As astute Gadfly readers and Fordham watchers have no doubt noticed, in recent months we've introduced ever more media products for your education policy pleasure. First (after Gadfly itself) came our Education Gadfly Show podcast (two full years ago!). Earlier this spring, came Fordham Factor, a regular video feature of news and analysis. Then came our blog, Flypaper, which has been termed "hyperkinetic" by more than a few of its competitors. And now we've updated our website.
Fordham, in other words, is modifying, modernizing, and amplifying the ways we communicate with the world. We're planting our electronic feet in the 21st Century and reaching our electronic arms into cyberspace.
Why? Because communications itself is changing. Daily newspapers are slowly dying. (Both the New York Times and the Washington Post recently laid off newsroom staff; the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are on a starvation diet; and many lesser papers are running on fumes.) Network television has all but been supplanted by cable and satellite, just as analog TV is giving way to digital. Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh gets 20 million listeners a day. People are reading books on "Kindles"--and deciding which books to read by searching on Amazon. The news cycle lasts about 15 minutes but keeps cycling 24/7. (Hence the news you find on the Wall Street Journal's website at 8 a.m. is newer than what's in the hard-copy paper that landed on your grandmother's porch a couple hours earlier.) People communicate by cell phone--lots of young people no longer even bother with landlines--and text messaging. E-mail has largely replaced traditional letter writing. FedEx has largely replaced the post office. And on and on.
I won't say I welcome all these developments or even participate in some of them. (To the exasperation of my young staff--or maybe their relief--I seldom listen to our own podcast because I prefer mute computers. I don't text-message on my cell phone, indeed I don't even like my cell phone.) But then I've still got at least one foot planted in the 20th Century. Then again, I'm not the point. The point is that a think tank like Fordham, a discoverer of (we hope) important truths, a source of (we hope) provocative analysis and a combatant in the war of education ideas, can no longer accomplish its own purposes or do what good it's capable of for American kids by confining itself to traditional print-on-paper. The 1990s model of "publish a study, hope the major dailies cover it, and send hard copies to 3,000 friends and influentials," is about as old-fashioned as the newspaper economic model known as "get your revenue from the classified section."
Now you must requeset a "hard copy" of our most recent study or we won't send you one. Why slaughter more trees and burden more shelves with volumes that many in our audience would just as soon read on screen or print out (maybe just portions) on their own equipment? Why spend scarce dollars on envelopes and postage to send people things they don't really want?
Our goal through all of this is to maintain the essential nature, familiar worldview, and fearless, questing, serious-but-irreverent touch that you've come to expect--we hope--from Fordham, and to maintain our quality standards, too. Nothing substantive is really changing. But how we communicate with you and the world needed to change, is changing, and will continue to change.
We'd welcome your feedback and advice on any of this. We want to know if we're striking the right balance. (Different people will have different views on this.) Are we, in fact, maintaining the best of yesterday's Fordham while keeping fit company with tomorrow's? Tell us what you think. Meanwhile, thanks for accompanying us into the 21st Century.