"The Dartmouth," An Explanation
There has been going on for some time a ferment amongcollege newspapers, and now and then the effects get intometropolitan newspaper columns. There has been alsoconsiderable action on the board of The Dartmouth thisyear, which, after a stormy period a few years ago when alively editor tore old policies to shreds, has begun to buildup something like an effective organization. This buildingpolicy may have been due at this time, and on the otherhand it may have been the immediate work of Editor Scottand his board, but at any rate the paper has been morereadable this year than at any time within recent years.There has been more "considered thought" in the editorials,more space for news and less for advertising,—Ed Boylehas been given more of a free hand in makeup and errorshave been less frequent than ever before. The moneyusually gobbled up by editor and business manager hasbeen distributed, office furnishings have been renewed, andplans for the coming year provide for a board which will bepaid regular salaries for work. Recognition of The Dartmouth's aims has already been given by the new interestingundergraduate publication The Tomahawk, and it comesas a result of the article in The Tomahawk that the AlumniMagazine asked Mr. Scott to develop the article a little forthe benefit of the Alumni. For material directly quoted,the Alumni Magazine wishes to thank The Tomahawk.
EVERYBODY damns The Dartmouth. They always have, and they always will, as long as the paper continues to be the sole medium of Hanover news.
The professor whose official notice was misprinted has good cause to complain. His whole class room routine is thrown out of gear. So has the audience that arrives for the evening lecture half an hour early, due to an uncorrected typographical error.
And naturally this discontent breaks out again when the plaintiffs remember the six dollars they are paying for their news service. Six dollars is the price of metropolitan service. The Dartmouth is far below that, obviously. There are many, especially among the faculty, who cannot see the justification for the annual tax.
Yet to those who have grown up with the lumbering system that creates a new issue every morning, the mere fact that it continues to come out every morning is a source of profound astonishment. We know the weaknesses. We know the easy indolence that may come upon any one of the eighty links that makes up the production chain. Some twenty men, working unJ der the managing editor, are responsible for the news of the day. Functionally the work of this department is the most important; without a good managing editor nothing else in the paper can function with any degree of adequacy. Thirty or forty men, whose work is integrated by the business manager and advertising manager, handle the mechanics of advertising and printing as well as office routine. Another twenty cont ribute editorials regularly, from which two or three are selected for the next day's issue. If you think the editorials are lousy, please come around and read the ones that we have rejected.
Everyone of the eighty has loyalties that are far more important than their allegiance to a newspaper system that may never reward them for their effort. But hour examinations, letters home, the thousand and one loyalties to friends, fraternities and studies—all these are disregarded for the paper without a thought of the consequences that they involve. There is one cardinal axiom: The paper must come out. Whenever any one unit of the system fails, the gap is filled by the nearest available man. He may grumble at being pulled out of bed, but he comes. The paper may be late, it may be inaccurate, but it never fails to appear.
It is small wonder then that the news staff gets pretty well inured to complaints about its "wretched service." A succession of injured professors whose flimsy articles on poetry recitals, prize contests and language plays have been rejected or cut in preference to more complete news stories on athletic events, often makes the managing editor marvel at the monocellular structure of human nature. A great many professors naively assume that The Dartmouth should be an official organ, keyed to a vague ideal called the best interests of the College, which they define as the development of a sincere interest in culture. To approximate any degree of such doubtful proselyting, besides being mechanically impossible, would demand that the editors possess a divine power to allocate to each phase of cultural interest its due share and no more. Obviously we are not cut from such astral dough.
The news of The Dartmouth can only be keyed to the field of student interest. Beyond that, any material that may have some claim to achieving these broadly cultural ends, we will cheerfully use as filler—when an inefficient advertising department forces us to use filler.
The editorials of The Dartmouth in the past year have been definitely keyed to Massachusetts Row and not to Occom Ridge. This is a departure, and one that is not born in the indefinite purple of idealism. This year the problem that confronted us has been one of reader interest: in the four years just preceding, only a minor fraction of the student body have read the editorials, chiefly because they have gone too far north towards Occom Ridge and away from campus interest. Our aim has been to amuse the campus several mornings a week with enough garnish to make the whole column readable. It seems better to us to ridicule a campus tendency than to come out with a whole-hearted denunciation that makes up in virulency what it lacks in logic and considered thought.
This is expediency, and if that is a crime against idealism and liberalism, make the most of it. In the last ten years of the paper's editorial history, there has not been a single major instance where the paper succeeded by a frontal attack. We have believed that there never will be.
More by ridicule than by other devices, we have attempted to set up in the student body an attitude towards drinking and "big-timing" which does not give an unwieldy proportion to the elements of glamour and color in these forbidden pastimes. We seem to have failed for the present; people say we are cynical, and some go farther and say depraved. We're not, but that doesn't help.
