The Colleges That Pay For Positive Coverage

Good Press for a Few Thousand Dollars - What’s Wrong With That?

There’s a lot you can learn about Susan Fournier, dean of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, from her April 2022 and March 2023 cover stories in CIO Views magazine.

You can learn that Fournier is “an award-winning researcher with an in-depth knowledge of what it takes to produce ‘research that matters.’” You’ll discover she’s “using strategic foresight to make Questrom the business school of the future.” What’s more, she has “advanced the value of interdisciplinary interfaces,” although it’s a little unclear what that means. Ditto the description of the business school’s goal “to be distinctive in digital business while interfacing with the parallel world.”

“Her team at BU Questrom believes that Susan’s courage has gotten them through the best and the worst of times and that she should be lauded for it,” one of the stories says. Evidently proud of her first CIO Views profile, that team wrote about it on Questrom’s in-house publicity website, under “Media Mention.” Fournier tweeted about it too: “Excited to share my perspective in @CIOViews.”

There is one critical detail that the CIO Views stories leave out, however. They don’t say that they’re advertisements, paid for by BU’s business school.

All the stories in CIO Views are paid for, a salesperson for the magazine confirmed. That’s despite the fact that none of the stories are labeled as such, and the publication in many ways presents as independent and journalistic. In neatly laid-out digital issues, there are letters from the editor. There are more obvious ads throughout, too, some for well-known brands, although a spokesperson for one company, Nissan, confirmed that it did not actually place the ad that appears in one recent issue. (Other companies didn’t answer questions about their ads in time for this story, but some ads seem outdated and one had “lorem ipsum” filler text.)

In the endless chase for good publicity, some colleges don’t hesitate to shell out thousands for positive stories.

CIO Views frequently features higher-education leaders and institutions. In its pages, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is hailed for creating “life-changing access to business education.” The University of Maryland at Baltimore’s provost, Roger J. Ward, is praised for “excelling in the position of second-in-command.” The way the magazine describes Chevalier Cleaves, chief diversity and inclusion officer for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, sounds like a LinkedIn summary: “He is an accomplished executive leader who can form and influence coalitions to better link the implementation of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) with an organization’s overarching strategic objectives.”

Several publications stand ready to satisfy colleges’ demand for journalism-ish stories. Two university media-relations officers told The Chronicle they’re increasingly the targets of pitches from websites like CIO Views. Among them is The Chief Navigators, whose homepage features outdated news, anodyne business advice, and reams of what appear to be paid-for profiles. There’s also The Education Magazine, with its heady mix of articles: “The 10 Elite MBA Colleges of 2024,” “The 10 Most Prestigious Human Universities in 2024,” and “Valentine’s Day Gift Items that Can Melt Your Husband’s Heart.”

In the endless chase for good publicity, some colleges don’t hesitate to shell out thousands for positive stories, even if doing so might seem contrary to their truth-seeking mission. Media attention is a difficult game to play. If you land a profile in a magazine or newspaper that follows the norms of journalism, you’re subject to the reporter’s scrutiny, and possibly to a story that might include faculty members’ criticisms, or unflattering anecdotes. Why bother when you can pay for something that looks like an independent profile, and promote it afterward as if it is?

Fournier is not the only college leader who got a March 2023 CIO Views cover. So did Jeffrey R. Brown, dean of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Gies College of Business. (Who’s to say you’re not allowed to publish two different editions in the same month? In one pitch email from 2022, a CIO Views salesperson wrote that the company had published “100+ magazine editions in a single year of 2021.”) A public-records request to see emails related to Brown’s story returned 183 pages of correspondence between a CIO Views salesperson and Gies PR officers, which detail how a typical deal goes down.

Riya James, a business development manager at CIO Views, pitched Brown directly, in October 2022. “Wishful greetings from CIO Views Magazine!” she wrote.

“CIO views [sic] would love to feature you as a Cover Story of our glorious journal.”

For “$3500 USD,” James offered Brown a magazine cover, a story of eight to 10 pages, and several ad placements in CIO Views throughout the year.

