Harvard Magazine Celebrates 100 Years of Covering University

On Nov. 7, 1898, the Athletic Association of Harvard Graduates published for the first time a newspaper called "Bulletin" with stories on the Harvard football team's 10-0 victory over Pennsylvania, the new Radcliffe gymnasium and the Harvard men who died in the Spanish-American war.

The nineteenth-century equivalent of a Harvard Sports Illustrated grew into Harvard Magazine, a "magazine about the great intellectual life of a university," according to its current editor, John S. Rosenberg.

The weekly Bulletin originally focused on athletic matters. It was free to members of the Association and available to non-members at a subscription cost of $2 per year.

While the magazine was founded by the athletic association, the first issue proclaimed, "The Bulletin will not be an athletic paper, however, in any exclusive sense."

In addition to play diagrams from the football games, the Bulletin ran stories about lectures held at the University on topics ranging from nineteenth-century English law to venereal diseases.

Rosenberg said the founding of the magazine was a way to keep members of the College connected to each other as the University itself expanded.

"Harvard College was becoming a relatively less big part of the whole," he said, noting that by 1898 Harvard was well on its way to becoming a premiere modern research institution.

Coming into the Modern Age

The magazine's purpose, content and circulation have shifted over the past 100 years.

Now it is, according to Rosenberg, much "more than club notes and game scores." He cited recent stories on archaeological digs at Sardis, nuclear testing in South Asia and the chemistry of dreams as examples of the magazine's diverse content.

The circulation of the magazine has increased dramatically to its current figure of 220,000, and is now distributed free of charge to all alumni, faculty and staff of the University.

Previously, the magazine was sent only to graduates of the College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Because Harvard graduates more people each year than the number of readers who die annually, circulation increases steadily, Rosenberg noted.

He said the recent decision to send the magazine to all University alumni is part of President Neil L. Rudenstine's efforts to integrate the University campaign's various branches.

Rudenstine upped University funding for the magazine to cover the increased circulation, he said.

Despite the fiscal support, Rosenberg said the magazine is not a University mouthpiece.

It is published by Harvard Magazine, Inc., a nonprofit corporation with three sources of revenue: about 50 percent from advertisements, 30 percent from the University and 20 percent from alumni contributions.

Rosenberg said the magazine is editorially independent because it is not the property of the University, but rather "the property of and a service to the alumni."

Defending the magazine's independent status, he also pointed to the absence of a president's page, a column found in most other alumni magazines.

Stories on financial aid, the Medical School power plant and a recent cover article on the experiences of gay students demonstrate the magazine's editorial independence, Rosenberg said.

In the case of financial aid, the magazine reported that despite the University's much touted claim that tuition increases were declining, the changes still represented an increase when compared with the growth of family income.

"Gay Like Me," by Andrew P. Tobias '68, which generated controversy among alums was another example of the magazine's development and autonomy, Rosenberg said.

"University publicity isn't likely to produce a story on the experience of being gay at Harvard," he said.