29: Phi Delta Kappan
Interview with Joan Richardson, Editor-in-Chief, February 2009
Play audio (approximately 30 minutes)
My guest for this program is Joan Richardson, editor-in-chief of Phi Delta Kappan, a well regarded education journal published continuously since 1915. As the magazine of the Phi Delta Kappa society, the journal presents to its members and to a broader audience research and commentary on issues, trends, and policies in education. Known for addressing tough issues in contemporary education and for including contrarian points of view, Phi Delta Kappan is found in almost 3000 libraries worldwide.
Steve: Joan Richardson, welcome to Periodical Radio.
Joan: Thanks very much.
Steve: Let’s begin with the mission of the magazine and its relationship with Phi Delta Kappa. How does the magazine support the purposes of the organization?
Joan: Well, the three main purposes of Phi Delta Kappa are leadership, research, and service. The magazine is regarded as a key element in both the research component and especially the leadership component, as being a leader in the field. We’ve tried to more tightly integrate the magazine with the organization since I joined. There were a number of years where the magazine operated fairly independently from the rest of Phi Delta Kappa. But we’re trying to ensure that there’s a lot of exchange back and forth between the organizational needs and the magazine right now.
Steve: Kappan has a diverse readership. As editor, how do you ensure the content will be interesting to the broad spectrum of readers?
Joan: That is a challenge. Kappan is different from almost every other publication in education, because of our audience, about a quarter of our readers are from the university community. The rest of the readers are K-12 people—practitioners, teachers, principals, people in central offices. There is a juggle, trying to serve both audiences. What they have in common, however, is their interest in K-12 education. That’s what draws the university people to the magazine and to the organization. Since we don’t cover university level education, our focus is those K-12 schools. I think the interest everyone has in mind is how you ensure quality schools, quality teaching, quality education for all children. If you keep that at your forefront as you’re looking at the articles that are appropriate for the magazine, the kind of articles that will assist in improving education at the K-12 level, then it’s much easier to make decisions about which articles to accept and exactly the best way to publish them. But it’s a mixed audience, unlike what you find certainly in the other associations. The other associations are focused on a particular niche of people in the field, whether they’re principals or teachers or staff developers, they’re English teachers or math teachers. Phi Delta Kappa is a big tent, and everybody in the field is connected to us in one way or the other.
Steve: Joan, Phi Delta Kappa is an international organization, correct?
Joan: Yes, it is.
Steve: I’ve noticed that at least the issues I was perusing preparing for the interview, the majority of the articles focused on education in the United States. How do you balance having international membership and issues of international education?
Joan: It’s interesting you bring that up because that’s a topic of current conversation right now. We have primarily been an American, North American organization, really. I think the international audience comes to us primarily because of the perceived quality of American education. But I am looking down the road to how we can extend our reach beyond North American borders. I’m very interested in ensuring that we figure out better ways to get information, articles, about good practices around the world to this audience. Also figuring out a way to make sure that the educators beyond the United States have ways of sharing their own stories with each other. For example, I think that there’s probably a great interest in Europe for example, not just in American ideas but in other practices within the European community. I think the Asian audience is huge, and that they have not only an interest in learning about American practices, but also in learning about what’s going on in the Asian market as well. I don’t know the best way to tackle that, but it is something that we’re talking about, and are very aware of right now. I don’t think we’re unique in that. I think that a lot of us in publishing in education and elsewhere have figured out that the borders are changing, and there’s a scramble to figure out how we better serve that audience around the world. We have some very active membership groups around the world, and I think they primarily come to us now because of what they perceive to be of value to them about the United States. But that could be changing.
Steve: That’s interesting, because in the popular press one often sees unfavorable comparisons of United States education versus other countries. But from what you just said, we’re seen as a positive example.
Joan: Oh, I think that’s true. You can’t always believe what you read, and I think there’s no question that American education is still considered to be more equitable than educational systems you find in many places around the world. If you look at the number of students who come to the United States for college and for graduate school, the perception of the American educational system is still quite high. We continue to have that tradition.
