The Magazine Has A Birthday
FIFTY years ago this month the first issue o£ the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE appeared. It was not a brand-new magazine but in format and contents was a continuation of The Dartmouth BiMonthly, founded three years earlier under the editorship of Ernest Martin Hopkins '01, then Secretary of the College. But a new name, a new publication schedule of nine monthly issues, October through June, and the designation of the October 1908 issue as Volume I, Number 1 all indicated that Mr. Hopkins and his small staff looked upon their monthly publication as a fresh beginning.
Without a halt during the past fifty years the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE has continued to come out as a monthly magazine. This is its 469th consecutive issue. Since 1908 publication has increased to ten times a year, many changes have been made in size and appearance, contents have grown and become more varied to keep pace with an expanding and changing College, alumni circulation has increased tremendously, thanks to the class group subscription plan, and editorial emphasis has varied as successive staffs have assumed responsibility for producing the MAGAZINE.
Despite all these surface changes in fifty years, this month's issue is essentially unchanged in spirit and purpose from that first issue of October 1908. The ALUMNI MAGAZINE is still published by the Dartmouth Secretaries Association and still exists to serve, first and foremost, the alumni of the College. Central to the unique success of Dartmouth's alumni organization and program has been an early, almost pioneer, recognition of the alumni as an integral and continuing part of the College and, with this recognition, a sincere effort to keep Dartmouth men in close and informed touch with the College and each other. The ALUMNI MAGAZINE'S role from the beginning has been primarily that of providing, between Dartmouth and her sons, the steady, two-way line of communication that the Committee on Alumni Relations recently declared to be the life-sustaining element in the whole alumni program.
As expressed by Editor Hopkins in Dartmouth's very first alumni publication, cooperation between the alumni and the College "necessitates knowledge of affairs as they are, by all concerned, and requires thought and effort that the possibilities of the present may be realized and that the development of the future may be sustained. Many a man through the force of circumstances draws all the inspiration for his enthusiasm for his college from the life of his undergraduate days, and feeds his loyalty wholly upon a sentimental reverence for the past. Many an administration in our colleges, through lack of contact with the alumni body, has failed to achieve desired results. The aim of this magazine is to do what it can in the work of cooperation. Its publication has been called for and encouraged by the secretaries of the classes and the alumni associations and clubs. The plan has the endorsement and the promise of assistance from the administration of the College. The project has been made possible by the assurance of support from loyal graduates. The Bi-Monthly will make every effort to do what it can in maintaining the interest of alumni, officers and friends of Dartmouth in each other and in the College. The more that it succeeds in this the more it will fulfill its mission."
One especially fortunate result of having Mr. Hopkins as its first editor was the MAGAZINE'S concern, from the very beginning, with the central educational purpose of the College and with many facets of higher education. Editorial comment in the early issues ranged over Dartmouth's purpose, teaching, the Ph.D. and the dangers of narrow specialization, new programs at other colleges, the status of scholarship, and the role of the undergraduate, liberal arts college in American life. The MAGAZINE has never lost this view of itself as having an important part in the educational mission of the College and as having the duty of putting first things first in its effort to inform the alumni.
Associated with Mr. Hopkins in producing the first issues of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE were Ashley Kingsley Hardy '94 and Homer Eaton Keyes '00, associate editors, and John Moore Comstock '77, alumni editor. Mr. Keyes succeeded to the editorship in 1910, and Mr. Comstock, who lived in Chelsea, Vt., continued to be alumni editor for 39 years, thus sharing the honor of longest editorial service with Harold Goddard Rugg '06, who was literary editor from 1914 to 1953.
THE October 1908 issue devoted fifteen of its 38 pages to alumni notes, edited by Mr. Comstock. Thus was established at the start another characteristic of the MAGAZINE. The class columns, written by the secretaries, have continued to be a major part of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE (in readership surveys they always come out No. 1 in alumni interest), and untold thousands of words have been printed in fifty years to tell the important and sometimes not-so-important doings of Dartmouth men around the world. In these class reports resides the real story of the Dartmouth product and perhaps of the effectiveness of Dartmouth as an educational institution. Debate now rages in college magazine circles as to whether class notes have a place in an alumni magazine, but the Dartmouth magazine continues to be their staunch advocate, while admitting that ways must constantly be sought to freshen them and to avoid the much satirized trivia.
On this 50th anniversary, special note should be made of the fact that the Rev. Charles C. Merrill '94 wrote the 1894 class notes in that first issue of October 1908 and, fifty years and hundreds of columns later, is still the .writer of the '94 notes in this month's issue. No one among the class secretaries can match his long and continuous service to the MAGAZINE.
