How the Media Views Community Colleges
National journalists, Ben Wildavsky, education editor of US News & World Report, and Mary Beth Marklein, education writer for USA Today, joined David Conklin, president of Dutchess Community College in New York, for a discussion on How the Media View Community Colleges.
The October 30 session was prompted by a Washington Post piece by Jay Mathews entitled "Why I Ignore Community Colleges." To Mathews, community colleges are once removed from higher education. Mary Beth Marklein said that indeed it was true that most reporters do not tend to think of community colleges when they think of higher education. Ben Wildavsky agreed.
To foster better relations with the press, Marklein suggested that community colleges be more proactive in true news situations such as Hurricane Katrina. The four-year colleges reached out to USA Today about their dire circumstances whereas the community colleges were virtually silent about their situations. In her experience, she said with total candor, community colleges are naïve about the press. They do not understand the importance of reporters' deadlines or the difference between a hard news and a soft news story.
Wildavsky said, "Community colleges are, by nature, local, not national institutions." The preponderance of their coverage is going to be in the local, not the national media. Indeed, both reporters maintained that community colleges should learn to communicate more and better with their local media.
On a few occasions US News has become interested in the story of a two-year institution. One case, Wildavsky said, was that of Santa Monica Community College, which produced an unusually high number of transfer students. It seemed to be a trend and it interested the magazine.
When President Conklin mentioned that the Chronicle of Higher Education had done a special issue about community colleges being "on a roll," he elicited little response from either Marklein or Wildavsky.
Essentially, the two journalists said they need an element of surprise and freshness. When community colleges start training teachers, Wildavsky added—entering four-year college territory—that would get his attention.
