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The Harvard Crimson

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The Harvard Crimson, the breakfast daily of Harvard University, was founded in 1873.[1] It is the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts[2], and is run entirely by Harvard undergraduates. Many Crimson alumni have gone on to careers in journalism, and some have won Pulitzer Prizes.

About the Crimson

Any student who volunteers and completes a series of requirements known as the "comp" is elected an "editor" of the newspaper. Thus, all staff members of the Crimson—including writers, photographers, graphic designers, and business staff—are technically "editors." Editorial power rests in a board of executives, collectively called a "guard," who are chosen for one-year terms each November in a highly competitive process.

The Crimson is one of the few college newspapers in the U.S. that own their own printing presses. At the beginning of 2004 the Crimson began publishing with a full-color front and back page, in conjunction with the launch of a major redesign.

The Crimson has a rivalry with the Harvard Lampoon, which it refers to in print as a "semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine."[3] The two organizations occupy buildings within two blocks of each other; interaction between their staff has included pranks, vandalism, violence, and even romance.

Crimson alumni include Presidents John F. Kennedy of the Class of 1940 and Franklin D. Roosevelt (who served as president of the newspaper), Class of 1904. Writer Cleveland Amory was president of the Crimson; when Katharine Hepburn's mother asked him what he planned to do after college, he says he replied teasingly that "once you had been president of the Harvard Crimson in your senior year at Harvard there was very little, in after life, for you."[4]

History

Early years

The Harvard Crimson was one of many college newspapers founded shortly after the Civil War and describes itself as "the nation's oldest continuously published daily college newspaper"[5][6]

The Crimson traces its origin to the first issue of The Magenta, published January 24, 1873 despite strong discouragement from the Dean. The faculty of the College had suspended the existence of several previous student newspapers, including the Collegian, whose motto "Dulce et Periculum" represented the precarious place of the student press at Harvard University in the late nineteenth century. The Magenta's editors, undeterred, politely declined Dean Burney's advice and moved forward with a biweekly paper, "a thin layer of editorial content surrounded by an even thinner wrapper of advertising."

The paper changed its name to The Crimson in 1875 when Harvard changed its official color—the announcement came with a full-page editorial announcing, "Magenta is not now, and ... never has been, the right color of Harvard." This particular issue, May 21, 1875, also included several reports on athletic events, a concert review, and a call for local shopkeepers to stock the exact shade of crimson ribbon, to avoid "startling variations in the colors worn by Harvard men at the races."

The Crimson included more substance in the 1880s, as the paper's editors were more eager to engage in a quality of journalism like that of muckraking big-city newspapers; it was at this time that the paper moved first from a biweekly to a weekly, and then to a daily in 1883.

Twentieth century

The paper flourished at the beginning of the twentieth century with the acquisition of its own building in 1915, the purchase of Harvard Illustrated Magazine and the establishment of the editorial board in 1911. The Illustrated's editors became Crimson photographers, and thereby established the photographic board. The addition of this and the editorial board brought the paper to become, in essence, the modern Crimson. The newspaper's president no longer authored editorials single-handedly, and the paper took stronger editorial positions.

The 1930s and 1940s were dark years for the Crimson; reduced financial resources and competition from a publication established by ex-editors meant serious challenges to the paper's viability. In 1943, the banner on the paper read Harvard Service News and the stories focused almost exclusively on Harvard's contribution to the war effort. Under the authority of so-called wartime administrative necessity, the Graduate Board, consisting of alumni who have final authority over the paper, did not allow the Service News to editorialize. Instead, the paper was administered during the war by a board of University administrators, alumni, and students.

Post-war growth

The paper went back to its civilian version in 1946, and as the Army and Navy moved out of Harvard, the Crimson grew larger, more financially secure, more diversified, and more aware of the world outside the campus during the early Cold War era than its pre-WWII predecessor had been.

