The Columbia Journalism Review ranks among the 10 most influential news media in America, a national survey of opinion leaders has found.
The study places CJR eighth in influence, in the company of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and along side PBS's NewsHourWith Jim Lehrer and the Journal of the American Medical Association. It was based on a survey of more than 1,600 prominent Americans in the private sector and government made between May and August of this year by the media research firm of Erdos & Morgan in New York City.
The finding comes as the magazine, the country's foremost analyst of press issues, completes its 35th year of publication and moves to new editorial leadership.
These are examples of its influence:
CJR is the oldest, largest and most respected monitor of print and broadcast news media.
"The magazine may be modest in size," says its publisher, Joan Konner, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, "but we're mighty in impact." She describes CJR as "a press conference for 70,000 journalists." It has a paid circulation of 30,000, and studies report a readership of 2.5 persons for each copy.
"CJR''s existence is testament to the thousands of working journalists - editors, writers, producers, publishers, broadcasters and webmasters - who turn to our pages because they care. They care about our business, they care about standards, ethics, performance and the pursuit of excellence."
The magazine was launched in 1960, when the school's dean, the late Edward W. Barrett, and Professor James Boylan proposed it, to meet a widely recognized need for a permanent organ to appraise the press. The first issue, in the fall of 1961 carried a statement of policy that has been printed in every succeeding issue:
CJR drew support from news organizations and private foundations from the start. Begun as a quarterly, it now publishes six times a year and continues to receive contributions, notably a recent three-year pledge of $900,000 from the Ford Foundation. Its prominence is due largely to the quality of its editors, who have included Professor Boylan, its first, Alfred Balk, Spencer Klaw and, currently, Suzanne Braun Levine, who will step aside January 1 when Marshall Loeb becomes editor.
Over the years the magazine has published an impressive body of analysis and criticism, much of it highly praised, widely reprinted and hotly debated. Oneof its most popular features is a section titled "Darts & Laurels," which rebukes or praises news organizations for specific journalistic acts.
CJR is an active contributor to the mission of the Journalism School, which Dean Konner calls "a bridge between journalism as it is and as it ought to be." It helps set the same standards that young journalists are taught in the school and that are reflected in the various prize programs it administers, which include the Pulitzer Prizes, National Magazine Awards, and duPont-Columbia Awards in Broadcast Journalism.
Walter Cronkite has called the magazine "more than a mirror of the industry. CJR is its conscience."
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