The Harvard Crimson, of Harvard University, is the United States' oldest continuously published daily college newspaper. It was founded in 1873 and then incorporated in 1967. The Crimson traces its origin to the first issue of The Magenta, published January 24, 1873. The newspaper changed its name to "The Crimson" to reflect the new color of the college on May 21, 1875.
The student paper, which consistently wins high honors, has a rich past as a testing ground for future journalists, and several have gone on to win Pulitzer Prizes. Its distinguished alumni include Presidents John F. Kennedy of the Class of 1940 and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904 (who served as president of the newspaper).
In 1991 student reporters for the Crimson were the first to break the news that Harvard had selected former Princeton Provost Neil Leon Rudenstine to succeed Derek Bok as President of the university. The reporters, who had learned of a secret meeting in New York, got their confirmation when they approached a surprised Rudenstine on his plane ride back to Boston. The story appeared in an extra bearing the dateline "SOMEWHERE OVER NEW ENGLAND."
Resourceful Crimson editors repeated the scoop in 2001, beating out national media outlets to report that Larry Summers would succeed Rudenstine.
The Harvard Crimson is the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Mass., and is run entirely by Harvard undergraduates. Any student who volunteers and completes a training requirement is elected an "editor" of the newspaper. Thus, all staff members of the Crimson--including writers, photographers and graphic designers--are technically "editors."
The Crimson is one of the few college newspapers in the U.S. that owns its own printing presses. In 2004 the Crimson began publishing editions with a full-color front page.
The Crimson has a long and rich rivalry with a certain "semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine," known to most others as the Harvard Lampoon.
The HarvardCrimson, the breakfast daily of Harvard University, was founded in 1873.
Crimson alumni include Presidents John F. Kennedy of the Class of 1940 and Franklin D. Roosevelt (who served as president of the newspaper), Class of 1904.
The Crimson included more substance in the 1880s, as the paper's editors were more eager to engage in a quality of journalism like that of muckraking big-city newspapers; it was at this time that the paper moved first from a biweekly to a weekly, and then to a daily in 1883.
Harvard has the world's fourth largest library collection (after the Library of Congress, the British Library, and the University of California), and the largest financial endowment of any academic institution, standing at $25.9 billion as of 2005, and the second largest endowment for a non-profit organization behind only the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Harvard has a friendly rivalry with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which dates back to 1900, when a merger of the two schools was frequently mooted and at one point officially agreed upon (ultimately canceled by Massachusetts courts).
Harvard is governed by two boards, the President and Fellows of Harvard College, also known as the Harvard Corporation and founded in 1650, and the Harvard Board of Overseers.
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