Weekly Wisdom | Interview with Doug Lederman

Bridget Burns: Welcome to another episode of Start the Week with Wisdom. I’m your host, Bridget Burns with the University Innovation Alliance.

Doug Lederman: I’m Doug Lederman, co-host and editor and founder of Inside Higher Ed.

Bridget Burns: Each week, Doug and I team up to have a conversation with a sitting college president or chancellor to try and distill—or a leader of something in higher ed in order to distill a sense of their journey and also their wisdom that they’ve gained along the way. Our hope is that this is an inspiring and uplifting and positive part of your week that gives you a little bit of boost on a Monday. That’s why we call it Start the Week with Wisdom.

Doug Lederman: And we’re very pleased to have as sponsor Weekly Wisdom Mainstay, which some of you may know as or remember as AdmitHub, which it was beforehand. It’s a student engagement and retention platform that is in use at a good number of campuses. And one of the things that distinguishes it most is different from a lot of sort of technology and other platforms is that they really underscore a lot of what they do through peer-reviewed research. They have some really impressive case studies. They’re best known for the one, for the stuff, some of the stuff they’ve done at Georgia State, reducing summer melt and helping Georgia State hold on to many hundreds of students. So I encourage you to check out the research and learn more about the company at mainstay.com.

Bridget Burns: Great. And to this week’s episode, our guest is Doug Lederman. So we had on our 100th episode for the Innovating Together podcast, we actually, Doug put the hot seat, put me in the hot seat, and I have been chomping at the bit for a chance to actually interview Doug and be able to. I also think it’s really helpful for us to every once in a while do an episode like this because we can talk about the episodes and the guests that have been most surprising to us and where we have gotten a lot from this. And I also just think it’s super helpful for the audience to know who the heck you are. So let’s just start there in terms of, I find it really interesting, I will just say that Doug is the co-founder and the editor of Inside Higher Ed, which is a trade publication that really changed the game in higher ed. So we’ve had a long historic, you know, the Chronicle of Higher Ed, and then there are some tiny little trade pubs along the way, but creating a internet-based, internet-focused periodical that was updated so much faster than we were used to. We used to get the Chronicle once a week, I think, or I don’t. And so, and I know you spent some time there. So you’re an entrepreneur. You are a boss. And you’re also a journalist, but it’s like you are in higher ed, but you’re not in higher ed. And you get to bear witness to all of the changes and the challenges along the way. So I think it’s a really interesting perspective that you have. And I want to give us a chance to benefit from it.

Doug Lederman: Appreciate that. Glad to talk about it. Glad to share, see if I can provide anything that the audience will be interested in and learn from a little bit. I really enjoyed doing this work with you. It’s very different from the kind of work that I would do or that I, you know, the interviews that I do as a journalist are very different. And when we started, I thought, oh, these are interesting questions, but they’re not about the issues per se, or they’re not. But I’ve learned a lot from watching these leaders talk about how they lead. And I think in this moment, particularly, where I think leadership is probably almost certainly more important than it’s ever been, I think these conversations, I think, have really, they’ve taught me a lot about leadership and I’ve literally brought some of the things I’ve heard some of our guests say to what I do every day. So appreciate you guys for having created this and bringing it to us.

Bridget Burns: And it was so perfectly timely because we were only looking at presidents during that window in COVID and being so harsh. And the idea that there was this whole other aspect of them I had gotten a chance to see when I was shadowing, that I was like, they’re actually real good leaders. Like they actually have real wisdom to share. So in the same way, I’ve come to you many times over the years with things that I’m struggling with or questioning. And so I think you have a lot to offer. And I want to start, though, by grounding this in your career trajectory. So you are a bona fide journalist. Do you have a journalism degree?

Doug Lederman: I do not. Did not. I majored in sociology, which, you know, again, I’m a, I think there are lots of good things that can come from journalism degrees, but journalists mainly need the traits that they get in a core liberal arts humanities degree, I think. Critical thinking, being able to communicate well, create a certain amount of creativity, not in facts, but in sort of how to think about the world and ability to connect dots. And those are things that I’m a big believer in the liberal arts and sciences and in liberal education. And I think that’s in some ways what journalists do is a core representation of what the liberal education does best.

Bridget Burns: Well, I think you were the commercial on liberal education. I think that’s, I think people are going to steal those talking points. But I want to understand. So, you graduate college. So, talk to me about your trajectory, like what gets you into journalism. Like, and I’m most interested in you are sitting in this unique spot observing higher ed and holding it accountable. And you are creating a historical record for us of all these issues that we wrestle with. Did you do that for a different industry before? Like, what made why did you pick higher ed? I’m just like, I’m there.