Steve: Joan, my colleagues here in the School of Education here at Saint Rose have told me that Phi Delta Kappan has a reputation for publishing provocative points of view that challenge conventional wisdom. Would you agree with that perception?
Joan: Historically, that’s been right, that Kappan is a little edgier than other publications in education. I think because we have such a broad reach, we’re able to delve into some topics that might not be appropriate for some other organizations. I don’t think PDK as an organization has ever been timid about that. I also think that because Kappan has a great interest not just in pedagogical issues, it also has an interest in professional issues. Any time you’re time you’re talking about professional concerns, you of necessity reach into topics that might be a little bit more controversial. For example, one of the topics that we hope to explore in the next year is looking at teacher compensation systems. That’s become an issue in many, many places around the country. There’s just an article this morning in my local newspaper about some innovative compensatory practices in three local school districts. With the change in the administration, it’s very clear that the new Secretary of Education is interested in new compensation packages for teachers. That elevates it to a topic that I think would be of great interest to Kappan readers. I think it’s unlikely that you would read about something like that in any of the publications produced by the other education associations. Again, that broad reach gives us the opportunity to delve into some topics that aren’t likely to appear on the pages of other magazines.
Steve: So you do want to consciously maintain that reputation going forward.
Joan: I think that I want Kappan articles to be provocative. I want them to be thought provoking. I don’t necessarily want be argumentative or put something out there simply for the sake of creating a controversy. I think there is a difference there. But I do want to make sure that we’re on the leading edge of new ideas. That’s a challenge, to ensure that you’re ahead of the game and you’re thinking about what the next issue is that people will be talking about. It’s one of the great challenges that everyone faces in publishing.
Steve: Kappan publishes research articles, but they’re written in a more accessible style than one would find in most scholarly journals. I noticed that the writer’s guidelines for Kappan explain that many more articles are submitted than can be published. Can you describe the process you use to select which articles are published?
Joan: Sure . . ..
Steve: You do not use peer review, correct?
Joan: No. Kappan has never been a peer reviewed publication. It has always been editor driven publication. In fact, I just got a query this morning from a major university asking me about our acceptance rate, so I just recalculated it this morning. The acceptance rate for the last 6 months of 2008, I only became editor in July 2008, the acceptance rate was 16%. We had received about 200 articles during that period, and accepted sixteen percent of them. I expect that that will hold true down the road. The process is fairly simple. We have an open call for manuscripts. We do not announce themes for issues, even though we often collect articles around themes and publish them that way. But we maintain an open call, and the articles are e-mailed to us at manuscripts@pdkintl.org. I read everything that comes in, and I read them relatively quickly. If they pass muster with me, then they go on to a second editor. It’s primarily just the two of us looking at them. The value we have there is that David Ruetschlin, who’s the managing editor, has been with Kappan and PDK for a long time, and he has a remarkable recollection of what we’ve published in the past, and provides a great resource to me in helping me know what we’ve covered already, and who’s written about various topics. We accept articles based on the quality of the idea, and the quality of the writing. We’ve had an overabundance of articles, for example, about No Child Left Behind and how really, really bad it is. It’s unlikely that we’re going to be publishing more articles on that topic in the short term here, because No Child Left Behind is changing. So most of those articles are not faring well right now, because of the timing of that. We’re looking for edgy ideas, I’m looking for people who have clearly done good work and learned something from ideas they’ve put into practice, ideas that would be worth sharing with other educators. I’m not interested in articles that are about ideas that may be implemented. I want something specific that has been done. We look at the clarity of the writing. If somebody thinks they have a good idea, but I can’t figure out what the idea is, it’s not going to pass muster. I’ve had to say to a number of authors lately, “I’m just not clear on what you’re trying to say.” So we have the luxury of a large number of manuscripts, which enables us to be quite selective about what we produce. But we also solicit articles. There are topics that we believe are of importance to our audience, and we’ll go after the people we want to have writing on them. We have for example an issue coming out in April which will have a number of articles related to urban education. That’s not a topic that Kappan has spent much time on in recent years, so we have a number of pieces coming in related to that. We also have a number of articles in that issue about recommendations for a new federal role in education. None of those were submitted articles. All of those were invited by the editors. In June we’ll be doing an issue on legal issues in education, and that entire issue is guest edited for us. So we’re both blending what comes in over the transom, looking for the best articles there for our audience, and then also thinking about the topics that we want to approach, and making sure we have the best people writing about them.