The '94 column, like an island amidst swirling waters of change, has appeared in MAGAZINES of varied size and format. The original little gray-covered magazine of forty pages or so, 6% by 9¼ in size, continued to come out with the same cover, typography and layout for twenty years, although by 1928 it had tripled the number of pages, added a few more pictures, and increased advertising from 1908'S single page to more than ten pages. The metamorphosis in the MAGAZINE'S cover look is shown in the reproductions across the top of pages 26 and 27. The first big change occurred in 1928 when Editor Eric P. Kelly '06 increased the page size to 8 x 11 and introduced larger type and a whole new format. Changes, including first a sketch and then a picture on the cover, were fairly frequent in the next five years, leading up to another thorough overhaul in 1933. At that time the MAGAZINE adopted the three-column format and the Baskerville type face still being used. A two-color cover was adopted in 1948, along with the present 9 x 12 page size; and now, to launch its second half-century, the MAGAZINE appears with another new cover design and a new type face for department heads. The effort to improve the MAGAZINE'S appearance has been continuous since 1928 and has not ended.
Contents in the early years of the MAGAZINE were of a pattern: editorial comment, the texts of addresses by the President and others, historical articles, College news, including sports, and alumni notes. Except for the frontispiece every month, there were scarcely any pictures. An article in 1912 on "The College Man in Politics," written by Samuel W. McCall 74' to whom the presidency of the College was once offered, was one of the rare breaks from the intensely intramural character of the front features. Gradually the emphasis on texts and historical events and personages was leavened by faculty articles on courses, departments and undergraduate programs. A series on career opportunities, written by alumni prominent in their fields, was an innovation in the late '20s, and the presentation in 1930 of "A College Course for Alumni" was one of the first important MAGAZINE moves in what the college world now calls "continuing education" for graduates. Articles by alumni authors appeared more frequently in the '30s, and special undergraduate issues brought student authors and views to the fore. The "profile" type of article began to appear, and the steadily increasing use of pictures led to the first of the MAGAZINE'S so-called photo features.
WHILE the front contents were developing along this line, the MAGAZINE was also progressively adding now-familiar departments. A "Department of Alumni Opinion," now simply called "Letters," first appeared in January 1911, and a book-review section, "Alumni Publications," was added in 19141 with Mr. Rugg as literary editor. The appearance of the first Hanover real estate advertisement in March 1917 ought not to be passed over. Sports coverage was removed from "College News" and made a separate department in December 1930 (to become "Following the Big Green Teams" in 1928); "The Undergraduate Chair," with Edward J. Duffy '26 as the first occupant, appeared in January 1924; "Hanover Browsing," first written by Prof. Rees Bowen, was introduced in 1932; "Congratulations," the forerunner of the present "Wah Hoo Wah" column, began in 1934; and a faculty section was inaugurated in 1944.
The years of World War II were a separate chapter in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE story. Issues necessarily reduced in size were devoted largely to the war activities of the College and the alumni, with two special departments conducted by Herbert F. West '22, who has just resigned as an editor after conducting "Hanover Browsing" for the past 25 years. One pronounced effect of the war was the increased use of pictures with the class columns, setting a pattern that has continued to the present time.
The world situation and the national temper after the war had their sharp effect on the colleges - and alumni magazines. The ivory tower, if it ever existed, was done for, and the "great issues" of the day became of vital concern to college men, undergraduate and graduate alike. The past dozen years have seen the MAGAZINE, while carrying out its basic job of keeping Dartmouth men informed about the College and each other, take on increasing responsibility for maintaining and developing the intellectual relationship between the College and the alumni. With its "So Little Time" series in 1946 the MAGAZINE took its first purposeful step in this postwar program. The next year saw a- five-month series on "Public Opinion in a Democracy," specially written by a group of nine alumni. Great Issues lectures, reading lists, and faculty articles on national and international topics have been part of the trend. Last October's special supplement on the Dartmouth Convocation on Great Issues in the Anglo-Canadian-American Community was a MAGAZINE milestone, to be followed this year by a series of faculty-written supplements on topics of intellectual interest. Also to appear this publication year is the second cooperative effort of a group of alumni and alumnae magazines to tell the story of American higher education in broader scope than would be possible on any one campus.
