Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Winter 2006
THE GERM OF AN IDEA
In 1956, a group of 19 editors of university publications from prestigious
colleges and universities across the country met to discuss how they could
expand their coverage to go beyond reporting on activities on their individual
campuses. The editors decided to produce a supplement for alumni magazines
that took a broader, national approach to reporting news on higher education.
Corbin Gwaltney, then editor of The Johns Hopkins Magazine for alumni, wrote the first issue along with a colleague. “We were still editing our alumni magazines,” Gwaltney says, adding that they wrote the new collaborative publication “with the little fingers on our left hands.” The original group of alumni editors supported the publication in several ways and pledged a percentage of the budget for one issue. Recalling those mid-20th century days, Gwaltney says, “We were really lucky; we had no idea of the personal legal liability we were assuming if we had been sued for anything. We just published it as a group of people, with not even the official backing, in most cases, of our universities.” It was also a different age with regard to printing processes and the facilities of the Internet and overnight delivery services. “Those were the days of hot metal type,” Gwaltney remembers. “We traveled to Chicago over three consecutive weeks to read proofs.”
The supplement, first published in 1958, was bought in bulk by alumni magazines. Each of the magazines had different size specifications, so the insert was printed in three different editions, which presented complicated logistical problems for the small staff. Gwaltney says his group was amazed that they sold 1.5 million copies of their fledgling publication. In September 1958, Carnegie Corporation of New York appropriated $50,000 to the American Alumni Council for the so-called “Moonshooter” report (a reference to Sputnik) to help support the second and third years of its publication, allocating the first portion of $12,500 in November. However, the publication became financially solvent in its second year, did not spend these funds and returned the grant.
GETTING STARTED
After publishing their report for a few years, Gwaltney and others embarked
on a new endeavor, forming a nonprofit educational group, Editorial Projects
for Education (now Editorial Projects in Education, Inc. or EPE). They
published a newsletter, The EPE 15 Minute Report, which was supported
by a Carnegie Corporation grant of $68,500 in April 1964. Designed with
an austere, one-color look, except for a red slash in the letterhead,
The EPE 15 Minute Report, which was intended for trustees, was
also read by college and university administrators; it was usually issued
every two weeks, but publication was delayed at times to allow coverage
of a newsworthy development or an issue was rushed into print to capture
a news-breaking event.
At the time, other newspapers covered some stories about education and there were a few trade bulletins devoted to higher education issues, but no publication focused on higher education exclusively. The editors of The EPE 15 Minute Report also noted that the federal government, under the Johnson administration, was getting involved in the higher education arena in a way it never had previously, helping to make higher education financially accessible to low-income youth through aid programs to colleges, government loans and grants to students and federal scholarships.
The grant proposal submitted to Carnegie Corporation included a presentation for the Chronicle that was substantially different from the version that ultimately was published. “The prototype was a beautifully written, beautifully laid out magazine called Renaissance,” recalls Margaret E. Mahoney, who was then a program officer with Carnegie Corporation. “But it was too sleek, too much like a magazine.” Instead a newspaper-style format was developed, so that the publication would fit more easily into the concept of a publication that could be comfortably read in any venue, including in transit, on a bus or plane. The first eight-page issue of the Chronicle featured stories about the 1966 election, including articles about the new Congress and the changes in higher education likely to occur under the leadership of the newly elected governor of California, Ronald Reagan. The front page of that issue hangs on a wall of the Chronicle’s Washington, D.C. offices.