Jan Slater, the college’s chief marketing officer, eventually accepted the offer. Then James sent along an overview of the magazine’s editorial process. Email exchanges with James, an interview with the chief marketing officer of Boston University’s business school, and records received from other public universities suggest that every participating college goes through something similar.

First, a CIO Views salesperson sends a written list of questions to the profile subject and their media-relations team. (Brown’s colleagues, who had previously purchased a March 2022 cover for the business school as an institution, came to realize the questionnaire was the “exact same” as “the last time we did this.”) CIO Views also offers Zoom interviews, although many institutions don’t seem to take them up on it. After leaders — or, more typically, their PR officers — send back answers, CIO Views writes a first draft, which it promises will be “edited as per your suggestions.” University staff members also get “final approval” on “both the draft and design.”

In payment documents The Chronicle obtained through public-records requests, the fee for these services ranged from $2,574.75 to $4,500.

Over email, Brown declined to be interviewed because he was traveling internationally. Aaron Bennett, director of communications for the Gies College of Business, who worked alongside Slater on Brown’s story, spoke with The Chronicle instead. He saw CIO Views as run-of-the-mill advertising. “It never appeared to us that it was unbiased editorial,” he said. “We knew from the beginning that it was going to be a paid-advertisement opportunity.” Unlike Boston University’s business school, his department didn’t promote the story after its publication.

I don’t see anything that would lead you to believe that it was paid. Do they need to disclose that? I don’t know.

Bennett acknowledged that it’s not clear that stories in CIO Views are paid for, but he didn’t think they had to be labeled as advertising. “If you were just reading it, as a layperson and just clicking on the link, I don’t see anything that would lead you to believe that it was paid. Do they need to disclose that? I don’t know,” Bennett said. “In my perspective, if The Wall Street Journal or somebody, The Chronicle of Higher Ed, is mixing editorial and then doing some paid, you would definitely clearly need to label that, but if all you do is paid, then I don’t know that you need to disclose that.” (The Chronicle does publish sponsored-content articles, which are clearly labeled as such and newsroom staff members are not involved in writing them.)

Journalism-ethics experts were surer about the need for labeling. “Definitely the publication has an obligation to be transparent with its customers about what its product is,” said Kelly McBride, senior vice president of the Poynter Institute, which runs workshops for journalists on ethics and other skills. McBride leads Poynter’s ethics classes. “That’s the No. 1 separator between publications whose loyalty is informing their audience and publications whose loyalty is something else: making money, advancing an agenda, deceiving the audience.”

A selection of CIO Views covers

No editors from CIO Views returned multiple calls to the company, but James, the business development manager, answered some questions over email. In response to a question about whether the magazine was misleading readers because it didn’t label its paid content, she wrote: “We acknowledge that transparency is paramount. However, we believe that what truly matters to our readers is the valuable insights and information they gain from our content.”

CIO Views frequently offers potential clients spots in top-10 lists, like “Top 10 Most Impactful Education Leaders Making a Difference” or “The Top 10 Best Colleges in USA, 2023.” The publication has a “thorough and meticulous” process for selecting who goes in its lists, James wrote. Asked in three separate emails for more specifics about that process, she shared only a few details: There’s a dedicated research team that looks at data, but what data isn’t specified; there’s no point system; and the selection criteria are generally qualitative, such as “innovation” and “reputation.” Weights for different selection criteria may change from case to case, she wrote.

Cleaves, the MIT diversity officer, who was billed “The Most Prominent Leader in Diversity & Inclusion, 2023,” didn’t answer questions about whether his story was paid for. “Because I don’t believe that any one person can truly match the title of the story, I ultimately accepted on behalf of the many professionals who daily work on behalf of their colleagues and organizations,” he wrote in an email. His story does not mention any other diversity and inclusion professionals.

