Scott Jaschik '85, editor of the Web-based Inside Higher Ed, gets more than 100 pitches a day for stories from colleges and universities. Yet, very few are from community colleges. He wants to change that, but not by getting their press releases.

"Your institutions are as public as any institutions, more so. And part of being a public college is letting people know what's going on," said Jaschik, speaking Aug. 9 to community college educators at the Institute for Community College Development's (ICCD) annual conference at Cornell. "You guys get the short end of the stick, less money. And it's because they don't know what's going on with your institutions."

ICCD, which is a partnership between the State University of New York and Cornell, provides leadership development programming and research support for community college administrators.

It was the issues of support and public awareness that drew more than 50 community college presidents, vice presidents, provosts, deans and other administrators from as far away as Spokane Community College in Washington and Grant MacEwan College in Alberta, Canada, to the conference, titled "A New Era of Accountability."

The lack of community college press coverage is a real problem, said Jaschik, a former editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education and an authority on higher education issues. "It's a bad thing for American education that there's so much ignorance about community colleges," he said. He cited two reasons:

Jaschik suggested that colleges stop sending press releases since, he said, most are discarded: "The best PR people don't even send press releases. They work the phones. And so many stories we get from two sentence e-mails."

Pitches for stories, he said, should be issue-oriented. An ideal story involves a campus event that is clearly tied to such relevant issues, for example, as funding trends or demographic changes in higher education.

Jaschik also encouraged the administrators to be accessible. "If I decide there is an important story, I should be able to get to a relevant person within four hours," he said. "I can at Harvard. I should be able to at Adirondack [Community College]. And that includes weekends."

Jaschik also advised the attendees to view press coverage as part of their job and, as such, to take the time to build positive relationships with members of the press.

"It's all about relationship building," he said. To drive this home, Jaschik ended his talk by distributing his business card and encouraging the administrators to meet with him over coffee when they were in the D.C. area.

Christin Munsch is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.