Doug Lederman: So, we, in last week’s episode, for those of you who watched it, Bridget, we watched Bridget’s graduation speech. And one of the things she said in there, one of her insights, was something that I imitate a lot or use a lot on my own, which is about the—accidental’s too strong a word because it sounds sort of like you were drifting and didn’t necessarily have certain things driving you forward. But I do think that many careers flow in very unpredictable directions. And I would say, and mine, and that’s why whenever I am talking to 20-somethings or teens or anybody, really, I encourage them to, you want to have a direction in mind, at least a maybe a North Star kind of direction, but not to think that the pathway there is going to be linear. So I had done journalism through high school and college. And when I came time to graduate, I was like many college graduates, scared kind of shitless to use the technical term. Wasn’t sure what to do. I got offered an admissions job, which I thought about taking, but decided to give journalism a whirl. Already then, this was mid-80s, to date myself a little, journalism was already an industry that was hard and challenging and not necessarily well paying. But I decided to give it a shot. So I got a, was lucky enough to get a job as a complete peon getting people coffee at the New York Times as a copyboy and then news clerk. And I sound like I’m being self-deprecating, but I literally was getting people coffee, among other things. And at a certain point, trying to do that job and then write on the side, the New York Times essentially told me after a sort of two years in their sort of training program that they didn’t think I was cut out to be to make it at the New York Times as a reporter. That stung. I didn’t necessarily agree, but it was sort of their judgment. So they said maybe you should go try and get a reporting job somewhere else. I did. Had two paths. Speaking of sort of the different ways life can take you, I could have gotten a job at a daily newspaper on the beach in North Carolina, in Wilmington, North Carolina, or a job at this strange publication called the Chronicle of Higher Education. And back then, if you went to a weekly newspaper, you know, sort of a trade publication, you were seen as sort of, it was risky. It was seen as sort of leaving daily journalism and daily local journalism, which is what everybody sort of tended to think was the gold standard. Anyway, I did that. Spent 17 years at the Chronicle, learned a lot about higher ed, but I certainly didn’t, my first job there was covering college athletics. I did not set out to be, going to your question, I did not really set out to be a higher education reporter. I got a job that I thought was interesting. It was related to this industry, covering the SMU football scandal and Jerry Tarkanian’s fight with Bob Maxson over who should run UNLV. Got a real window into some really interesting issues in higher ed and then made my way through the Chronicle for 17 years and became really passionate about higher education. To your point about, I very much believe higher education is important. And I believe that the role I play serves higher education, but in a very different way from all the people who appear on this program and lead institutions. And I, you know, we hold higher education, we try and improve higher education by sometimes holding it accountable, sometimes with some tough love, but also by helping the world understand it. And good, bad and ugly. And there’s, you know, I believe, continue to believe a lot more good than bad and not that much ugly, but there’s some. And I think we, our role is trying to improve this ecosystem, this industry, to use a phrase some of our listeners might be uncomfortable with, but I think it is one by making it better. So that was a long-winded answer your first question.

Bridget Burns: So the part that I want to share, so I’ve heard from others that you, your role at the Chronicle, was trying to push them to be digital and to do more rapid reporting. And then you are essentially the disruptor who leaves the Chronicle, co-found Inside Higher Ed. And now, because people are used to how the Chronicle is now, you actually achieved the mission from the outside. They’re doing exactly what you had wanted them to do. And if you hadn’t done that, I don’t, you know, who knows, right? And so I think that’s an interesting path to have gotten the change you were looking for, is that you could have.

Doug Lederman: Yeah, yeah. And listen, the Chronicle, the world, competition is an important factor and influence in our society. And the Chronicle, I think, probably would have changed inevitably eventually if we hadn’t done what we did. But it probably would have taken longer. And I think the world, I think, and again, I think higher education is better because we both exist and we push each other and the Chronicle’s gotten better. And we, you know, leaving to start Inside Higher Ed was risky. My late wife, who’s at the time, was a little nervous that I was giving up a steady income to try and start something. But we did it. I’m really proud of what we’ve done. And like I said, I think we have continued to carry out that sort of original mission of trying to improve this industry, this ecosystem through holding up good practices, sometimes calling out bad ones, helping politicians and others figure, you know, recognize its importance and also figure out ways to make it better.

Bridget Burns: Well, that’s super helpful because keep in mind, like, there’s a lot of people who don’t know of a era prior. They don’t know of any prior, and in fact don’t see this competition as like, no, you read both. And in fact, you can pitch your stories to both. And thank goodness there’s two publications because, you know, and then now there’s so many others that are popping up, little E, like newsletters and things like that. So there’s only going to be more. And yeah, it’s great.

