A Community Paper

A curious thing struck me during last spring's race relations crisis. I was sitting in a meeting with minority student leaders in the Eliot House Junior common room. While the students hated and mistrusted The Crimson, they liked and respected Anna D. Wilde, then our minority issues beat reporter.

This fall, at a Leverett House junior dinner, Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles went on and on about "a certain local publication. "While he was clearly criticizing The Crimson, Knowles was careful to mention by name and single out for praise the beat reporters who cover him.

There seemed to be a pattern developing. To the extent that people knew us, they liked us, trusted us, believed us. To the extent that people didn't know us, they saw The Crimson as a biased, arrogant monolith. The challenge as a biased, arrogant monolith. The challenge we face now is to cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship between The Crimson, in general, and the community, in general.

A report of the American Society of Newspaper Editors seemed to validate my gut instincts. In their 1985 report, titled "Newspaper Credibility: Building Reader Trust," they suggested ways to build such a relationship:

"Newspapers can affect how they are perceived. They would do well to enhance their role as a populist institution--'my paper' instead of 'that paper.' People who feel they have access to their local newspaper find newspapers more credible than those who don't. Newspapers should take more opportunity to explain why they do what they do, why it's sometimes necessary to make certain people unhappy to serve the interests of everyone...

"Most of all, newspapers should practice good, basic journalism, and they should show respect for the people they cover and the people they serve."

On Wednesday a new group of students became the 120th Executive Board of The Harvard Crimson. Our goal is to make your newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, the best college newspaper in America.

You, the reader, are the ultimate beneficiary of that goal. Whether you are a student, a professor, a graduate, a parent, a city resident, a staff member, a University administrator or a visitor to Cambridge picking up this newspaper for the first time ever, we want to give you the best newspaper possible.

Part of the way we hope to achieve this goal is by getting you involved. Reader participation and increased accessibility don't simply improve our image in the community; they make the newspaper better. And an excellent newspaper is good for readers, for staffers, for Harvard and for Cambridge.

We encourage readers, therefore, to be more than simply passive consumers of this newspaper. This is, after all, your newspaper, not simply "that newspaper." So we invite readers to be active. If you think we're doing something wrong, let us know. If you have a question, call and ask. If you're organizing an event, tell us about it. In addition to listing it in our community calendar, we may well cover the event for our news pages. If you hear about something new, exciting, exceptional, interesting or inspirational, let us know. Many of the articles in our paper are the result of called-in tips from sources. If you care passionately about an issue, write a letter to the editor, or talk to the editorial chairs about writing a guest commentary.

We hope readers will come by and visit. We don't want to talk only by telephone. By touring our building and meeting some editors, a reader might understand better how The Crimson happens, and how decisions are made here. We'll be having several open houses over the next year. We also welcome all undergraduates to join our staff in the upcoming spring and fall comps.

For our part, we pledge to be accessible and polite to every reader. We will return telephone calls quickly and welcome participation and ideas. We will print our telephone numbers and address on page four of the newspaper every day. If we make mistakes, we promise to correct them quickly and ungrudgingly. We will welcome all undergraduates who want to join our staff and we will do our best to teach you what we know.

On a larger scale, every Crimson staff member will try to build solid relationships with people outside the paper. Most importantly, we will make every effort "to practice good, basic journalism," and we will "show respect for the people we cover and serve."

We will continue our quest to put out the best college newspaper in America. Let us know how we're doing.

"14 Plympton" will appear occasionally on the Friday editorial page. Crimson editors will use this column to discuss issues that affect journalism at The Crimson and at Harvard.