The Media

Not a trace of cigar smoke nor a sound of raised voices could be detected when we dropped by Robinson Hall recently to pay respects to the new editor-in-chief of TheDartmouth. Scattered around the cramped office were things of a sort editors like: a 1975 sports-car catalog, a yellowed front page from the November 22, 1971, issue, screaming DARTMOUTH TO ADMIT WOMEN, and a picture of a coyly grinning male undergraduate inscribed "To Anne...." This sanctum is presided over by the lady of the inscription, Anne Bagamery '78, first woman editor-in-chief of the oldest college newspaper in America.

All the slender blonde asks out of life as editor-in-chief is "to be correct. We can't ask for much more." A Romance Languages major from Birmingham, Michigan, she said she was chosen for the job for her capabilities as an editor and "regardless of my sex. Other people are more conscious of it than I am."

Another new face is the paper's own. This term The Dartmouth's directorate has adopted a new layout to achieve a more "graphically oriented look," according to publisher Ted Kutscher '78, who says, "smaller headlines say more." So far, reaction has been mixed to the first major change in the paper since it went offset in 1973-74.

Reaction was not mixed to the startling issue of December 2. The lead story had it that President-elect Carter had nominated President Kemeny for "a Cabinet-level position as Director of National Computing" and that Carroll Brewster and Thaddeus Seymour, former deans of the College gone to presidencies elsewhere, were jockeying to fill the Dartmouth vacancy. Inside the issue, the editors announced that former football coach Bob Blackman would soon replace Jake Crouthamel. A few far-flung alumni got upset about these fanciful maneuvers, and The Dartmouth is still hearing from them, Bagamery says.

We, on the other hand, deplore the very notion of such reckless japes. To set the record straight: former first lady Betty Ford has accepted the chairmanship of Dartmouth's Women's Studies Program, and her husband will coach the golf team.