Talk:The Harvard Crimson
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[edit] Source citations needed
This article suffers from a severe lack of source citations; in fact as I write this the Crimson's website seems to be the only one. The major specific facts need to be linked to some source, per the verifiability policy. Crimson and University websites are reasonable, because what is important is that the reader know where the fact came from, and be able to judge the reliability of the source.
Usually, with regard to facts about itself, one would expect an organization to be reasonably accurate but occasionally self-serving, so it tells the reader much more to say "According to the Crimson it is the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts[citation]" than to say flatly "The Crimson is only daily newspaper in Cambridge." If the City of Cambridge has a website that lists businesses, etc. and has one listing newspapers, of course that would be better still, etc. But it is much more important that a fact have some reference from a source whose reliability can be judged, than that the reference be a gold-plated standard of Absolute Revealed Truth.
I tagged the two that I thought were most egregious. Any claim of being a superlative (oldest, etc.) is very likely to be somewhat debatable and involve judgements of what it means to be continuously published, to be a college newspaper, etc. So I'd like to know where this came from and what the details are. I haven't looked into it myself and I could be wrong, but I'll bet a nickel, even money, that there is at least one other college newspaper somewhere that claims to be the oldest.
The second is a quotation, a jocular reference to the Lampoon. Well, it's in quotation marks... so let's have the place, any place, it's quoted from. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:06, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
- Fine, we can link to an article that each one of them wrote, which will be easy unless they were non-content board editors. 140.247.248.102 14:56, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] "oldest continuously-published"
I see someone changed "the oldest continuously-published" to "one of the oldest continuously-published." While that makes the statement vacuously true, I don't think weasel-wording is an adequate substitute for a reference.
How about it? Where does the statement that it is the oldest continuously-published daily college newspaper come from? If we can't have a source, how about we just say it was founded in 1873 and let it go at that?
As for "continuously published," the description of the wartime years leads me to wonder whether the "Harvard Service News" should, in fact, count as being the "same" publication as the Crimson. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:09, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I note with interest that the Yale Daily News claims to be "the nation's oldest college daily newspaper.[1]." Brubacher, John S.; Willis Rudy (1997). Higher Education in Transition. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1560009179. , p. 137, says "After the Civil War... on almost every campus a publication was established which modeled its form, content, and purpose on regular daily newspapers. The Yale Daily News, first to be founded, is still in operation. The Harvard Crimson began in 1873 as a more newsy rival of The Advocate. Ten years later, it merged with a competitor to become a daily."
With regard to Cambridge daily newspapers, I also note that the Crimson itself claims only to be "is the only breakfast-table daily newspaper in Cambridge, MA."[2] This would seem to me to carry a strong implication that Cambridge must have an afternoon daily. Anyone know anything about this?
[edit] Newspaper fact box
How about a fact box with an image of a full front page to liven up the article. See Cherwell (newspaper) 219.77.174.120 08:23, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
