Closing chapter, end of story at NU Press
Northeastern University has decided to shutter its 27-year-old publishing arm, a small but well-respected university press that costs the school up to $450,000 a year to operate.
Northeastern University Press publishes about 35 books a year, including the works of Boston historian Thomas O'Connor. Critics of the move see it as a blow to the intellectual prestige of a university that has been working assiduously to improve its academic credentials, most recently announcing a $75 million plan to hire 100 professors.
"I was shocked, I must say, that the university would choose to do this. It seems to fly in the face of its attempt to gain national acceptance as a major research university," said O'Connor, a Boston College historian who has had several books published by the press. "A university press is usually a very important signal on the part of the university that it is interested in things like publication, research, and academic performance."
A spokesperson for Northeastern said the closure of the press was strictly a financial decision, triggered by increasing economic stresses on the press and in publishing in general.
"It was an important part of the institutional character, but we're not able to do it any longer," said spokeswoman Christine Phelan.
The decision was made by NU president Richard M. Freeland and provost Ahmed Abdelal; it was approved by trustees at a recent meeting in Florida, Phelan said.
All nine staff members will lose their jobs when the press closes in 2005.
Like many university presses, NU Press has always been subsidzed by the university. Over the past decade it has cost the school from $275,000 a year to a high of $450,000 this year -- about 40 percent of the press's budget, officials said. The subsidy grew this year because the press has been struggling with the economic downturn of the last couple years, said Jill Bahcall, associate director of NU Press.
A number of professors and other supporters of the press are planning to write to Abdelal asking him to reverse the decision, Bahcall said.
"It was always considered a feather in the cap of Northeastern," said editor in chief Robert Gormley. "They somehow figured it's no longer a feather in their cap."
Gormley said he wondered why Northeastern could not consider a compromise such as the one worked out recently at the University of Massachusetts Press. With UMass facing an $80 million cut in state funding, the university cut its $375,000 subsidy to the press last year, more than a quarter of its revenue. The UMass Press stayed open, however and is working toward self-sufficiency, saving money through an alliance with the Johns Hopkins University Press.
NU Press will still publish and market its spring and fall lists this year, Gormley said.
The amount of money Northeastern spends on the press is dwarfed by the university's ambitious expansion plans. Two years ago, officials launched an $18.3 million spending plan to improve the school and vault it to the national stage. Freeland has set the goal of getting Northeastern in the top 100 universities, as ranked by US News & World Report.
To that end, he has devised the plan to hire 100 professors to improve Northeastern's faculty-to-student ratio and has boosted its research funding 41 percent in the last five years. The university, which has also been in a building boom, has shrunk its enrollment dramatically and became much more selective.
The academic improvement plans and the closing of NU Press are "disconnected," Phelan said. "It's not something we're happy to be announcing, and yet we felt the decision was the correct one."
The press specializes in Boston and regional history, criminal justice, music and women's studies, Gormley said.
It published a book on Al Qaeda, "The New Jackals" by Simon Reeve, that became popular after Sept. 11, 2001, and recently released "A Rose for Mary: The Hunt for the Real Boston Strangler" by local TV reporter Casey Sherman.
Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com. 
