No Official Word

About Epidemic In

Freshman Class

Actually, there were about 180 official words, and I gave them to you myself........

The academic year 1932-1933 ended on this note, but September brought a new dedication to accuracy, and to excellence. J.J. Thorndike, John U. Munro, Osborne Ingram, and others, led a movement to restore The Crimson's credibility, a movement which seemed at first to be succeeding. But by winter, the paper was slipping back. We are in grave danger of losing all the ground we have gained". Thorndike warned the staff. JESUS H. CHRIST IN THE FOOTHILLS was Ingram's comment on one particularly outrageous error. The enthusiastic newshounds insisted that the paper be expanded: six pages, they said, was the minimum necessary to do justice to College and national news. The Business Board, barely rehabilitated, smelled disaster and giant losses in an enlarged paper, and rounded up enough votes in the Winter executive elections to elect their candidates.

War was declared.

Some of, the Crimson's best talent walked out of the Sanctum after the election never to return. Tempers had run high, and the election had swung on a few key votes. Some of the business board's electors had not been seen on Plympton Street for months. After the decision, eleven editors departed to found their own paper.

The Harvard Journal gave The Crimson the only tough fight in its history. One Journalist threw down the gauntlet in a defiant note to Crimson President J.H. Morison:

I will make a proposition to you. I'll be Crimson newsboy, if you'll be Journal newsboy--of course, you must realize you'll have much longer routes to cover.

Initially, even The Crimson thought he was right. Public opinion is a bit over-favorable to the ournal," an editor warned. We have got to handle ourselves better, to make it more interesting, if we're to keep our subscriptions and hence our ads."

The shock of secession galvanized The Crimson into action. Suddenly, all the things everyone insisted couldn't be done--the scoops, the big stories, even the six page papers--became everyday happenings. Osborne Ingram, the inveterate invoker of the Deity, became Managing Editor, and made a journalistic silk purse out of the sow's car of a green and inexperienced young staff. Meanwhile, in the Advocate building behind Claverly, the Journal people were turning out a lively, inventive, readable paper. Congratulations to the Journalists," wrote one of Ingram's untrained minions one day.

Whatta Col. 5 scoop they got, oh boy oh boy." The Journal contracted for printing with a Cambridge paper, and came out regularly, six days a week, plus extras.

The Journal had the staff. The Crimson had the facilities, the business contacts, and the tradition. Since it did not begin publication until after the Easter vacation, the Journal was in a weak position to attract subscribers. In balance, The Crimson had the edge.

The battle was neck and neck for a few weeks. The Journal's layout was original and intriguing, with plenty of five column headlines and pictures. Eight Journal pages every day gave readers Harvard, national and international news, and even Radcliffe news--something always scandalously neglected in the old Crimson. The Journal's Sunday edition--it omitted Mondays--scooped The Crimson often on weekend news. Through it all the College maintained neutrality. Although Dean Hanford had tried to stop the split before it became public, he treated both papers impartially, giving official notices and news to both. The 1948 history relates that the Journal scooped The Crimson with an extra on the death of Dean Briggs, and again with coverage of a student demonstration against a German cruiser at the Navy Yard. The Journal was trapped into a defense of the status quo in the face of a Crimson expose of the Engineering School; The Crimson in turn, lost popularity with its defense of the right of F.E.S. (Putzi) Hanfstaengl, '09. Hitler's piano player, to return for his 25th reunion. On the whole, the Journal was more a crusading paper. The Crimson more moderate, during the battle.

The end of the fight was predictable; when the year ended, so did the Journal. Its editors lost money, sleep, and study time in their struggle to set up and run a new paper. Commencement brought capitulation, and The Crimson once more had the field to itself. But The Crimson of June, 1934, was inestimably better than its namesake of a few months before. Ingram's miracle had made it the kind of paper the Journal people had wanted in the first place, and the 1948 History tells us that the two groups buried the hatchet, and: