Publication analysis
About the publication
Title: The Chronicle of Higher Education
ISSN: 0009-5982(Print) and 1931-1362 (Online)1
Website: http://chronicle.com/
Purpose, objective, or mission: “The Chronicle of Higher Education has the nation’s largest newsroom dedicated to covering colleges and universities. As the unrivaled leader in higher education journalism, we serve our readers with indispensable real-time news and deep insights, plus the essential tools, career opportunities, and knowledge to succeed in a rapidly changing world.” 2
“Higher-ed professionals rely on The Chronicle for unbiased, engaging content to help their students, institutions, and careers.” 3
Target audience: Higher education faculty and administration.4
Publisher: Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc.5
Peer reviewed? No. 6
Type: Civilian; though it does sometimes carry articles of interest to or authored by librarians, it is mainly for the general administration and faculty. 7
Medium: Print and online.8
Content: The website contains news, featured stories, opinion pieces, advice columns, job listings, and career-building tools such as online CV management and salary databases. The print magazine includes news, jobs, and The Chronicle Review. 9
The Chronicle Review is a weekly magazine of ideas. We publish essays, review essays, book reviews, and reporting on academic, intellectual, and cultural affairs. 10
Frequency of publication: The Chronicle updates its website daily and is available bi-weekly in print. 11
About the publication’s submission guidelines
Location of submission guidelines: https://www.chronicle.com/page/contact-us
Types of contributions accepted: The Chronicle welcomes correspondence, manuscripts, and proposals for articles from our readers. Articles and letters may appear in our print edition, our website, or both. We publish essays, review essays, book reviews, and reporting on academic, intellectual, and cultural affairs. We consider unsolicited submissions; however, please read The Review before submitting your work to familiarize yourself with what we publish. 12
Commentary and Views
“We consider articles or proposals for articles that express an opinion on issues and policies affecting higher education as well as those that explore, through the author’s personal experience, some aspect of the larger academic community. All Commentary and Views submissions should be 1,000 to 1,200 words and should contain URL links to source material for facts and figures mentioned in the essay.” 13
Advice
“We publish first-person and advice columns on topics including the job market and the hiring process in academe; the graduate-school experience, tenure and promotion, the administrative career path, and career options for Ph.D.’s; professional challenges in research, publishing, teaching, and service work; academic culture; and balancing work and family. Essays should be 1,000 to 1,500 words and written in a conversational, journalistic style.” 14
Letters
“Please make your points as concisely as possible. We will not publish letters longer than 350 words, and all letters will be edited to conform to our style.” 15
“The Chronicle welcomes news pitches that pertain to higher education, but note that in a typical week, our reporting staff receives hundreds of them. We’re writing for a national audience, so a successful pitch will not only point out a compelling local story, but will also be relevant to administrators, professors, and higher-education observers across the country.” 16
Submission and review process: The decision to accept or reject a manuscript rarely takes more than a week. All accepted essays and articles are rigorously edited and fact-checked. Authors have the opportunity to review and approve a manuscript before it’s published. The editors of The Review will decide where and when the piece is published, with some articles appearing only online.17
Editorial tone: Journalistic and conversational.
Style guide used: None specified. “While we cover the academy, we are not a scholarly journal. Essays should be written in a clear, informal style free of jargon and accessible to nonspecialists.” 18
Conclusion: Evaluation of publication’s potential for LIS authors
Because of the publication frequency and the audience that this newspaper serves, this is a good place for the new author to publish. You don’t necessarily have to work in academe, but it helps. Academic librarians, along with information professionals with an interest in education or pedagogy, would be welcomed here. This publication is an informal counterpart to academic journals, a sort of cocktail hour where academics can mull over or vent about relevant issues within and outside of their field. Interested authors will be intelligent, educated and independent thinkers with something interesting to say.
Also, the wide variety of pieces found in the The Chronicle makes it very easy to find something to write about that, if written in a clear prose style, has a decent chance of being published. Book reviews are a natural, but the longer commentary pieces on some topical tempest occurring in the academy are always a good bet. Because so many write under pen names, the odds of a new author being accepted seem high.
Because of its eclectic content, others working in academe will also find something interesting in The Chronicle of Higher Education. While this publication is definitely written for those with careers in higher education, LIS authors with an interest in teaching will find something of interest here as well.
Audience analysis
About the publication’s readers
Publication circulation: “Our award-winning journalism is well-known at colleges and universities: More than 2 million people visit our website every month, and 1,650 organizations across the country make our journalism available to every one of their employees and students.”19
Audience location and language or cultural considerations: Though The Chronicle claims to be the main source of the goings on in higher education, it does tend to concentrate on the English-speaking world of the United States and sometimes Canada and the United Kingdom.20
Reader characteristics: According to The Chronicle’s advertising materials, “86% of readers are decision makers and influencers at their institutions. 54% are in senior leadership positions at their institutions. 92% hold a master’s degree or higher. 60% have a doctorate degree. Readership includes 90% of the buying power in all of U.S. higher education and 90% of the top 300 research institutions in the U.S.” 21
Knowledge of LIS subject matter: While the readership may garnish accolades in the higher education arena, they may still lack knowledge in LIS jargon, processes, and trends/innovations.
Conclusion: Analysis of reader characteristics and their potential impact on authors
The readers are well educated and very interested in their profession and the culture of academe as a whole. Writing for The Chronicle would be an excellent way to increase understanding of library issues (such as information literacy) and market the library’s relevance to other professions. Intellectual and academic freedom, new issues in purchasing and providing content such as e-journals, information literacy, and services to disadvantaged groups would be other issues that would resonate with this readership.
An LIS professional writing for this audience would not have much additional work to do, so long as he or she has something interesting and informed to write about. While this is not the place for scholarly work, readers do enjoy learning about new research or reading critiques of articles they’ve read in an entertaining format. They want to read shop talk, stay informed in their field, and feel connected to issues in the larger world.
This would be a good place to write an opinion piece about an LIS issue that touches on education, society or academe, or review a work that touches on these same issues. Todd Gilman, Librarian for Literature in English at Yale University and a Lecturer at San Jose State University, has published articles about distance education, special collections, research skills and information literacy, and other topics that connect libraries and academe in The Chronicle.
Last updated: November 7, 2020
References
- The Chronicle of Higher Education, Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory, accessed November 7, 2020, http://ulrichsweb.serialssolutions.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/search/1601911248
- “About Us.”, www.chronicle.com, accessed November 7, 2020, https://www.chronicle.com/page/about-us/
- “Advertising.”, chronicle.com, accessed November 7, 2020, https://marketingsolutions.chronicle.com/
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- “Contact Us.”, Chronicle.com, accessed November 7, 2020, https://www.chronicle.com/page/contact-us
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