EDITORIAL BOARD CONTEST UNUSUAL

The following article on the Editorial competition for the Crimson which opens Monday was written by a former editorial editor. This competition will afford members of the Junior Class their last chance to make the paper as well as offering 1932 an opportunity to compete for the News, Photographic, and Business Departments.

The winter competition offers the advantage of being the shortest contest of the three annual series of trials for the Crimson.

An editorial competition of the CRIMSON is the only known way to break into the journalistic game without degenerating into a lowly journalist. Not that I wish to give the impression that editorial writers are over conscious of their calling as artists, but it is worth getting straight at the outset that there is, or should be, a conservative poise intimately associated with editorial writing. Other sides of newspaper work may provide valuable experience in being hurled out of advertisers' offices, stimulate romance through backstage interviews, and develope savor faire during flash light shots, but it remains for the editorial office to stay quietly at home and think up explanations and alibis for the things other people do. Which after all, is not a bad talent to develop, particularly if one drives an automobile.

CRIMSON editorial competitions have a habit of paying pretty good dividends. Frankly, I learned a good sight more about English composition during my own CRIMSON competition than in a year's course in advanced composition.

An editorial candidate reports every night in the week except Saturday with one editorial on a Harvard topic or concerning some interesting aspect of the day's general news. He develops his own initiative in digging up subjects to write upon. His powers of judgment and analysis are given opportunity to show themselves in working up an intelligent, fresh comment. Little else can polish up his technical skill and his ability to write what he thinks as can the daily practice of writing a three hundred word editorial. Last but not least, the candidate has the benefit of a careful and candid detailed criticism of his work.

Those are the advantages of a competition a candidate is apt to write home about to explain away possible grade shrinkage While they are perfectly true they do not tell the story. For such prosate benefits make no mention of the thrill of appearing in print, of the satisfaction of playing a humble part in the molding of undergraduate opinion, and of the lasting pleasure of companionship while working for a common end.