Steve: Is that about a half and half mix, or . . .?
Joan: Well, it’s hard to say at this point, because I’m so new in this position. I’m also still trying to work into the publication articles that were accepted prior to my arrival on the scene. Down the road, I’d guess it would probably be about half and half. But it might be a little premature to say that.
Steve: Joan, I want to change gears just a tiny bit now. A distinguishing feature of Kappan is the cartoons, which have been part of the journal’s content since the 1950’s. From an editorial point of view, what makes the cartoons valuable to Kappan?
Joan: When I was a Kappan reader, and not Kappan editor, the Kappan cartoons were something that would kind of lighten the load in the magazine. There’s a lot of content in there, and it helps to break up the serious tone of the magazine, and to recognize that there’s humor in everything. Anybody who’s spent any time in a school knows there’s a lot of humor in schools. Kids are very funny creatures, and teachers are pretty funny creatures, too. It offers a real world glance at what day to day life is really like in the schools. From a publishing perspective, it helps to have to a lot of different ways for people to interact with a magazine. Not everybody wants to read every article, but you want to give them opportunities to connect with something in your publication. The cartoons have clearly been a very successful way of doing that. As I think you know, we’re redesigning the magazine for the 2009-2010 issues. We’ll have a new look to the magazine starting next September. We did a large readership study to help us figure out what we should be doing, and what we should not be doing down the road. One very clear message is that we should not be messing with the cartoons (laughs). The cartoons will be around.
Steve: I did want to ask you about the redesign that you’d mentioned to me in advance of the show. What is driving the redesign, why is it necessary?
Joan: It’s necessary for a lot of reasons. Kappan hasn’t done a redesign, I don’t think ever. I think it has moved along and there have been some small changes made over the years, and it has started to look very dated. It’s very dense looking, it’s been a very difficult magazine to get into and to read. Design-wise, it clearly needs to be updated very substantially, and we’re working on that now. The other component of that is that we need to reach a different audience, an expanded audience over what we’ve had in the past. We have an older membership, and as happens with any publication that has an older membership, when people reach a certain stage in their life and in their career, they start to move on to other publications. We need to ensure that we are vibrant for a new generation of teachers and principals in schools. We really need to think about ways to position ourselves to both continue to appeal to the long-time readers that we’ve had, and also reach out very substantially to what I think of as the thirty year old readers that we want to have. Those would be people who have reached a point where they are career educators. They are not dabbling in education any more, they’re not trying it out to see if it fits them. We’re interested in the people who have decided after a few years in the field that this is what they want for their life’s work. We want those career educators and we want them on board with us about the time they’re in their late 20’s or early 30’s, when they’re in graduate programs. They might be at the point where they’re looking at national board certification, and we want to make sure we’re appropriate for that audience, as well. At the same time we redesign the look of the magazine we’re rethinking the columns that we have, we’re introducing some new features into the magazine. We’ll be integrating the magazine more effectively on the web site. We’ll have some pieces that are published only on the web. I expect that those will be columns as well as articles. We’ll be introducing a blog on the web site, at least one, and we’ll be offering better feedback components so that people will respond with letters to the editor, responses to articles online rather than in the print publication. So we’re rethinking the whole package of Kappan. I kind of think of it like when you approach your house and you decide that you need to move the furniture in the living room. You move the furniture around a little bit, and it looks better. That’s what we’ve done this year, we’ve moved the furniture around a little bit. But by next Fall, we are putting up a new coat of paint, we’re washing the carpets, we’re fixing that leak in the window, we’re sprucing up everything. By September we’re going to have a new improved and more completely thought out magazine.