For its part in the "American Higher Education 1958" insert that appeared in 153 magazines last spring, the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE, with thirteen others, was a recipient of the 1958 Alumni Service Award from the American Alumni Council. This, plus an award for the special Hopkins Center issue of May 1957, was the latest in a series of AAC citations given to the MAGAZINE from 1935 on. Under Mr. Hayward's editorship, the MAGAZINE had best class notes in 1935, best balance in 1938, best major articles in 1939, and won the grand award for all departments in 1940. In his final year, 1942-43, the MAGAZINE was the first winner of the Robert Sibley Award for the most distinguished alumni magazine of the year. In 1949 it became the first two-time winner of the Sibley Award, and other AAC citations were received in 1946, 1947, 1952, 1953, and 1955.
ALTHOUGH editorial operations come in for most alumni and general attention, the MAGAZINE has a vitally important business side. An unquestioned bright spot in this side oF the story is the period of 1938 and 1939 when the group subscription plan, backed by the Secretaries Association and the Alumni Council, was generally adopted by the Dartmouth classes, thereby giving the MAGAZINE a tremendous boost in circulation and lifting it to a new level of importance in alumni affairs. The year before this plan was adopted, the MAGAZINE with a circulation of 6,000 copies was reaching about one-half of the graduates of the College and only a little over one-third of all alumni. Last year, with a circulation of more than 25,000 copies, the MAGAZINE was going regularly to 96.7% of graduates and 88.6% of the entire alumni body. This year, with a solid sequence of sixty classes (1898 through 1958) participating in the group plan, it expects to reach the 26,000 mark in circulation.
The class group subscription plan which has made possible such all-inclusive coverage of the Dartmouth alumni body rests upon the willingness of each class to finance out of class dues a group subscription that sends the MAGAZINE regularly to the largest possible number of its members. Each participating class agrees to send at least its quota, equal to the number of living graduates, and in return receives a special group rate. Also, as part of the plan, a group subscription at a below-cost rate covers the entire membership of each graduating class for the five years until it holds its .first reunion and begins the collection of annual class dues.
The system of individual subscriptions that prevailed for thirty years gave the ALUMNI MAGAZINE a precarious financial footing, not to mention an incessant and often discouraging selling job to do. "No owners, no salaries, no profits" said the ownership statement made in 1912 by William R. Gray '04, who was business manager from 1910 to 1920. Up to 1924 the MAGAZINE was still operating in the red, despite a remarkable jump in advertising revenue, brought about by Business Manager Harry R. Wellman '07. Then in 1925, with 1911 and a few other classes breaking the ice with experimental group subscriptions, it operated in the black for the first time.
During the next dozen years Business Managers Albert W. Frey '20 (1925-35), Natt W. Emerson '00 (1935-36) and Norman Stevenson '05 (1936-39) inched circulation ahead from 4200 to 6000 copies, but efforts to have the class group subscription plan generally adopted were met with committee reports that variable class organizations did not make it feasible. Finally, the Alumni Council in the fall of 1937 named a special committee, headed by Harold P. Hinman '10, to study ways of strengthening class organization and achieving more complete coverage of the alumni body with the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. The efforts of this committee and particularly the yeoman work of Mr. Hinman with the individual classes brought into being the group subscription plan, resulting in a doubling of circulation to 12,500 within two years and starting the MAGAZINE on its steady climb to the large monthly press run of today.
With the virtually unanimous adoption of the group plan a new era of growth and effectiveness began for the MAGAZINE and, it is fair to say, for the whole Dartmouth alumni program. The MAGAZINE'S financial stability and independence were further strengthened in 1942 when the Ivy League alumni magazines banded together to sell advertising space as a group. For some years now the ALUMNI MAGAZINE has stood on its own feet financially and, except for a portion of the editor's salary, has made no call on the funds of the College. This fortunate position is important not so much for itself as for the opportunity it gives the MAGAZINE to do its job in better and better ways.
And so, fifty years and 469 issues later, the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE this month looks back upon its beginning, thankful for its honorable tradition, the strength builded into it by the unselfish service of a great many persons, the loyal support of Dartmouth men everywhere, and the chance it has had to contribute to the Dartmouth fellowship and the educational mission of the College.
Looking back for any magazine staff discloses more shortcomings than accomplishments. Fortunately, fifty years is but a prelude. Volume 51 is under way, and a long and challenging and exciting road stretches ahead. Like everything connected with Dartmouth, the MAGAZINE on its birthday has no self-satisfaction, only the desire to get moving ahead and to do the job better.
The Editorial Succession
Ernest Martin Hopkins '01 Editor, 1908-1910
Eugene F. Clark '01 Editor, 1930-28, 1929-30
Sidney C. Hayward '26 Editor, 1930-1943
Homer Eaton Keyes '00 Editor, 1910-1920
Eric P. Kelly '06 Editor, 1928-29, 1930
Charles E. Widmayer '30 Editor, 1943-