With the magazine giving up on its responsibility to be clear about its content, do its clients, the universities, bear the burden? Experts’ opinions were mixed: Daxton (Chip) Stewart, a professor of journalism law and ethics at Texas Christian University, considered such promotional measures perhaps unwise, but ethically speaking, “fair game” for university marketers. Meanwhile, McBride thought colleges erred in spending “money on a product that is fundamentally deceptive to the news consumer.”

Like Boston University’s business school, several colleges were not only featured in CIO Views, their public-relations departments later touted the articles. Coppin State University, MIT’s Lincoln Lab, Oklahoma State University, and the University of Maryland at Baltimore published blog posts and links to their paid ads as “media mentions” or the like. The official biography of Steve K. Stoute, president of Canisius University, a Jesuit institution in Buffalo, N.Y., says he “was featured in CIO Views magazine as one of the 10 most visionary leaders transforming education.” Asked for comment, Eileen C. Herbert, a spokesperson for Canisius, didn’t answer a direct question about whether the story was paid for, and didn’t comment on Stoute’s biography.

Colleges that pay for puff pieces, then promote them, Stewart said, “should be embarrassed about that.”

With their stilted writing and confusing stories — Who wrote this? Who paid for it? — there’s an ethereal quality to publications like CIO Views. It feels as if they exist only in some placeless alternative universe, not our shared, real world. (That said, CIO Views does create a print product. Records from universities indicate some paid to have printed copies delivered. The Chronicle requested a paper copy of CIO Views via the website, but never received one.)

It’s hard to pin down who puts together these publications. They don’t have editorial mastheads or reporter bylines on stories. Names and specific contact information appear only in the pitches publications send to potential clients, not anywhere on the websites themselves. Email inquiries to The Chief Navigators and The Education Magazine went unanswered, and the phone numbers listed on The Education Magazine’s website don’t work. Even letters from the editor of CIO Views are signed only “Mousmi N.”

In pitch emails and invoices to colleges, CIO Views staff members all list the same physical address: “30 N Gould St STE R Sheridan WY 82801.”

In 2021, about 88,000 businesses claimed 30 North Gould Street as their address, including dozens that have been the subject of consumer complaints.

That street address is associated with dozens of companies that act as what are called “registered agents” in the state of Wyoming. All limited-liability companies are required to have a registered agent, and CIO Views is registered as an LLC in Texas and in Wyoming, which is popular for incorporation because of its low business taxes. Google Street Views shows a square, cream-colored brick building with a big, black sign: Wyoming Corporate Office.

Large companies that act as registered agents allow client businesses to incorporate in Wyoming without physically being there. In 2021, about 88,000 businesses claimed 30 North Gould Street as their address, including dozens that have been the subject of consumer complaints, The Sheridan Press, a local newspaper, reported at the time. Sheridan itself only has a population of about 19,000. “It’s sad to me that Sheridan’s name is tied to some of those cases,” Dixie Johnson, chief executive officer of the Sheridan County Chamber of Commerce, told the newspaper.

Ashleigh Snoozy, managing editor of The Sheridan Press, which is located a block away from 30 North Gould Street, wrote in an email that only registered agents and their staff members work at that location. No client companies, such as CIO Views, have workers there.

At phone numbers associated with CIO Views, Nina Williams, an editorial assistant, picks up. Williams insists that the magazine is headquartered in Sheridan and that about 20 people work in the office. She lives in Sheridan herself, she said — she moved for the job last year. But no, she doesn’t work in the office. A search of LinkedIn profiles of people who say they’re employed by CIO Views lists several in town. A message sent to Mousmi Naidu, identified as the publication’s Sheridan-based managing editor — the same one who signs every issue? — was not answered.

Other CIO Views employees are listed as being based in various cities and towns in Wyoming, Texas, and India. Many of the magazine’s freelancers are based in India, Williams said. A web-traffic analysis by SimilarWeb found that the most common country of origin for traffic to cioviews.com is India. Traffic is low, less than half that of The Sheridan Press and a fraction of 1 percent of what a national, general-interest magazine, such as Forbes or U.S. News & World Report, might see.

