers were “fear and loathing in Web 2.0″) in higher ed communication offices.

I can’t wait to read Andrea’s article in the September issue of Currents, because she’s definitely right on target. People always fear change, and Web 2.0 is a big change for marketing, PR and communications folks.

For some, the denial stage — it’s just a fad — has just begun. So, it might be helpful to look at what some editors and reporters covering higher education have been doing lately:

• The Chronicle of Higher Education has started to offer some excellent online video reports produced by Jeff Young. In July, it will launch Tech Therapy, a podcast based on questions asked by readers. And, they’ve been blogging for a while now.
• US and World News Reports has launched a blog to defend explain its college rankings: Morse Code. Comments are still off, but I’m hopeful the magazine will finally get the memo on blogs and comments
• Inside Higher Ed has hired Dean Dad as one of their in-house bloggers.
• At University Business, Editor Tim Goral has invited readers to write a whole issue of the magazine about the state of higher education (BTW, you have until August 6 to submit a piece). What better proof that the conversation is the message when it starts to be printed?
• Even CASE’s Currents might soon go 2.0 as a group of alumni professionals are using a wiki to research and write an article on how the Internet is changing alumni communications, article that will be submitted for publication this Fall.

I first read about Morse Code, the new blog authored by Robert Morse, the director of data research for U.S. News & World Report behind the methodologies and surveys for the America’s Best Colleges annual rankings, on Andrew Careaga’s blog last Thursday. It appears that the blog was launched on May 15.

As regular readers know, I was at a conference at that time, but I really got interested by this move from the publication in the midst of the traditional controversy around the way it ranks colleges and universities.

This morning, I emailed Robert Morse to find out if he would be willing to answer a few of questions about his blog. I got a quick reply from Cynthia Powell, the PR director of the magazine. Just a few hours after sending my questions, she emailed the following answers. Ms. Powell explained she answered my question on the behalf of the magazine in a follow-up email after I asked whose answers these were.

1) Why did you decide to launch this blog?

We’re expanding our website and this was a great opportunity for us to showcase one of our experts

2) What are the goals for Morse Code?

To provide a more detail perspective on the college and grad rankings and have a forum to discuss other issues in higher education as well as respond to those who comment on the U.S. News college and grad rankings.

3) How do you choose the topics of the blog posts?

Morse Code will focus primarily on the rankings, but may include comments on other higher education issues and their effects on the rankings (for example, the changes in the Carnegie classification system for colleges and universities.)

4) You’ve included a widget to allow people to share your post on many social media platforms. However, comments aren’t enabled on your blog. Do you plan to allow readers to post comments to your blog posts at some point in the future?

The interactive features are forthcoming. Right now, Morse Code is in its “soft launch” phase, building out content and a base audience. We hope to add more interactive elements to Morse Code, ideally timed to coincide with the launch our new college rankings in August.

As you can see, it seems that more interesting conversations will follow. If you want to keep up with the blog, make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed of Morse Code.