Monday, March 16, 1998
Community Briefs
U.S. News refuses shift in rank for law school
U.S. News and World Report has refused to change its ranking for
the University of Texas School of Law, saying the school submitted
updated information too late.
Attempting to combat its fall from 18th to 29th in the
magazine’s rankings, the law school submitted revised numbers
Wednesday showing that 91 percent of students who graduated in 1996
were employed. It was originally estimated that 84 percent of the
graduates were employed, contributing to the lower ranking.
But magazine officials said revising the rankings would be
unfair to the other schools.
"It strikes members of this magazine’s staff as a positive
development that your law school is improving its tracking of
placements, but changing the University of Texas School of Law’s
rankings as a result of updates you made after the U.S. News
rankings were completed and released also strikes us unfair to
other law schools in the rankings," said Lincoln Caplan, U.S. News
special projects editor.
Sharlot, dean of the UT School of Law, said the magazine’s
decision was unfair.
"It’s shocking now that they know the real data, they would
continue to show the wrong data," he said.
The drop in rankings was attributed to the law school’s failure
to track the employment status of 61 students. The magazine
automatically classified 75 percent of those students as
unemployed.
After the magazine published the rankings in February, the law
school began tracking down recent graduates and asked for a
correction of the rankings.
"We recognize – while deploring – the power that your rankings
appear to have on the decisions of the public regarding the
relative attractiveness of law schools and their graduates,"
Sharlot said in a March 3 letter to the magazine.
Two Los Angeles papers folding
The Copley Press shut two of its Los Angeles County newspapers
this weekend, and cutting up to 100 jobs at a third because of
dwindling profits and growing competition.
Friday’s editions of the Santa Monica Outlook and the San Pedro
News-Pilot were the papers’ last. A third paper, The Daily Breeze
in Torrance, will continue to publish, but will face up to 100 job
cuts between business and newsroom employees, the company said.
Approximately 55 full-time employees and a score of part-timers
lost their jobs at the closed newspapers.
La Jolla, Calif.-based Copley said it was pushed into the move
by the papers’ declining market share.
Indeed, analysts said the closures reflect a new era of
competition in the Southern California newspaper market.
Morton said three newspaper companies dominate the greater Los
Angeles readership and advertising base: MediaNews Group, publisher
of the Daily News of Los Angeles, Long Beach Press-Telegram, San
Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star-News and the Whittier Daily
News; Times-Mirror Corp., publisher of the Los Angeles Times; and
Freedom Communications Inc., which publishes the Orange County
Register.
The three major media companies have left little room for
smaller players, or in Copley’s case, players unwilling to invest
heavily in their publications, he said.
"It’s become very competitive, with much bigger players than you
used to have," Morton said. For papers the size of the Outlook and
News-Pilot, which had weekday circulations of 23,840 and 13,500
respectively, "Unless you’ve got an alliance with lots of other
papers, you don’t stand out much for advertisers," he said.
Approximately 70 people were laid off by the closures, most at
the 123-year-old Outlook.
Compiled from Daily Bruin staff and wire reports.