‘One Last Time’

RT: When you all started IHE, the place you’d left was the only game in town for covering higher ed nationally. What was the need you saw that wasn’t being served? 

DL: The Chronicle of Higher Education (we can name it!) did lots of good work that many people in higher ed didn’t see either because (a) they couldn’t afford the increasingly expensive subscription price or (b) they felt excluded from the Chronicle’s orbit, which at the time focused on research universities, the tenured faculty, and the Northeast. We thought community college employees, adjunct professors, grad students, and others were just as entitled to high-quality news and commentary, and we worked internally to try to get the Chronicle to serve them better. The powers that be there weren’t ready to change, so we decided to see if we could figure out another way to do that. It wasn’t easy, but we made it happen.

RT: How has the higher ed media landscape changed in the last two decades? 

DL: It has both expanded and contracted. Many more publications cover higher education than once was the case, although many of them remain focused on a narrow slice of highly selective, wealthy colleges and universities, which helps drive public perceptions that higher ed is unaffordable and inaccessible. At the same time, the media landscape as a whole has become much more fragmented and fragile, such that many people get their news about higher education—as about other things—from sources that have a clear political perspective or ideological bias.

RT: What’s the readership of IHE? 

DL: Depends how you count. More than 250,000 receive our Daily News Update each weekday, and another 50,000+ receive our weekly newsletter. We have about 1.5 million unique users come to the website each month. And that audience is more diverse—by job title, institution type, demographics, age—than any other higher ed media publication. Truly a big tent.

RT: What are you most proud of? 

DL: My children. Oh, you mean related to Inside Higher Ed (my other child)? I’m proud of the many thousands of people we’ve helped do their jobs better because they can see around corners at what might be coming at them tomorrow or next month; the professors and administrators we’ve helped get better jobs; the inequities and unfairnesses we’ve helped address by shining a light on and prompting institutions and governments to rethink. And at Inside Higher Ed itself, the many talented people we’ve hired and nurtured, who’ve made us (and sometimes the journalism organizations they’ve gone on to) better.

RT: What do you wish you’d been able to do? 

DL: Fix all of higher education’s problems.

RT: Many presidents complain that we don’t cover good news. What do you say to that? 

DL: I understand their view: Lots of things that are deeply important to them and their constituents just aren’t stories for us, as a national publication trying to cover an entire industry. And yes, situations that involve conflict, or at least tension, between principles or constituencies can be more likely than situations without any of that to make for compelling journalism. Inside Higher Ed is fortunate not to be wholly dependent on getting the highest possible levels of traffic (as many publications are) so we don’t need to follow the “if it bleeds, it leads” approach to journalism. We cover the stories that we think are most important to help people who work in higher education (and care about it) understand what’s happening—and that’s a mix of “good” and whatever the opposite of that is.

RT: Two years ago, when we cooked up the idea for this newsletter, the IHE survey of presidents had just come out, and you turned into a jumping bean because so many presidents said they were optimistic about their institution’s financial future. You wondered if they were lying to us or lying to themselves. How are you feeling about that now? 

DL: I still believe too many institutional leaders are sugarcoating their situations in ways that may make them less likely to act decisively and consider meaningful—and potentially difficult—changes that would better their colleges and universities for the long term. It is one thing for leaders to project confidence and be cheerleaders to keep their employees, students, and other constituents feeling upbeat. That is part of their jobs. But so, too, is truth telling and pushing their institutions to adapt to the current moment—and that may mean acknowledging that the institution needs to be smaller, or less focused on research, than it historically has been.

RT: Another thing that drives you nuts is when presidents say, “We just need to tell our stories better.” What should they be saying publicly? 

DL: “We are important institutions that do a lot of good work, are hugely important to our communities, and make individuals and society better in numerous ways. But we can be better, and we know we need to prove it. So here is the broad menu of things we believe we do (fill in the specific blanks for your institution, related to education, training, research, community development, and the like); here are the ways we can measure or otherwise prove we’re accomplishing each of those missions; and we’re going to update our progress in attaining those goals to try to regain your confidence and show that we’re not so arrogant to think we don’t need to get better.”

RT: You went to a fancy-pants private boys’ school and graduated from an Ivy. Talk about elitism in higher ed? 

DL: Of all the critiques being leveled against higher education right now—lack of affordability and value, liberal political bias and indoctrination, inadequately preparing graduates for work and life—I’d rate the continued inequity of access to higher education as the most serious. The incentive structures still reward institutions that enroll rich people over poor people, students prepared in fancy-pants schools (to use your term) over underresourced ones, and colleges that do the heavy lifting in fulfilling higher education’s ultimate mission—being an engine of socioeconomic advancement and an “equalizer” in our inequitable society—continue to get short shrift.

RT: Which issues are you personally interested in and where do you now want to direct your prodigious energy, big honkin’ brain, and now-healthy heart? 

DL: I’ve spent the last 38 years (gulp) trying to make higher education better through the tools available to me as a journalist (and founder of a publication): storytelling, spotlighting excellence, and holding accountable those who $#@$ mess up; helping people understand a complex ecosystem of institutions, people and communities; and co-founding a publication that will do all those things for decades to come. I continue to believe both in the power of postsecondary education and training and in its ability and need to be better, and I’m excited to spend the next stretch of my career working with groups of colleges, nonprofit groups, and others committed to doing their important work better. That can take lots of forms, but I expect it to involve getting my hands directly into the work in ways that I often couldn’t as a journalist at a distance.

RT: How should people who want to be in touch reach you? 

DL: Send up the bat signal. This will probably evolve as I figure out what work I want to do, and with whom. But for now, best ways are probably my personal email or, I hate to say it, LinkedIn.

RT: What are you going to miss most about leaving IHE? (Other than me.) 

DL: You’re first, second, and third, obviously. But seriously, I loved that we’ve done this newsletter together, and it is one of the many things about my 20 years at Inside Higher Ed that I’m both proud to have had a hand in creating and that have helped me develop some new skill or knowledge or understanding of myself. [Even though I haven't done as much writing as you nagged wanted—ed's addition.] IHE has been one big learning experience for me, as a journalist, accidental entrepreneur, and colleague. The latter points to what I’ll miss most: the people. Those I’ve worked with over the years, and the sources and collaborators and readers and critics who made our work possible. Catch you in my next act.

RT: Thanks for picking up your pen to share your hard-earned wisdom One Last Time. Now, George Washington’s Doug Lederman’s going home.