The Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson is the student newspaper of Harvard University and was founded in 1873.[1] Run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates, it served for many years as the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[2]
This article is about the newspaper. For the athletic program, see Harvard Crimson.Type
The Harvard Crimson, Inc.
J. Sellers Hill
Miles J. Herszenhorn
Elias J. Schisgall (Associate Managing Editor)
Claire Yuan (Associate Managing Editor)Matthew M. Doctoroff
January 24, 1873
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
About The Crimson[edit]
Any student who volunteers and completes a series of requirements known as the "comp" is elected an editor of the newspaper.[3] Thus, all staff members of The Crimson—including writers, business staff, photographers, and graphic designers—are technically "editors". If an editor makes news, they are referred to in the paper's news article as a "Crimson editor", which, though important for transparency, also leads to characterizations such as "former President John F. Kennedy '40, who was also a Crimson editor, ended the Cuban Missile Crisis." Editorial and financial decisions rest in a board of executives, collectively called a "guard", who are chosen for one-year terms each November by the outgoing guard. This process is referred to as the "turkey shoot" or the "shoot". The unsigned opinions of '"The Crimson Editorial Board" are decided at triweekly meetings that are open to any Crimson Editorial editor (except those editors who plan to write or edit a news story on the same topic in the future).
The Crimson is one of the only college newspapers in the U.S. that owns its 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 no longer prints in-house but used to print over fifteen other publications on its presses.
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."[4][5] The two organizations occupy buildings within less than one block of each other; interaction between their staff has included pranks, vandalism, and romance.[6]
Currently, The Crimson publishes two weekly additional sections in addition to its regular weekly paper: an Arts section on Tuesdays and a magazine called Fifteen Minutes on Thursdays. Issues of Fifteen Minutes come periodically in the form of glossies.
The Crimson is a nonprofit organization that is independent of the university. All decisions on the content and day-to-day operations of the newspaper are made by undergraduates. The student leaders of the newspaper employ several non-student staff, many of whom have stayed on for many years and have come to be thought of as family members by the students who run the paper.
The Crimson is composed of 10 boards: Arts, Business, News, Sports, Editorial, Blog, Design, Magazine, Multimedia, and Technology.[7]
History[edit]
19th century[edit]
The Harvard Crimson was one of many college newspapers founded shortly after the end of Civil War. The paper describes itself as "the nation's oldest continuously published daily college newspaper", although this description is contested by other college newspapers.[8] 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 ("sweet and dangerous") represented the precarious place of the student press at Harvard University in the late 19th century. The Magenta's editors 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 by a vote of the student body—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 1885.[9]
20th century[edit]
The paper flourished at the beginning of the 20th century with the commission of its own building in 1915, located at 14 Plympton Street in Cambridge, which remains the paper's headquarters, and its purchase of Harvard Illustrated Magazine and the establishment of an editorial board in 1911.[10] The Illustrated's editors became Crimson photographers, and thereby established the photographic board. The newspaper's president no longer authored editorials single-handedly, and the paper took stronger editorial positions.
During 1930s and 1940s, reduced financial resources and competition from a publication established by ex-editors represented serious challenges to the Crimson's viability. In 1943, the banner on the paper read Harvard Service News, and the stories focused almost exclusively on Harvard's contribution to World War II. Under the authority of so-called wartime administrative necessity, alumni discouraged the Service News from editorializing. The paper was administered during the war by a board of Harvard University administrators, alumni, and students.
In 1934, The Crimson defended a proposal by Adolf Hitler's press secretary, Ernst F. Sedgwick Hanfstaengl, to donate to Harvard a prize scholarship to enable a Harvard student to attend a Nazi university. The Harvard Corporation voted unanimously to refuse the offer: "We are unwilling to accept a gift from one who has been so closely identified with the leadership of a political party which has inflicted damage on the universities of Germany through measures which have struck at principles we believe to be fundamental to universities throughout the world." The Crimson defended it, "That political theories should prevent a Harvard student from enjoying an opportunity for research in one of the world's greatest cultural centers is most unfortunate and scarcely in line with the liberal traditions of which Harvard is pardonably proud."[11]