'Crimson' Faced Its Own Troubles In Spring Crisis

Newspapers and magazines don't often like to talk about their own problems. Life magazine, for example, gleefully served up the bad news about Abe Fortas, but it has been noticeably less eager to tell about its own financial crisis. And the New York Times, which runs deadpan stories on its managerial shifts, leaves the controversial details to informants like Gay Talese.

Always trying in every way to imitate the giants of journalism, the CRIMSON has generally followed this rule. Now and then a reporter may self indulgently slap a troublesome news source: "Professor so and so refused to answer questions about..." "The Dean could not be reached at his home or anywhere else on the Eastern Seaboard for comment last night." But more often the routine story of how the news is gathered remains where it belongs, far off the front page.

In normal times, this intuitive taciturnity serves the reader well. He doesn't have to read the same boring details every morning. But in abnormal times it may not be such a service; and in the grossly abnormal times of last spring, it helped produce a virtual news blackout of one of, the more significant aspects of the Harvard crisis.