UPDATE: Lemann Responds to CJR Daily Editors Quitting As Funds for Web Site Slashed

By: E&P Staff Steve Lovelady, managing editor of CJRDaily.org, a Web site for The Columbia Journalism Review, quit Thursday after Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia University?s Graduate School of Journalism, informed him he was cutting the site?s budget nearly in half.

His deputy, Brian Keefer, also resigned. Lovelady, 63, is the former managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

?It?s a fundamental policy dispute about the allocation of resources,? Lovelady told The New York Times. ?Nick has decided to spend the money on a direct-mail campaign for the magazine, in hopes of saving subscription revenue. To me, that sounds like something out of the 19th century. He?s taking the one, fresh, smart thing he has and gutting it.?

Lemann told the Times, according to the paper, "that the amount of money raised for the Web site could not sustain the online staff, and he was using a portion of the magazine?s discretionary money for a direct-mail campaign to try to increase subscriptions to the print magazine." The magazine comes out six times a year.

The CJR Daily site started in 2004 as an election year monitor, and then stayed on, with a staff of eight. The magazine has another site where the print product and other material can be found.

Jay Rosen, the well-known blogger and journalism professor at New York University, told the Times the move was a ?strategic error? and that the review should drop its print version to reduce costs and go entirely online. ?I?m sure their current subscribers want it in print, but you have to look at your potential subscribers,? he said. ?Since the profession is going toward the Web, in the long run, that?s the smarter move.?

Lemann later released this statement:

"In 2004, thanks to the generosity of a consortium of foundations, we were given a wonderful opportunity to start a Web site called Campaign Desk -- a branch of Columbia Journalism Review that monitored the press coverage of the last presidential campaign. When the campaign ended, we turned Campaign Desk into an ongoing, general-purpose site called CJRDaily. We did this on a wing and a prayer, because we did not have funding commitments in hand to keep the staff at the size it was during the campaign indefinitely.

"We have had considerable success in fundraising for Columbia Journalism Review, but not so much that we can keep CJRDaily at the same editorial budget it has had, so we are going to reduce that budget, with regret. But even after the reduction, CJR will have the most substantial Web reporting and writing staff of any publication its size that I know of. We are making that commitment because we believe so deeply in the journalistic promise of the Web, even though, as everybody in journalism knows, it does not yet produce revenues commensurate with its quality. Our goal for Columbia Journalism Review, under the leadership of Victor Navasky, it that it be, in print and on the Web, as strong a media monitor as we can make it on the resources we have.

"I understand Steve Lovelady and Bryan Keefer's reasons for leaving, although I wish they would not, and I am grateful to them for getting CJR's Web version off to such a strong start."