The paper, although financially independent and independent of editorial control by the Harvard University administration, was under the University's administrative control insofar as it was comprised of university students who were subject to the university's rules. Radcliffe women on staff were forced to follow curfews to which Harvard men were not subject, and that interfered greatly with the late hours required in producing a newspaper. Throughout the 1950s, the Crimson and various university officials exchanged letters debating these restrictions. Crimson editors pushed for later curfews for their female writers, who grew increasingly important in day-to-day operations. Under president Phillip Cronin '53, women became staff members rather than Radcliffe correspondents.

Crimson writers were involved in national issues, especially when anti-communist investigative committees came to Harvard. Future Pulitzer-prize winning writer Anthony Lukas' stories (most notably, an interview with HUAC witness Wendell Furry) were sometimes picked up by the Associated Press. Not even a staff writer yet, Lukas had arrived at the university with Joseph McCarthy's home number in his pocket. His father was an opponent of McCarthy's and a member of the American Jewish Committee, the group that produced Commentary magazine.

Modern-day paper

The Harvard Crimson, Inc. was incorporated in as a nonprofit Massachusetts corporation in 1966; the incorporation was involuntarily revoked, then revived, in 1986.[7]

In 1991, student reporters for the Crimson were the first to break the news that Harvard had selected former Princeton Provost Neil Leon Rudenstine to succeed Derek Bok as President of the university. The reporters, who had learned of a secret meeting in New York, got their confirmation when they approached a surprised Rudenstine on his plane ride back to Boston. The story appeared in an extra bearing the dateline "SOMEWHERE OVER NEW ENGLAND." Resourceful Crimson editors repeated the scoop in 2001, beating out national media outlets to report that Lawrence Summers would succeed Rudenstine.

On January 12, 2004, the Crimson printed its first color edition after obtaining and installing new Goss Community color presses. The date also marked the unveiling of a major redesign of the paper itself.

In 2004, the Crimson filed a lawsuit against Harvard University to force the Harvard University Police Department to release more complete records to the public. The case was heard before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in November 2005. In January 2006, the court decided the case in favor of the University.

In November 2005, the Crimson had its records subpoenaed by ConnectU, a firm suing Facebook.com, its better known competitor. The Crimson is currently challenging the subpoena, and it has said that it will not comply with ConnectU's demands for documents.

On April 23, 2006, after having received an anonymous tip, the Crimson broke the story of plagiarism allegations surrounding Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan and her recently published book, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life.[8]

Notable past editors

References

  1. ^ Brubacher, John S. (1997). Higher Education in Transition. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1560009179. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help), p. 137: "After the Civil War... on almost every campus a publication was established which modeled its form, content, and purpose on regular daily newspapers. The Yale Daily News, first to be founded, is still in operation. The Harvard Crimson began in 1873 as a more newsy rival of The Advocate. Ten years later, it merged with a competitor to become a daily."
  2. ^ Massachusetts Newspapers [1] lists two other Cambridge papers--The Tech, which is a biweekly paper, and The Cambridge Chronicle, which is a weekly.
  3. ^ Harvard Crimson, February 01, 2006, Young Rich pens book deal, is one example of this running joke: "Penning books in the humor category seems fitting because Rich, as the statement takes care to mention, is the president of the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine."
  4. ^ Amory, Cleveland (2002). The Best Cat Ever. Back Bay. ISBN 0316089788. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) p. 100
  5. ^ "About the Harvard Crimson," Harvard Crimson website[2]
  6. ^ Because many college newspapers were founded at almost the same time, there is scope for many competing claims of being oldest or first. The Yale Daily News claims to be the "Oldest College Daily" in the United States. The Columbia Daily Spectator , founded in 1877, claims to be the second-oldest college daily. The Cornell Daily Sun, launched in 1880, claims to be the "oldest independent college newspaper." The Dartmouth of Dartmouth College, which opened in 1843 as a monthly, calls itself the oldest college newspaper, though not the oldest daily, and makes a claim to institutional continuity with a local eighteenth-century paper called the Dartmouth Gazette.
  7. ^ The Harvard Crimson, Incorporated, ID 042426396, Commonwealth of Massachusetts[3], search by ID 042426396
  8. ^ David Zhou, "Student’s Novel Faces Plagiarism Controversy", The Harvard Crimson[4]
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