Steve: Is that process being done entirely in house, or have you brought in consultants? How does that work?
Joan: Pretty much it’s being done in house. We are working with one outside designer who’s helping us with some components of it. Primarily it’s just us.
Steve: Joan, you mentioned that you became editor-in-chief of Phi Delta Kappan in July 2008? Is the job what you expected?
Joan: The job is what I expected and more. First of all, it’s a great honor to be editor of Kappan magazine. I think it’s the best job in education journalism that there is. I have been overwhelmed by the. . .courtesy isn’t quite the right word. There’s a warmth that people feel for this publication that I did not anticipate, a generosity from readers and from writers that has really overwhelmed me. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by what happens when I pick up the phone and call somebody and the response that I get. Kappan has been so well regarded for so long, that it has this reservoir of good feeling about it that I’ve been able to tap into. That’s been really wonderful. It’s also very daunting, because it’s a publication with enormous tradition, enormous respect, and I want to ensure that I keep that going. The other big change for me is, I came from an organization where I worked with five or six different publications, newsletters and magazines, published books, managed a web site. In this job, I just focus on one magazine. But it’s a magazine that comes out every month, so it’s a massively bigger job in many ways. So I’m running pretty hard most days to keep up, but I have loved it, I’ve absolutely loved it.
Steve: That’s good to hear. These are kind of tough financial times for many publishers. I read and hear a great deal about how it’s tough everywhere right now. The editors I’ve interviewed for Periodical Radio have described to me a number of different business models. I noticed on the web site that most of the content is either pay-per-view or restricted to subscribers. Other publishers have chosen to have more free content online that goes along with the printed magazine. Could just explain a little bit about how the current business model was selected, and what the main issues are from your point of view?
Joan: Well, I think with any membership organization, the business model is pretty much the same. You have members who are paying a membership fee to acquire the publication and other services of the organization. Because they have paid that, they become a selected group, and they have different rights than other people do because they’ve paid for that service. Everything is available to Phi Delta Kappa members online in the members-only area of the web site. They can search and download articles going back a number of years. But the public also has access to that. The archive is available on the public portion of the web site. Anybody can search that archive, and anybody can download an article, and they pay a small fee for that if they’re not a member. That’s a fairly standard approach in this field when you’re talking about a membership association, which Phi Delta Kappa is. Having said that, we will be offering a few more things online in the public zone beginning with the next volume, because we need to broaden our reach and make sure more people are aware of the organization and the publication. The other piece that comes into play for even membership publications is advertising and sponsorships. That’s a continuing challenge, I think for everybody these days as advertisers scale back on where they’re able to spend their advertising dollar.
Steve: But Phi Delta Kappan is still financially strong and healthy and has a bright future?
Joan: Yeah, I think the organization is quite strong. The membership has declined, but there have been some staff cuts that have been made. There have been internal business decisions that have been made to keep the organization healthy. Bill Bushaw, the executive director, has made some very substantial changes in the organization in the four years he’s been on board. I would not have joined the organization if I’d thought it was not financially viable.
Steve: Joan, is there anything else you’d like to mention before we conclude?
Joan: There’s nothing I can think of, except that I welcome feedback, especially now as we’re going through a redesign process, but also down the road when there’s a new magazine that’s out for people. I’d love to hear comments on that. I just generally like to get feedback from readers and people who use the magazine. I think your audience is one of the largest users that we have, and I hope they find my e-mail address, jrichardson@pdkintl.org, and just send me a note about what they think about what’s going on.
Steve: Wonderful. Joan Richardson, thank you very much for being my guest on Periodical Radio.
Joan: Thank you. It’s been a delight, thank you very much.
Steve: You’re welcome. An individual annual subscription to Phi Delta Kappan is $68 for 10 issues. Thank you for listening to Periodical Radio. I’m your host, Steve Black.