A Note to Readers: The Crimson’s Digital Future

To our readers:

For the last century and a half, The Crimson has been committed to holding power to account at Harvard University, informing our readers while training the next generation of journalists. For most of our history, printing a daily paper was the fastest and most impactful way to fulfill that purpose.

Our mission — which has survived war, depression, and pandemic — remains fundamental and unchanged. But the form through which we fulfill it must be flexible.

Over the past two decades, our newspaper — and the journalism industry — has raced to keep up with the pace of the internet, where content is delivered faster and more creatively than it was when our presses first ran in 1873.

Today, an overwhelming majority of our readers interact with our content online. We must lead the way in embracing that reality.

This fall, The Crimson will make a historic change to harness the opportunity presented by the digital era: We will shift to producing a weekly print edition while recentering our operations and product to prioritize online content.

We understand the significance of this change: The University Daily will no longer appear daily in print. But this isn’t a move away from our commitment to covering Harvard every day — it is a step into the future that will allow us to improve the substance and delivery of our product while better serving our staff.

Producing high-quality independent journalism today requires an innovative digital-first approach. This change will allow us to invest our resources into meeting our readers where they are: online. And to prepare the next generation of journalists, we must train them on the tools of tomorrow — no longer just a broadsheet newspaper.

Undoubtedly, there remains an important role for print at The Crimson, which will take a new and improved form. In the fall, Issue No. 72 of the 149th Volume will come in a brand new weekly format that will be redesigned and expanded to include our best journalism, complete with the original reporting, analysis, and opinion our readers expect. Online, we will remain a daily news operation as we extend our commitment to providing minute-by-minute information to the communities of Harvard and Cambridge on our digital platforms.

On the day The Crimson celebrated its 60th anniversary in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Class of 1904 — president of The Crimson three decades earlier — was being inaugurated to a higher post. A group of editors hosting a celebratory dinner anxiously awaited word from FDR, whose universally famous acronym first began at The Crimson, where it is still a tradition to call each other by our initials. Shortly before the dinner, Roosevelt sent a telegram apologizing for his absence. “I’m sorry that I cannot attend your celebration,” he wired. “Keep the old sheet flying.”

Those words have served as the unofficial motto of​​​​ The Crimson ever since. With this change, we will seek to turn the challenge of our time into the opportunity of our new era and keep the old sheet flying for 150 more years.

Sincerely,

Raquel Coronell Uribe ’22-’23
President of the 149th Guard

Jasper G. Goodman ’23
Managing Editor of the 149th Guard

Amy X. Zhou ’23
Business Manager of the 149th Guard