HARVARD IN PRINT

Among the responsibilities of the University to the general public and particularly to its own graduates and undergraduates is the publication of news of its activities. In order fully to discharge this duty, news should be complete; and it should be issued officially and promptly.

This is not done at Harvard. Perhaps the first obstacle in the way is the official fear that information may be mishandled in the presentation, and the conviction that the surest preventative is to withold information. There may also exist the belief that official disbursement of publicity material will be interpreted as the activity of a university anxious to find itself on the front pages as often as possible. But it is definite lack of appreciation of the meaning and value of properly controlled publicity that is assuredly present in circles of Harvard authority.

The gain inherent in the keeping of the name of Harvard before the public mind in association with educational progress is apparent. To achieve this gain it is essential that Harvard news appear in the columns of the daily press. It is infinitely to be preferred that this news be collected and distributed by Harvard officials than that it be allowed to leak out through any of the numerous channels that lead from a complex organization. Official preparation of the news for the press by an authority in whom is vested sole responsibility for publicity would eliminate at the source those errors which are feared by the University and are certain to crop up in the passage through miscellaneous agencies.

An unwillingness to publish officially complete details of what has become news as soon as it has happened is liable to misinterpretation as the policy of a real seeker after public notice who attracts more attention by mystery, by admission and denial, and the sensationalism attendant upon uncertainty.

Harvard has suffered in the past from the unwelcome publicity of inaccurate facts and of accuracy colored to disadvantage. The blame is traceable directly to the laxity which prefers to permit valuable information to leak out comfortably to be mishandled in the press rather than direct its course officially. The University owes it to itself and to its constituents to assume a firm guidance of publicity and insure the official publication in full of Harvard news when it is news.