Doug Lederman: Let me give you a funny story. I was at the Association for the Study of Higher Education probably, God, 10 years ago now. And I was talking to somebody who had just earned his PhD. And he was arguing with me about how long Inside Higher Ed had been around. And I think at that point it was seven years. And he was like, no, I said something about how we’d been around for seven years at that point. And he was like, no, you haven’t. I was like, excuse me. He said, oh, I just, as long as he had been in his doctoral program and been paying attention, we had been there. And I guess it had been six and a half years or whatever. And it was just funny because, you know, that was the first, those are the first people for whom we’d always been there. But a lot of people coming into higher education now, we’ve sort of always been there. And that’s kind of gratifying.

Bridget Burns: Wow. I think it’s valuable to have all the array of options. And I do think that moving to digital, like I’m looking forward to hearing what the next thing is. So let’s talk more about lessons though. Okay. So this entrepreneurial path. As a fellow entrepreneur who’s built something that didn’t exist, I know how terrifying and seat-of-your-pants and making it up and bad prototypes are required. The level of just, you know, literally thinking you’re going to possibly die at any moment is like that’s how I would describe entrepreneurship. So you go from a fairly historic, old industry, ossified, and you decide to start be an entrepreneur. What, can you talk about some of the first or the biggest lessons that you learned from being an entrepreneur that have influenced how you are as a leader or that like just really rocked you?

Doug Lederman: Yep. I mean, listen, your description was very apt for our experience. I, and I don’t think part of the reason I describe myself as an accidental entrepreneur is that some of the entrepreneurs I know start multiple things. They are sort of serial entrepreneurs. I’m, I’m so the opposite of that. I did my one thing and I’m way done with starting anything else. I mean, it is, it’s hard and it is scary as hell when you’ve got people depending on you and when you’re blazing something of a path, you don’t know if it’s the right one. And we made plenty of mistakes, lots of mistakes early on. And we had to pivot multiple times in our first year and a half. And, you know, one out of every 10 startups survives. So, and that’s, that’s really a lot of responsibility. Journalists have a responsibility, period. I mean, so, you know, I own, I take very seriously the role, the author, the power that journalists have. It’s, that’s also scary and not to be trifled with. And, um, and then when you throw on sort of responsibility to a bunch of employees and an audience that you are that comes to trust you. So I think that sort of the awesomeness of that responsibility sort of is with me every day. And it’s mostly a good force. I mean, it sometimes has me waking up very, very early in the morning and before I’m really ready and has, you know, has me worry about things. But I am also really gratified by sort of the work that we’ve been enabled, we’ve enabled this group of people out here—I’m sitting in my office—to do, and the ways that we’ve been able to sort of help higher education be better, I hope. In terms of what I’ve learned about it from doing it, I think there is enormous trying things, experimentation, pushing yourself into areas. I mean, I had never created a spread, a real, like a financial spreadsheet before I helped start Inside Higher Ed. And before we hired a CF chief financial officer, I was the one sort of doing our early books. And like, if you looked at my desk right now, you’d be kind of terrified about that. And the number of things I’ve, the ways I’ve had to stretch, you know, this, you probably know this, you probably feel this way too. You know, you are at a startup, you are everything from janitor to whatever, to whatever is seen as more elevated and important than janitor. But everything matters and you have to constantly keep learning. You have to constantly keep growing. And you have to sort of be willing to raise your hand and try things and test yourself. It’s hard, but I think it makes you a better person.

Bridget Burns: It does. But what resonates for me is the night terrors about people’s mortgages. Early on, I decided that the Alliance was going to, I wanted it to be different and I wanted to be the people who are in this organization were going to be the folks who we actually wanted to help and serve and who are connected. So my team has always been majority women and people of color. And so, and then I discover how many of them support their families. And boy, keeping, like, I just remember so many times where like there’s panic attacks about like all these people who are relying on that I will find a way to find the money, that I will find a way to get the right pitch to a funder that I, you know, it’s like the miracle that’s always, and it’s just, it never lets up because you, you never get to enjoy any of the good moments. You are always racing to the next one. So I completely empathize with that. But the what I find is always interesting is like, whatever got you to entrepreneurship, like whatever thing you were good enough at that gave you the idea, you don’t get to use those skills as an entrepreneur. Like if you’re a high-flying, like I’m guessing you’re an incredible editor. I’m guessing you’re a great journalist. You don’t get to work on being a journalist or an editor when you’re building a business. And so it is just like what got you here, you don’t get to use those skills, even though those are your natural strength. And you now have to learn budgets, HR, all of these terrible managing people, all the worst things.

