Adieu, Stanford Professional Publishing Course
Posted by Thomas Riggs in publishing trends on January 14, 2010
Everything must pass, but in publishing things are dying off at an uncomfortable rate. I was just getting used to the idea of the world without Gourmet magazine. Now there’s an obituary on the Stanford publishing program website.
The Stanford Publishing Course for Professionals has closed, a victim of both the economy and larger transitions in the program’s core fields. This move comes amidst broad cost-cutting at Stanford University. University Librarian Michael Keller writes: “It is deeply troubling to all of us who have been involved in the SPPC over the years, but the recession is affecting the publishing industries and higher education, as it has all other sectors of the global economy.”
The Stanford publishing program was the industry’s most prestigious. Publishing professionals, many from outside the United States, would spend a week living “among talented publishing colleagues in the heart of Silicon Valley, where U.S. innovation is born.” According to the website,
You’ll step away from the day-to-day demands of your job to study your business, immerse yourself in new ideas, and rethink your strategies. You will reinvent the way you work.
Oddly, the website also says, “This year has told the story: innovate—or die in the old paradigm.” I guess Stanford forgot to innovate. The program, which also included Web and digital publishing courses, is hoping to find a way to reopen one day. It will try to determine if a “revised pattern of revenue and a different programmatic governance structure might yield an SPPC that is self-sustaining.”
In case you want to see what you missed, here’s the promotional video.
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