by P.D. Lesko

In September of 1992, the Adjunct Advocate debuted. The magazine, a slim 20 pages, had no display advertising and led off with a cover story titled “Health, Wealthy & Wise”: Finding Affordable Health Care.” The issue also featured the very first “Reportcard.” The feature, as we explained it to readers back then, “focuses on individual schools, and their treat ment of the adjunct faculty. The Adjunct Advocate is a tough grader, but then again some colleges and universities aren’t treating their adjuncts fairly.” We sent a copy of each Reportcard directly to the President of the featured school and never once, in the three years that the feature ran, did we receive a letter of reply, explanation or correction of information. “Reportcard” was our effort to be provocative, and to be very public in our criticisms of how individual colleges treated their adjunct faculty.

The initial print run was 150, and the printer charged us just over $1.00 per issue. A one-year subscription cost $18.00, and that first year of publication included eight issues of the magazine, quite a bargain. Beginning in September of 1993, we decided to drop the number of issues down to five per year, and make them bimonthly. The majority of adjuncts, after all, did not teach in the summer, we reasoned, and so a summer issue would not be necessary. It wasn’t until years later that we would realize that frequency has a direct connection to reader loyalty--you want readers to remember to miss you.

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