Absolutely No News Occurring at Dartmouth; Plus: Something That’s Been Bugging Us
The bizarre message above has greeted visitors to thedartmouth.com for at least the last 36 hours. We’re not sure what Al Gore has to do with web-publishing a college newspaper, but here’s a message to the commenter who complained Monday that we’ve been ignoring The D in RagTime: You’re in charge of letting us know when the precipitation lets up. (Actually, a D staffer just gave us a sneak peak at the redesigned site, which looks like a snazzy improvement; they say it’ll be up soon.)
Anyway, staring at this has inspired us to “investigate” (read: Wikipedia) something that has always jiggled the needle on our BS meter: The Dartmouth’s claim that it is America’s oldest college newspaper, founded 1799. It just seems off, just like the way they call their top editorial board “the directorate.” (Really.) Wiki says that…
…the Hanover newspapers existing then are unconnected to a monthly literary magazine that students established around 1843, which is the publication that evolved into the current paper. For that reason, The Dartmouth currently (2006) states that it is in its 163rd volume.
Guh? Clearly we are gonna need more info than this. Can anyone who’s familiar with Dartmouth history weigh in? Probably, there’s no point to digging further — this is an area in which the Yale Daily News says it’s the “Oldest College Daily” (its alumni org is vomitously called the “OCD Foundation”); the Harvard Crimson says it’s “the nation’s oldest continuously published daily college newspaper”; and the Columbia Spectator claims “second-oldest” status, without noting who’s first. Help us out, readers: who’s lying least?
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April 13th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Great monitoring job, guys…The D has been out of commission every day this week. I think its Nova’s fault…
April 13th, 2007 at 11:58 am
this site refreshes too slowly.
April 13th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
The D is full of applesauce. It evolved from some literary rag founded in the mid-19th century.
April 13th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
The D’s claim is a load of shit. Soemthing called the Dartmouth started in 1799, stopped pretty shortly thereafter, random shit was kicked around, some weeklies, I think a monthly is thrown somewhere in the next century, and then the modern daily happened towards the tail end of the 19th century I think.
Interestingly, this lie was first perpetuated by Nova.
April 13th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
The new site is up today, it’s pretty sick.
http://www.thedartmouth.com
April 13th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
The Cornell Daily Sun (or at least its alumni org) calls itself “the nation’s oldest independent college daily.”
April 13th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Which idiot at The Dartmouth decided to take the site down BEFORE the new site was even finished? Was it Burkowski? Stupid 10’s. Also, the bottom 75% of the design absolutely sucks. So much for “good things come to those who wait.”
April 13th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
WHO THE HELL DECIDED IT SHOULD BE A WIDESCREEN WEBSITE?! This sucks.
April 13th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
The website apparently likes to skip yesterday’s stories and jump right into “view past weeks stories.” Plus, if you click on an author’s name, you get the very professional “404″ not found. Nice one.
April 13th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
You should really look at the “The Conservative Party School” op-ed, since they mention you guys.
April 13th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
“The Conservative Party School” article is fucking stupid. Daniel Belkin obviously still thinks Dartmouth is living in the 70’s; this school hasn’t been conservative for over 30 years. I like how he contradicts himself when he says only one prof donated to Bush’s ‘04 campaign.
April 14th, 2007 at 2:59 am
You have to pay attention to little words like “daily” and “continuous” to unravel the seeming contradictions in longevity claims.
The Daily Dartmouth may or may not be able to connect itself to the Dartmouth Gazette that started in 1799, but it clearly begins in 1843 as a weekly. None of the other college newspapers comes close to that.
The Yale Daily started in 1878, but that comes earlier than when The Dartmouth became a daily. The Hahvahd Crimson started in 1873, but as a bimonthly.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:20 am
The Dartmouth really was founded in the 1840s at the earliest (and even that date considers teh 1860s revival as a continuation. There was a 1799 paper in town, but it wasn’t called The Dartmouth, didn’t last more than a few years, and is completely unrelated to the paper of the 1840s.
The Dartmouth has been claiming to be the nation’s oldest college paper longer than any paper in the country.
April 14th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
hi bmar!
April 14th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Belkin’s column was about Dartmouth’s misrepresentation by peer institutions as a conservative party school, not about it actually being a bastion of conservativism. Read the article again. He calls the Review an outspoken minority, and uses the Bush donation fact to prove his point, not contradict himself.
April 14th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
What a perfect analogue to academic regard:
Yale claims to be oldest (best) in a specious, “let’s debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” sort of way.
Harvard makes the same claim, but opts for the most empirically sound standard: continuous publishing.
Columbia actively selects second place: the first among the losers.
And Dartmouth makes some batshit claim that ties it to 18th century libertarians with a printing press in the woods of New England.
April 14th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Wow, those are basically the most hilarious and accurate stereotypes I’ve ever heard.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
I almost got in a fight the night before The Game 2005 over the longevity of THC and the YDN.
April 15th, 2007 at 12:48 am
wow you should be proud of that. you sound like a sweet dude.
April 15th, 2007 at 10:26 am
Seriously, H ;09, if I had heard that conversation happening, I would have killed you.
April 16th, 2007 at 2:06 am
Ahahah
April 16th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Even with the most conservative 1860s date for The Dartmouth, it is still older than the YDN (1878) or Crimson (1873). So regardless, The Dartmouth is America’s oldest college newspaper, and I don’t think anyone from Dartmouth has disputed the claims of the YDN and the Crimson that they have titles of “oldest, with some qualifications — in other words, not oldest”
April 16th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
quoting “The Story of Dartmouth”, by Wilder Dwight Quint (1914, available on google books):
The D “has had a continuous existence since 1867, when it was revived as a monthly after a suspension of twenty-six years. In 1875, it was made a weekly newspaper.”
Before that, who knows. The previous pub seems to have been called the Dartmouth Gazette, and was publishing during the time of the Dartmouth College case (1810-1815.)
That said, CC’06’s stereotype is dead on the money.