LETTER FROM THE DEAN
A Lover's Judgment

BY TOM GOLDSTEIN

The genius of CJR's staying power is its location -- inside a strong, well-regarded journalism school, part of a great university. The magazine inhabits the best of two worlds: it derives its authority from a rock-solid parent institution. But it is sufficiently autonomous that it can pay little heed to that very institution.

Being part of a nonprofit institution does have its drawbacks. Money has been a constant worry for the review, whose first year budget was projected at $21,000, less than 2 percent of what it is currently. For the first third of its existence, this penury was self-imposed. Like Consumer Reports, the review accepted no advertising, because of fear of taint. It was just wrong, the founders felt, to accept money from newspapers, magazines, or broadcasters who some day might be subject to criticism. (In the last two thirds of its existence, advertisements from news organizations have dribbled in, and there is no evidence that the review ever pulled a punch to please an advertiser, real or potential.)

What seems quaint and perverse in today's world of fundraising is one rationale that the faculty endorsed for creating such a review. Without such a magazine, they felt that they might get flabby, too willing to accept the sleepy status quo of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In seeking money for the school or securing jobs for its graduates, the school might too easily forgive transgressions by the press.

The school, wrote Richard Baker, a quite sensible faculty member, would be tempted "into a kind of sycophantic posture. It wishes to rid itself of this posture, feeling it will gain more respect from the role of constructive critic."
In balance, the review has strengthened the school significantly, as Baker predicted, even if it is not beloved.

It has annoyed many. In her memoir, Personal History, Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, made a cryptic reference to "the fucking Columbia Journalism Review." But, notably, she did agree to serve on the school's Board of Visitors, and various foundations associated with her newspaper have given generously to the school.

And, despite the drumbeat of criticism targeted against his publication, Punch Sulzberger of The New York Times spearheaded a drive in the 1990s to rescue the review when its finances were such that it was on the endangered list. Even though it was number one in its category, the dismal options seemed to be to sell the magazine or fold it. It survived, thanks to Sulzberger, Dean Joan Konner, a group of wise advisers, a few foundations, and the university, whose representatives gave the magazine leeway in paying back a hefty deficit.
Forty years after it began, the review is not all it might be and remains very much a work in progress.

It is surely not as integrated into the fabric of the school as its founders -- or this dean -- would wish. The faculty plays a small, sometimes invisible, role in the publication of the magazine.

Moreover, the review's strength, its location in a university, may also be a weakness. In this comfortable nonprofit setting, it surely has taken too few risks over the years.

When the review began, it had the field of media criticism to itself. Forty years later, the media environment is suffused with commentary and reporting on the media, and the precise role of the review remains elusive. On its tenth anniversary, then Dean Elie Abel described it as "a journal less scholarly than some but more readable than most." But he never did define its role. And that definition has eluded a series of deans, publishers, and editors.

It is a review, but it has no easily apparent model. It does not resemble the old Saturday Review, which was still publishing at the time of its birth, or the Columbia Law Review, with its student editors. It is neither The New York Review of Books nor The New York Times News of the Week in Review.
It constantly renews itself, and now has fresh energy under the leadership of its publisher-editor, David Laventhol. At its best, it remains a conscience of journalism, the ideal in the back of a journalist's mind, who thinks, "What would the Columbia Journalism Review say if I did this?"

Praise from the review continues to be meaningful, and its criticisms are taken seriously.

Of all the many early formulations for the review (and rest assured, before e-mail, there were scores of such attempts at writing down its mission) the one I like best comes from Dick Baker. It should be, he said, "a friendly critic, a lover's judgment."
 
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Tom Goldstein is dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.