Editor Rieder leaves AJR for USA Today

As recent personnel changes indicate, the nation’s journalism reviews are no more immune to musical chairs and fiscal hard times than are the rest of the news media.

Last month capitalnewyork.com reported Cyndi Stivers’ departure as Columbia Journalism Review’s editor after she’d been in that position for fewer than two years. She now is editor-in-chief at AOL.com. Too, the website reported the firings of longtime executive editor Mike Hoyt and Justin Peters, CJR’s editor-at-large.

And American Journalism Review, which the Washington Post reported six years ago as having a $200,000 budget deficit that was threatening to shutter the review, announced a few days ago the departure of longtime editor Rem Rieder. After 22 years spearheading AJR, Rieder announced he was leaving to become USA Today’s media editor. For the past few years, Rieder has been AJR’s only fulltime editorial employee. According to jimromenesko.com, AJR has named Leslie Walker and Sean Mussenden as interim editors.

Belt-tightening in higher education is making it more difficult for journalism reviews to stay in the black while they try to deliver media news to their print and online audiences. Columbia University’s Journalism School publishes CJR, and AJR is published by the University of Maryland Foundation in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

As also is the case with Gateway Journalism Review, published by Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s College of Mass Communications and Media Arts, the nation’s three longtime journalism reviews are unable to keep afloat through subscriptions alone. And this at a time when it is increasingly competitive to secure monies from foundations and other funding sources.