Doug Lederman: Yeah, that’s the secret surprise. There’s a lot of, yes, there’s a lot of journalism, there’s a lot of Peter principle in journalism, particularly. Journalists who are good reporters often become editors. They may or may not, there’s a lot of overlap in those skills, but they are not fully consonant. And there are things that make you a good editor that you may not have as a reporter. And God knows when you move over and try and run something, those are not necessarily, but that’s the thing. I don’t know. We did this because we had a passion for what we—for the work, and we needed to try, and we thought there was another way of doing—continuing to do it, and the only way to get it done was to create something new. And so that was what we did. And so it was, again, it was very sort of in service of—like, I didn’t go choose to start a company. We chose—we started a company because we wanted to do this thing, and that’s ultimately—being driven by a passion and by something, a mission, really helps.

Bridget Burns: That’s great. So I want to, I want to use one of the questions that we always ask, which is around where you learned about leadership. So you’re now not a journalist, or you don’t get, you don’t get the luxury of being a journalist. You are a manager, you’re a boss, you’re the face, you’re the head honcho. So I want to know what did you learn more from good examples of leader? Did you ever have, did you have a good example that you that like showed you how to manage and lead? Or did you have bad examples that you were like, oh, I don’t want to do that?

Doug Lederman: I think probably like a lot of the people we have on this program, the answer is both. So management and leadership in journalism is definitely different. And I do have the luxury, although it means a lot, makes for a lot of work, that I do still get to edit and work with reporters. I mean, I wear multiple hats. And so it is knowing the business side is knowing we need to make it work so that we can continue to do the journalism and continue to do the stuff that I really love. That’s kind of how I think of what, why, why we exist. And so I have learned a lot from, I had some very good managers and editors. I’ve had some terrible ones. And I think that the main traits that I’ve learned, there’s a selflessness that is, I don’t know, a lot of people have it somewhat innately. I don’t know that I do, but I have learned there is a selflessness to leadership that if you, because you tend to, like it’s an interesting path in journalism. As a reporter, it is about you. Your byline is there. Becoming an editor, you largely disappear from what people see. Now, I go out talking and I still write, so I get some of that. But like, as an editor, it has to be a little selfless. And all the people on our, all the people who work at Inside Higher Ed who never get a byline, they never, there’s a selflessness to that. And I think leading ultimately is about figuring out how to make your the people around you better at what they do and giving them the sort of runway and the opportunity to do that. And that largely requires taking yourself out of it to some extent and clearing the way for them to shine. And so, and I had some people who were phenomenal at that. And then I definitely have seen some other people who couldn’t get out of the way and couldn’t move into the shadows or the not the spotlight. And so that’s, that’s sort of one of the most important traits to me that I’ve seen in the people who I really admire as leaders. Could probably go on, but what else? What else would we help you to know? Oh, you’re muted, Priddie.

Bridget Burns: Sorry, so in our last few minutes, what I want to talk about is your vantage point of higher ed. So you have seen this sector that doesn’t really behave like a sector. As much as we act like they’re a monolith or that there’s some centralizing factor, there isn’t. But you are bearing witness to all of and have seen all of the things and all the trends and the challenges. So I’m curious about if there was a behavior that you have noticed as the editor of Inside Higher Ed that you think might be getting in the way for higher ed. I’m curious what that is and what changes you’d like to see.

Doug Lederman: So yeah, I mean, one of the sort of anybody who’s heard me do a webcast or talk or I make a big deal out of the fact that we do not have a system of higher education. We have a maybe it’s an ecosystem. I think that’s the closest I can come. It’s a constellation of a lot of mostly independent actors. And the challenge is that it’s very difficult to get sort of systemic movement in a non-system. And so there are some things that we clearly, as a collection of institutions, frankly, as a collection of providers, including non-things that aren’t colleges and universities, but are trying to educate and train America’s people, both for work and for life. That whole collective, there are certain things that it would really help us to all do together, but that’s not how we work. And so this ecosystem responds to a set of rewards, a set of incentives, a set of threats, a set of laws and regulations and all these other things. And a lot of the things that as a collection we need to do would benefit greatly from more interoperability, from more cooperation, from more collaboration. I continue to, and yet a lot of the rewards don’t, and systems don’t point in that direction, don’t reward you for doing it. I mean, your work is one of the emergent examples of things that I think are trying to bring institutions together to work collectively. If I could change one thing, it’s the sort of not-made-here problem that higher education has. The sort of tendency to think that we have to, the way we do it is best. We can’t work with them because they’re a competitor. If we share our weaknesses, we’re going to be, it’s going to come back to bite us. We can do this on our own, and the way we do it is best. I think that’s probably been more destructive and damaging and limiting to anything in higher education than anything else I can think of. And I, I don’t know, it’s not an easy fix. I hope I think there are some interesting things happening now that sort of change the reward, potentially change the reward system, that reward institutions more for being accessible and equitable, et cetera, than for being prestigious, all that kind of stuff.

