Get to Know Us!

The following article was also published in Monday's First-year Registration issue. It has been reprinted for House residents who are registering today.

Welcome back to campus! It's been an exciting and productive summer here at Harvard, but things definitely haven't been the same without you.

I'm writing to remind you that The Crimson is your daily newspaper. The students who staff and run the paper want to write about what is important to you and tell you about what's important to others in the University community.

This year, The Crimson will again try ambitiously to cover many aspects of campus life. You'll see Crimson reporters at all the usual places--speeches, football games, Undergraduate Council meetings, etc. But because our reporters cannot be everywhere and because we cannot always know about everything going on around campus, I invite you to come in and tell me about what you'd like to see in the paper.

This semester I'll be having office hours on Friday afternoons from 3 to 5. I hope that many of you will come in to tell me what you like and don't like about. The Crimson and to suggest ideas for further coverage. (If this time is not good for you, please call me to set up another, or just drop by the building.)

There is, however, no need to see me personally if you want to propose an idea for a story or would like to share a news tip. There are, in fact, many ways to get in touch with someone at The Crimson. Here are a few ways to get in touch with us to suggest ideas for stories or to offer comments on our coverage:

1. One or, preferably, two days in advance, call The Crimson and ask to speak to a news editor or news executive. Our phone number is 576-6565 (voice mail) or 5-9666. If no one is here, please leave a message.

Describe the event briefly, specifying its time and location. Be sure to leave a contact name and phone number. If anything worthy of a photo will be taking place, you might mention that as well.

2. Call back the day of the event to double check that the assignment editor has the event noted on his or her assignment sheet.

3. If you have a press release you'd like to send to us, please do. Our fax number is 576-7860. Our mailing address is 14 Plympton St.

Although we'd like to, The Crimson cannot cover everything that goes on at Harvard. Increased communication, however, will help what matters to you end up in the paper.

Not every story can get onto the front page or be very long, (especially when there are other major events going on that day), but the more you let us know that a story matters to you, the greater your chances will be of reading about it in tomorrow's Crimson.

If an event, even a significant one, involves only a small group of students or is not widely publicized, there's a chance reporters may not find out about it until it is, as the expression goes, old news. This is frustrating for both our staff and our readers. Anything which can be done to prevent such occurrences is, I think, a step in the right direction. This goes for sports as well as news stories, for features and even for opinion pieces.

The Crimson can serve its readers best if its pages, specifically its opinion pages, are a central locus for campus dialogue. If at some point in the year you want to express your opinion in the paper, please don't hesitate to write a letter to the editor. The letters section of the paper exists exclusively for this purpose. If you think something's great or something stinks on campus, page two of The Crimson is also available to publish student opinion pieces as Guest Commentaries five times each week.

And if you have concerns about the content of the operation of the Crimson itself, please also feel free to contact our reader representative, Tara H. Arden-Smith '96, by phone or e-mail. Instructions for contracting Tara appear daily on page four.

If you have questions about subscriptions or delivery, please call our circulation managers Corinne Funk. So Young Park or Tania Yannas at 576-6600 or 5-7890.

I didn't write this column just to give you a bunch of numbers you may have already had. Rather, my hope is to keep open the channels of communication between the students who run The Crimson and the students who read it. I look forward to meeting with you soon.

Andrew L. Wright '96 wants to get to know you.