The Crimson Starts Its Next 100 Years

Thousands of hours and millions of words have gone into producing this newspaper over the last 100 years. Greater and lesser men and women have written for its pages, conducted its business, and forged its image. --The Harvard Crimson January 24, 1973

AND WITH those words, The Crimson plunged into its second century. the first century had been memorable: Crimson editors had gone on to become presidents, Pulitzer Prize-winners, Marxist economists, business magnates. The paper's politics had wavered from the far left to the right, but a thread of liberalism seemed inextricably woven into the fabric of the organization... And it was somehow fitting that on the 100th anniversary of the first edition of The Crimson, 450 former Crimson editors congregated on Cambridge for a Centennial dinner.

The dinner guests were a distinguished and diverse group, but they reflected the political trend of the paper over the last 100 years. After dinner and speeches, the group voted to send a resolution to President Nixon, asking him to sign the October peace agreement and to renounce any further U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia.

Other important decisions were made that weekend. The Crimson's Board of Graduate Editors approved plans for an offset press. Until 1971, The Crimson printed its daily edition in the basement of the Crimson building at 14 Plympton St.

But the economics of letterpress printing proved too costly for the paper, and photo-composition equipment was purchased. The Crimson, however, did not have enough capital to purchase an offset press, so the paper went through a number of different printers before finding happiness at Arlington Offset.

But the entire process of printing a daily newspaper will return to the Crimson building at 14 Plympton in February 1974, when a new Goss Community press revs up to print the first edition of volume 159.

And while The Crimson won't own the most modern or most expensive equipment available, it will be a far different newspaper than the one which Hollis Gleason '08, the oldest Crimson editor to attend the Centennial celebration, remembers from his day.

The Crimson began unpretentiously enough in 1873 by announcing in a simple statement of purpose: "I won't philosophize. I will be read." At that time, the paper was called The Magenta, and was published biweekly. The paper promised to obey all the canons of journalism: fairness, accuracy, objectivity.

The Magenta looked like other newspapers of its day. Articles ran in single columns and no photographs or drawings brightened the pages. The paper appeared to function as a clearinghouse for University information, and the editorial causes ranged from turning off the Yard gas lights at a later hour to more school spirit.

When the college changed the school color to crimson in 1875, The Magenta decided to change its colors as well. In May 1876, The Crimson appeared, but the new nomenclature could not disguise the basic problems of The Magenta: the paper was losing money.

After some financial wheeling and dealing that enables the paper to survive for a few years, The Crimson and its rival, The Advocate, began to discuss the possibility of merger. But the older Advocate haughtily rejected the idea, and The Crimson decided, on June 28, 1882, to publish as a weekly.

The weekly Crimson meant a change in direction. In a editorial on June 28, The Crimson said that to remain a fortnightly would mean to compete with the Advocate on a magazine-level. The Crimson wanted to be a newspaper.

The newspaper field at Harvard was well-stocked. The Harvard Echo had been around since 1879, and The Harvard Daily Herald appeared in early 1882.

And The Herald had quickly taken a vigorous approach to the news, challenging the older Echo. When the Advocate spurned The Crimson's merger offer, the Herald gladly accepted.

The Daily Herald-Crimson appeared in October, 1883. One year later, the name was changed to The Harvard Crimson, and the paper ended its metamorphosis. Technologically, politically, and financially, The Crimson would change over the next 90 years, but the name and the rate of publication would remain the same.

TWO ASPECTS dominated The Crimson for the rest of the 19th century: athletics and the mechanics of the paper. The Crimson established its own crew team, and the results of the races appeared in the New York daily papers.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 rose to the presidency of The Crimson, he editorially attacked the undergraduate student body for its sagging athletic spirit. Students were urged to attend the football team's practice sessions and to support the squad on Saturday by going to the games.

And while football occupied its columns, finding a home occupied its editors. Originally the paper's offices were located in Stoughton 22 (someone reading this article will live there this fall), and that lasted until 1895 when 1304 Massachusetts Ave. became home for Crimson editors. After the cramped quarters in Stoughton, the three floors on Mass Ave. must have seemed like a palace, and it gave The Crimson a permanency somehow absent in the early days.

However, the transient paper was not to remain on Mass Ave. After a brief sojourn in the Harvard Union, improved finances enabled The Crimson to set aside funds for a new home on Plympton St. In November 1915, The Crimson moved into its current headquaters, becoming one of the first college newspapers to own its own building.

But the biggest change in the first two decades of the 20th century came in the columns of the newspaper. A larger staff and more adverting meant more eight-page papers, and the birth of the Editorial Board brought greater coverage of theater events and political issues.

The Crimson was no longer run by a small staff, and the president and managing editor found themselves in control of a growing newspaper instead of a two-man operation.

During these years, the paper supported Hughes against Wilson and opposed intervention into World War I. When the war came, hundreds of Harvard undergraduates traipsed off to Europe to make the world safe for democracy, and many Crimson editors went along.