Bridget Burns: So I would, yes, and in that you actually, so I completely agree. And I think about this a lot. From my vantage point, I observe how people are kind of players on a stage and they’re responding to the direction. They’re responding to what gets attention, what gets praised, what gets rewarded, what gets punished, what gets ignored. And it literally feels like a theater at times. And I’ve said this to the undersecretary, and I’ve said this to only recently, that and I would say this to you because you control one of the very few, one of the things that is really important that there is scarcity around. You control the microphone. We control the microphone, right? And that’s why I’m always very like when people pitch to be on the show, I want to look at what kind of how they are leading that institution, what kind of institution, what are they doing. But there is a very clear, if there is a scarcity around a thing, there’s not enough to go around, we need a better way of allocating that resource. And I would argue that there is a very clear divide in the field between leaders, if you’re going to give a microphone or an opportunity to, there are leaders who are only interested in expanding market share, and there are leaders who are actually providing industry leadership. And the latter is what we need more of. And the latter, you can see those people because they are hosting other campuses to come tour. They are trying to share their stuff, even maybe not perfectly. I mean, I can’t go to ASU without there being a campus visiting them every single time. There’s always, and they’re trying to, you know, here, look behind the walls, and you can see all this, right? And, and, you know, and sometimes it’s hard to copy, to take things from schools. So maybe it’s about translation, but trying, at least trying to give this stuff away. And I would say that there are certain institutions and individuals who I can tell they aren’t actually interested in sharing any of what they’ve learned. They just want to gobble up more students and they just want more market share. And I think that we have to develop a bit of a conscience here and like stop that because there are thousands of institutions. We need to serve millions more students. And this parochial, adorable thing you pointed out has got to stop. And we need to elevate. And if you’re going to give an opportunity, just give it to those who are actually, they’re opening the best. That’s my pitch.

Doug Lederman: Hear, hear.

Bridget Burns: Okay, well, good. So this all was orchestrated so that I could make that. Well, Doug, this has been super helpful. I want to just conclude with: do you want to share any other advice that has been valuable to you in your career?

Doug Lederman: I’d probably end up repeating a little bit what I said before, which is don’t assume that the other person, the level of experimentation, the willingness to try new things, not being afraid of the unknown. I think there’s this, I mean, for all the anxiety you and I were talking about that keeps us up at night. I don’t know, certainty is, I think, a risky proposition. And it is, I tend to think about, especially people getting started. If it always looks like the person over there has a plan. And I probably, just to share one experience, some of you may know that my first wife died at 51, completely, you know, no reason in the world she should have in terms of risk factors and everything else. And if that doesn’t teach you about the unpredictability of life and the lack of a how planning, you know, planning, it’s good to have direction and it’s good to know sort of roughly where you want to go, but you cannot, you cannot see what’s around the corner. And all you can do is be driven by some values and some, hopefully some purpose, and then be willing to experiment and to try new things as they come to you and to don’t and to not be afraid that that’s something unpredictable. It might be bad. But it’s you just, you just, you can’t plan too much and expect it to actually happen. And I think it’s, I just, that’s probably the lesson that I have probably most learned in my life. And it guides me in my work also.

Bridget Burns: That’s great. I would, I think the tattoo for that is “ready is a lie”. You never, it’s never, it’s never as polished and perfect as you think. So, well, thank you for sharing that. And yeah, I would just say that I’d always known you as Doug Lederman, the guy who would occasionally call with questions to interview who I knew from your work at IHE. But it was actually when your wife passed that we became close friends because you were so vulnerable in your grieving journey and you were so open in a way that just it made it so that other people, I mean, just really you opened up to the world in a way that I feel, I hope that you’ve experienced that, that your relationships have gone deeper and that others have communicated just how important it was that you were so open and you gave people the opportunity to kind of bear witness to this great love.

Doug Lederman: So, and I’ve tried to pass that on. I think it’s a weird gift, not something I would choose for people, but it changes you and I think it makes you stronger and hopefully better.

Bridget Burns: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And we will next time put you back off the hot seat and we will host many presidents coming forward. We have lots of exciting guests booked up ahead. So for those of you at home, we hope this has been inspiring, give you a little different perspective of the industry kind of adjacent to higher ed. And we will see you soon.