Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman had covered higher education for years but on May 30, 2003, they found out that – in journalism – there’s no such thing as tenure.
On that day, both Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman, the editor and managing editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, announced they were leaving the paper, where they had both worked for nearly 20 years. They did not explain why.
But now they are back on the beat, competing through a start-up with their former employer. Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman, along with Kathlene Collins, who worked at The Chronicle for 20 years, introduced last month an online publication, insidehighered.com. In doing so, Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman, who are both editors, and Ms. Collins, who is the publisher, are trying to become the first significant competition in higher education publishing since the intellectual-if-gossipy Lingua Franca folded in 2001.
The scuttlebutt is that VCs are all looking for content plays now, and entrepreneurial editors are more than happy to give them investment opportunities.]]>