Yale Daily News Defaults Title As CRIMSON Becomes 'OCD'

Today, on the occasion of the annual football rivalry, the CRIMSON accepts, by default, the honored title of being the "Oldest College Daily."

For nearly three quarters of a century the Yale Daily News maintained this distinction, but several years ago, when it relinquished regular Saturday publication, its slim historical lead began to dwindle. The CRIMSON began daily publication in 1883, just five years after "OCD," as the New Haven paper was formerly known.

Accordingly, with the five-year lead erased, the CRIMSON is obliged to assume this final honor. Having permitted the News several months of grace in which to withdraw the title from her front page, the new "OCD" has been obliged to adopt it outright.

The question of dropping the word "daily" from the News' masthead continues to divide the editors, many of whom assert that it is "dishonest" and "hardly Yale" to claim an undeserved title. Others, however, insist that "It looks good on the page--and it never matters what we say, anyway."

Recent efforts to print on the Harvard weekend and on other significant dates appear to many veteran News editors as an embarrassing compromise.

James Claude Thomson Jr., Yale '53, a distinguished past Chairman of the News in its daily days, seemed to speak for many when he observed recently, "We used to have a paper down there at the OCD. Now that that's gone, what is there?"