Every weekday The Crimson pulls together a package of campus news, arts and sports for its readers' enjoyment and edification. But while prolific in its coverage, the paper rarely covers campus opinions of its quality.

Students, faculty and administrators agree that The Crimson has been a powerful influence on campus in the past 25 years.

"As the campus daily paper they played a very important role in how the parts of the campus interacted," says Matthew Anestis '95, former chair of the student advisory committee (SAC) at the Institute of Politics (IOP).

Over the past 25 years, as The Crimson staff focus has shifted from political expression to objective coverage of campus news, reader criticism has shifted as well. While readers in the seventies seemed to value The Crimson most as a student political voice, they now say its role should be as a facilitator of dialogue on campus issues and events.

Crimson Politics

Since its inception, The Crimson has always played a prominent part in campus political life, both through its editorial arm and occasionally, some complain, in its reporting.

During the sixties and early seventies, The Crimson was swept up in the same revolutionary fervor that led to widespread protests and to the 1969 student takeover of University Hall. Crimson editorials sympathized with radical students and editors themselves were often just as involved in campus activism.

As a result, Crimson reporting joined its editorial page in reflecting a distinct liberal bias, as noted by many students and Faculty.

In his 1990 book The University: An Owner's Manual, Henry S. Rosovsky, dean of the Faculty from 1973 to 1984, calls Crimson reporting of the sixties and seventies more of an "exercise in advocacy journalism favoring the forces of revolution" than impartial journalism.

Later, however, he says that as political activism on campus died down, The Crimson returned to its style of objective reporting, "no better or worse than the national press."

The Crimson's reporting on campus affairs makes the newspaper a valuable link between students and administrators.

"I read The Crimson and I suspect that many administrators who have a connection with the College do so," says John B. Fox '59, secretary of the Faculty.

Students interviewed agreed that The Crimson's reporting over the past decade has been objective for the most part while its editorial leanings remained liberal.

"We ran lots of editorials taking a left-wing view of world affairs," says Michael W. Miller '84, managing editor of the paper in 1983. "I heard that simmered down after I left and things moved away from the left."

While the editorials and staff of The Crimson remained progressive-minded during the eighties, focus began to shift away from coverage of world affairs to coverage of campus issues.