What Colleges Should Learn from Newspapers' Decline

Autor/in	Carey, Kevin
Titel	What Colleges Should Learn from Newspapers' Decline
Quelle	In: Chronicle of Higher Education, 55 (2009) 30, (1 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0009-5982
Schlagwörter	Stellungnahme; Newspapers; Institutional Survival; Trend Analysis; Educational Development; Educational Change; Strategic Planning; Influence of Technology; Technology Integration; Technology Uses in Education + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Newspaper; Zeitung; Trendanalyse; Bildungsentwicklung; Bildungsreform; Strategy; Planning; Strategie; Planung; Technology enhanced learning; Technology aided learning; Technologieunterstütztes Lernen
Abstract	Newspapers are dying. Are universities next? The parallels between them are closer than they appear. Both industries are in the business of creating and communicating information. Paradoxically, both are threatened by the way technology has made that easier than ever before. The signs of sickness appeared earlier in the newspaper business, which is now in rapid decline. The Tribune Company, owner of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, is bankrupt, as is the owner of the The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are gone, and there's a good chance that the San Francisco Chronicle won't last the year. Even the mighty New York Times is in danger. All of this is happening despite the fact that the Internet has radically expanded the audience for news. Millions of people read The New York Times online, dwarfing its print circulation of slightly over one million. The problem is that the Times is not, and never has been, in the business of selling news. It's in the print advertising business. For decades, newspapers enjoyed a geographically defined monopoly over the lucrative ad market, the profits from which were used to support money-losing enterprises like investigative reporting and foreign bureaus. Now that money is gone, lost to cheaper online competitors like Craigslist. Proud institutions that served their communities for decades are vanishing, one by one. As of today, there's no Craigslist busily destroying the financial foundations of the modern university. Teaching is a lot more complicated than advertising, and universities have the advantage of sitting behind government-backed barriers to competition, in the form of accreditation. Anyone can use the Internet to sell classified ads or publish opinion columns or analyze the local news. Not anyone can sell credit-bearing courses or widely recognized degrees. But the number of organizations that can--and are doing it online--is getting bigger every year. Newspapers had a decade to transform themselves before being overtaken by the digital future. They were the best in the world at what they did--and yet, it wasn't enough. The author contends that there's still time for higher-education institutions to use technology to their advantage, to move to a more-sustainable cost structure, and to win customers with a combination of superior service and reasonable price. If they don't, then someday, people are going to be reading about the demise of once-great universities--not in the newspaper, but in whatever comes next. (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	Chronicle of Higher Education. 1255 23rd Street NW Suite 700, Washington, DC 20037. Tel: 800-728-2803; e-mail: circulation@chronicle.com; Web site: http://chronicle.com
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10