Making the News

A short “boop” announced that I had new e-mail. My fingers moved in a blur across the keyboard with a swiftness born of three years of e-mail addiction. The message in my inbox said that the private e-mails of one of Harvard’s exclusive social clubs were publicly accessible. Other Harvard students across a few other e-mail lists had already been forwarded this information, but so far the link to the social club’s e-mail archives hadn’t been widely distributed.

The message contained instructions for accessing the social club’s punch book—containing all the negative and positive comments of club members about potential new members—as well as for accessing private e-mails detailing the club’s interactions with other clubs and with their new members. I had a decision to make.

The Crimson gets wind of social club developments twice a semester or so: busses used as toilets on the way back from punch events, strange initiation rituals, club finances gone untended, and so on. In many ways, these revelations are no stranger (though usually slightly more scandalous) than the stuff we do at The Crimson. Inclusive or exclusive, college clubs seem to share a common obsession with arcane initiation procedures, for instance. And every student group must use a system to decide who gets in and who stays out. This social club had just made the mistake of assembling an accessible digital version.

From one perspective, then, this club’s e-mail archives were no more remarkable or revealing than the e-mail archives of any of Harvard’s student groups. From the archives, we learned that social club members benefit from their alumni network both in terms of job opportunities and donations. We learned that club members sometimes like to drink alcohol. (Scandal!) And we learned that the club’s punch process, during which new members are chosen, relies less on any nebulous measurement of “merit” and more on the social adeptness of prospective members. In short, the archives confirmed everything that everyone already knew about Harvard’s social clubs. If anything, I was impressed by how cordial and respectful this specific club managed to be while commenting on its punches.

From another perspective, however, this social club’s e-mail archives were different simply because they were guaranteed to pique the interest of your average Harvard student. They were interesting for the same reason that paparazzi salivate about pictures of Brangelina’s new baby. By diligently cultivating their exclusivity through closed punch processes and the maintenance of close ties only with other closed social clubs, Harvard’s social clubs—male and female—make themselves targets of intense scrutiny.

Though this specific club’s e-mail archives showed that it resembled many of Harvard’s inclusive student groups in many ways, they also hinted at the unusual wealth lavished on members for no higher purpose than socializing. They acted as a window into a social world that few Harvard students are allowed to taste, much in the way that People magazine provides a window into the lives of the world’s wealthy socialites. For the roughly 90 percent of students who do not belong to an exclusive social club, these e-mails were decidedly of interest.

Sitting at my computer in The Crimson’s building, my decision to pursue the story hinged less on its interest to The Crimson’s audience than on my qualms about the newspaper “making,” rather then reporting, the news. Clearly, the story was of a kind of sordid interest to a substantial part of campus. But the newspaper appeared to walk a difficult line in equating interest with newsworthiness. If we decided objectively that this story appealed to our readers, we would in effect be originating the news by publicizing these private e-mail archives to a far greater audience. The paper was in the midst of publishing its Friday issue that day, so debate raged over the weekend as to whether or not to publish a story. We met with leaders of the club in question. And we sought advice from professional journalists as to the correct course of action.

In the end, the story emerged with top billing that following Monday. One of our best reporters spent the weekend gathering facts about previous social club leaks to put the incident in context. Published along with excerpts from the e-mails, the article was certainly guilty of “making” the news. Its structure implied value judgments (at least by my ken) about the club’s punch process and its members’ lifestyles. And its ending quote made the club’s punchmaster look stupid for posting the punch book online and for failing to password-protect the e-mail archives. Nowhere in the article was there any coverage of the campus’ reaction, a traditional mark of newsworthiness. The Crimson, not the e-mail archives, was the newsmaker.

The Crimson faced vehement criticism for publishing the article, but to do otherwise would have been a disservice to journalism. Every story, however small, represents a potentiality. Sometimes a story’s potential is clear. Seymour Hersh’s article on Abu Ghraib “made” the news while changing American policy. Other times, a story’s potential is harder to judge. An article in a small Beirut newspaper led to the Iran-Contra scandal. Closer to home, who could have guessed that an article about “intrinsic aptitudes” nearly a year and a half ago would crystallize Faculty resistance and lead to the ouster of University President Lawrence H. Summers?

By their very nature, newspaper stories focus public discourse by selectively highlighting certain information. Their effects can be wide-ranging or nonexistent, but these effects are very rarely predictable before the articles are inked onto the page.

Laboring under these very constraints, legendary New York Times reporter and columnist James Reston exhorted newspapers to aspire to the massive impact but poor aim of artillery pieces. Media, he says, should cover anything and everything, for journalists fail more surely when they pass up a potential story, not when they cover too much. Better to send more shells slamming into the public discourse than leave it unmolested and, consequently, unchallenged.



In hindsight, The Crimson’s coverage of the e-mail leak had little impact beyond embarrassing the club’s members, and for that I’m sorry. Our student-run artillery piece of a newspaper is always learning how to aim better. But, ultimately, in a free society, the price of enjoying unfettered access to information is sometimes finding oneself in the crosshairs.



Alex Slack ’06, who was a Crimson editorial chair in 2005, is a history concentrator in Leverett House.