So what are colleges getting for their money when they advertise in CIO Views? “Résumé-building or reputation-building, brand-building,” McBride, the Poynter Institute vice president, said. “If you’re trying to create a narrative about yourself or about your institution, it’s handy to either have quotes from some publication or to have images of that publication featuring yourself or your institution.”

And what’s the harm, if relatively few people ever actually encounter a CIO Views story?

McBride said such stories attempt to “to create some other reality that may or may not be accurate.” Stewart, the TCU professor, pointed to a “world awash in unlabeled sponsored content or AI-generated mush or things intended to game the media ecosystem or attention and clicks in a way that really does drown out legitimate journalism, the stuff that’s expensive to produce and follows some ethos and commitment to truth.”

“As a fan of democracy,” he said, “that’s disappointing.”

Like Bennett, several media-relations officers who bought CIO Views profiles for their bosses defended the practice as ordinary advertising. Indeed, press offices for every college mentioned in this story all either made that argument, or declined to comment. (Nate Bural, assistant vice president for marketing and communications at Tarleton State University, wrote in an email, simply: “No thank you.”) Paul Alexander, chief marketing officer for Boston University’s business school, argued that unmarked ads are legitimate, as did Fournier herself. “Sponsored content is a widely used, longstanding, and accepted practice and it is one of the many tactics we use to tell our school’s story to alums, employers, and current and prospective students, faculty, and staff,” she wrote in a statement. “Each publication decides how they present sponsored content to their respective audiences.”

Perhaps she would know best. Questrom’s first dean with an academic background, Fournier’s research focuses on branding. She has published papers with titles like “Being a Likable Braggart: How Consumers Use Brand Mentions for Self-Presentation on Social Media” and “Managing the Risk in Human Brands.”

Not every PR officer agrees with the idea that unlabeled pay-to-play publications are legitimate marketing tools, however. Max Fredric (Fred) Volkmann, who was vice chancellor for public affairs at Washington University in St. Louis for two decades before becoming vice chancellor of the university, then retiring, received a CIO Views pitch in late 2023. He forwarded it to The Chronicle with a subject line that began: “SCAM ALERT.”

I have no problem with advertising. I have a problem with what could be perceived as deceptive behavior.

“It’s generally accepted practice to put an identifier on something that does not totally appear to be an ad, so that it tells the reader that they’re reading a sponsored message,” Volkmann said in an interview. “I have no problem with advertising. I have a problem with what could be perceived as deceptive behavior.”

Reaching new audiences, spreading the word — most PR officers who availed themselves of the services of CIO Views said they had qualitative, hard-to-measure goals like those for their purchases. But for one college, a story like the ones in CIO Views was not just about an ineffable narrative or reputation. It made a difference to a concrete problem.

In January 2023, Eric Jones, an associate professor of botany at the University of Maine at Machias, got a pitch from The Education Magazine. It asked to cover both his department, integrative and marine sciences, and him. If he’s ever been interviewed by a journalist before, he doesn’t recall, but he still figured this was not exactly that. There were no real criteria associated with the “10 Best Colleges for Biological Sciences, 2023” list that the Machias campus had supposedly been selected for. The email also clearly laid out a price, $2,500.

Some of his colleagues in his department were skeptical, but Jones asked the admissions office what he should do. Admissions is a central concern for the college. The university has been struggling with enrollment, with 591 undergraduates in the fall of 2023, down from 810 nine years earlier. The faculty halved during that time, falling from 82 full- and part-time members to 38.

The admissions office approved and paid for the article, and Jones described an editorial process similar to the one at CIO Views, filling out written questionnaires and getting to approve the final text. The published story on the integrative and marine-sciences division got much more social-media attention than usual. Even better, applications went up this year. “We’re all pleased as punch,” Jones said. He and his colleagues bring a copy of the story to events for admitted students, he said.

Asked whether those students would know the article was paid for, he said: “I do not know. I suspect, in all likelihood, most probably won’t.”

Sourced from The Chronicle for Higher Education‍