The War To End All Wars took the life of W.H. Meeker '17, Crimson president, one of 15 Crimson editors who died in the trenches of France.

After the war, Crimson editors drifted back to Cambridge, and the paper started to rebuild itself. One of its first moves was the purchase the Harvard Illustrated Magazine, a publication which had started in 1899. The Magazine's photo equipment came along with the magazine itself and the Photographic Board was born.

The Crimson of the 1920s was like The Crimson of today. The addition of the Photo Board increased the number of departments to four-editorial, news, and business are the others. If any of you want to join the ranks of Crimson editors this fall, you will try out for one of these four departments.

These tryouts are time-consuming and somewhat difficult. Candidates for the News Board must work two days per week for eight weeks; there are cuts after four weeks and eight weeks. Editorial candidates must write six articles; Ed Board cuts are very flexible, each candidate working individually with a tutor.

Candidates for the Photo Board must complete six assignments and prove competency in the darkroom. Business Board candidates must work in the office a few afternoons each week and sell between $700 and $800 in ads.

After the requirements have been met, the boards hold elections, which are pretty much rubber-stamp procedures. No one pretends that the tryouts are easy, but no one wants them to develop into cut-throat competition either. Candidates are not competing against each other; they are striving to improve their reporting and their writing. If you want to learn to write, take pictures, or sell ads, The Crimson will teach you.

LESSER AND GREATER men and women have attempted to become Crimson editors, and some famous people have failed. Walter Lippman '10, a patron saint of journalism, was cut four times. William Randolph Hearst '96, the Xanadu of newspaper owners, never bothered to try out. And neither seemed the worse off for it.

As Harvard and Radcliffe evolved toward their present relationship (and that is a whole different story), The Crimson evolved too. Women began to frequent the building after World War II, and the first women were elected in the late forties.

But the 4 to 1 ratio of men to women did not produce a much higher ratio at The Crimson, nor did The Crimson seem inclined to lead the way for the rest of the country by choosing a woman president. Two women have achieved the position of managing editor, but women still exist as a minority at The Crimson today.

The paper has tried to re-evaluate its role over the past few years, but some women editors have said that the building exudes a male-dominated atmosphere.

The paper also has a poor representation of blacks, a situation which has perplexed the staff. Some blacks have said that The Crimson, with its predominantly white staff, discriminates against blacks, a statement which the paper will deny vigorously.

Back in the thirties, the paper was much more formal. Well-known Marxist economist Paul M. Sweezy '31 was president in that era, but a glance at the paper during his year will give no clue to his later dedication to socialism.

But the thirties meant hard times for The Crimson, as it meant hard times for most businesses. The Depression cut deeper into the paper's capital, although the Harvard community learned little from The Crimson's columns about breadlines or CIO organizing drives.

The paper seemed to take a literary turn, as if to say that the hard news of the day was too depressing. The editorial page appeared day after day with editorials against initiation of the House plan (all upperclassmen live in one of 13 Houses near the river or in the Radcliffe Quad). And just when finances were at their nadir, The Crimson found itself with its first real competition since the 19th century.

The Harvard Daily Journal almost succeeded in taking over The Crimson's place in the University by taking advantage of the paper's complacency. But the appearance of the new paper brought out the dormant aggressiveness of Crimson editors, and a full-fledged war with The Journal ensued.

Well, just as in the TV shows, you all know the ending. The Crimson won, but the competition proved a revitalizing force. It propelled the paper into the forties, when a world war again sapped the paper's strength.

The Crimson found itself unable to continue throughout the war, and in 1943, the Harvard Service News appeared. This offspring served as a caretaker organization until the editors returned from Europe--returned for the battle against McCarthyism and the complacency of the fifties.

And then the sixties came, and the paper's politics drifted slowly leftward until The Crimson published an editorial on October 15, 1969 that made headlines in Paris--"Support the NLF."

During the late sixties, the paper found itself caught between the revolution and the reporting of the revolution. Some Crimson editors did both, while others criticized this lack of objectivity.

Into the seventies, the paper has reasserted the objectivity vital to a credible newspaper, but it has maintained its radical editorial stance--which is to the left of most Harvard students.

Yet throughout its history, The Crimson has been primarily people. From Art Hopkins, the linotypist in the forties and fifties who became a Crimson institution, to today's shop foreman Pat Sorrento, the paper has been run by dedicated individuals.

And a brief history of The Crimson would be incomplete without reference to Crimson parodies of the Lampoon, Harvard's humor magazine (and vice versa), or 23-2, the mythical score that is the margin of victory in every athletic contest participated in by the paper.

But if we tell you everything (and we'll try), you'll stop reading us. And if you've read this far, you'll remember the motto of The Magenta: "I won't philosophize. I will be read."Three Crimson editors watch their teammates in the making of another classic 23-2 touch-football victory.