The trend we hoped to inaugurate, a tendency towards controlled and discreet rounding, if rounding there must be, has not materialized. But there is some hope. Fifteen boys don't shout about Main Street of a Saturday night: only three or four perpetuate the noisy traditions of the old guard. The rest, we hope, are sitting before some fireside, sipping, talking or maybe just gazing into the embers.
Previous editors have attempted the difficult role of reformer. They have treated their positions as moral overlordships of the campus. And, without exception, these undergraduate kings, pretenders to a throne that existed only in their imagination, have failed in their undertakings, because their only weapon has been an awkward sort of schoolboy criticism, making up in vigor what it lacked in maturity and balance. Too often this weapon has turned out to be a boomerang, leaving the editor with the unhappy decision of admitting his fault, or ingeniously defending a ludicrously untenable position. And too often the editorial pride has been such that it preferred the defense to a candid admission of error. The results have never favored TheDartmouth's reputation.
This year our primary concern has not been so much with the editorial column as with the internal organization of the paper. The machine has been subjected to a great many severe abuses in the last several years. It is only when these have been ironed out, by ceaseless trial and error, that the paper can hope for freedom from ignorance, and the ability to use this freedom with balance and strength. But the organization must realize its own nature before any of this can commence.
Fundamentally The Dartmouth is a parasite organization. It does not prey upon the time of its competitors so much as the more intensive forms of athletics or the higher specialized forms of managerial activity, but it remains parasitic in its basic theory. It imperiously exacts a great deal of time from its competitors and gives them in return rewards that are, coldly, intangible. Of course this is conditioned by the fact that in practice the goal of the College is even more remote to the average man than the very near and very real goals of his extra-curricular activities.
Accordingly the policy of the paper can only be to attract to its competitions as many men as possible. The key of the news organization is the junior board. If that board is large, the work required per man to fill the sheet is much less than with a small personnel. In theory the quality of the work should improve with the increased amount of time the board members are able to give each unit of the paper's work. And the paper will be more attractive to the better men of the fresh- man class as an extra curricular activity, because the work they will be required to do will come the nearest to equating freedom with prestige that is possible in campus competitions.
This is the keystone of any success The Dartmouth may ever attain. Without a large board, the competition kills itself by increasing the work required of each individual endlessly, as the severity of the competition forces more and more out of the active personnel.
At present we are well on the way towards this goal. The sophomore news board numbers eighteen members. This means that each individual will be required to serve as night editor only once in three weeks, after his brief period of apprenticeship. This will cut the time they will have to spend on night duty into one-third the time spent by the board members four years ago. The news board will only cover one varsity sport in a year, in place of one every season.
One more major reform is worthy of note: In the past the editor has been the executive of The Dartmouth. This has meant that the competition has been based upon editorials and not upon the mechanical efficiency that is necessary for accuracy. The managing editor in the past had been the second string editor too frequently. This has not had a favorable reaction upon the morale of the office of managing editor.
This last year the managing editor not only was the high candidate in the technical end of The Dartmouth but also in the editorial end. As the success of the paper depends primarily upon the managing editor and not upon the editor, the presidency of the corporation was given to the managing editor. In future years the difference between these offices that has existed in the past should be wiped out by this policy of shifting the presidency according to the merit of the men who qualify for the two offices. It is our theory that the office should seek the man, rather than the reverse.
In the two respects enumerated above,, we may or may not have made some progress. The next five years will tell. Our only definite achievements have been two-fold: the development of a technique of morale, and the specialization of an English course to suit the needs of the editorial competition.
The technique of morale has been simple. The editorial offices have been furnished, and, more important, used as lounging centers for the whole board. There have been incredibly foolish touch football games with The Harvard Crimson. There has been an informal spring banquet at Mel Adams. There has been a subrosa organization known as Mug and Slug whose meetings are nowhere and whose discussions are nothing, but whose results are remarkably patent. We have done a little towards making the board a craft gild with a common goal, instead of an organization whose only motives are vanity and lucre. There will be a lot more done in this line by the next three directorates.
Through the cooperation of the English Department and the Administration a special course has been created, so that board members get curricular credit for their extra-curricular work. This means that TheDartmouth in a few years or so will receive the cumulative effect of training in administration; there will be reasoned instruction and never supervision. The benefit of supervision is too often lost in the unconscious antagonism of an endless succession of youths who feel that their hard-won authority is being infringed. Such instruction ought to do a great deal towards maturing the editorial tone of The Dartmouth.
For the next three years, perhaps, people will still continue to damn The Dartmouth with good cause. But these attacks should dwindle, if the paper keeps its course.
We haven't gone far at all. All we know now is the wrongs of the present. We have tried to correct them, as patiently and surely as our ignorance permitted. Maybe we have been right, maybe we have not .The 1932Dartmouth will tell.
WALTER SCOTT '29
DID YOU HELP?
