The Dartmouth is an organization unlike any other at the College. Run entirely by students without any oversight by the College administration, The D is completely independent both financially and editorially and provides a unique resource and community on campus.
This issue, our annual Freshman Issue, is just one of over 150 issues that our 200-member staff will produce this year. Be sure to look out for our green distribution bins upon your arrival to campus and pick up your free copy of America's oldest college newspaper.
INSIDE THE DARTMOUTH
People are often surprised when they wander into our offices on the second floor of Robinson Hall and find writers furiously typing up stories to meet deadline, business staffers on the phone with advertising clients, graphic artists designing the next day's issue and editors roaming the offices to help out whenever they can. Make sure you stop by our open house during Orientation to see the offices for yourself. Whatever your particular area of interest, you can find it at The Dartmouth.
The News section is the heartbeat of The D, providing campus and our wider audience with updates on all things Dartmouth. In recent months, the paper's news pages have tackled topics including the new dean of the College, College President Jim Yong Kim's new alcohol collaborative and visits to campus by national politicians and public figures like Timothy Geithner '83.
Our Opinion section is a forum for campus and political dialogue that enables staffers and community members to comment on national controversies as well as campus debates. In recent weeks alone, The Dartmouth Opinion page has seen commentary touching on topics ranging from the Congressional debt ceiling debate to Dartmouth's housing system. On our Comics page, The Dartmouth's comic artists provide a visual and often entertaining critique of campus news and culture.
The Sports section gives students and alumni their daily fix of Dartmouth athletics, covering both club and varsity sports. Sports news is usually found on the back page of the newspaper, except on Mondays, when The D publishes its eight-page Sports Weekly supplement, which includes the past week's game highlights and a colorful centerfold featuring your athletically talented classmates.
The D's Arts and Entertainment writers review everything from the latest performance at the Hopkins Center for the Arts to Lady Gaga's newest album. The section includes weekly film reviews, updates on exhibits at the Hood Museum and features on Dartmouth's own musicians, actors and artists.
The Dartmouth Mirror, a weekly pull-out magazine published on Fridays, takes on Dartmouth campus culture, focusing on a different theme each week. The Mirror balances tongue-in-cheek campus commentary and satire with longer-form investigative journalism, as writers delve into topics as diverse as the public's perception of the College and Dartmouth's appreciation for Harry Potter.
The Dartmouth's photography staff adds depth to each edition, giving the paper's readership a better sense of the news of the day through visuals. The paper's design and layout staff members craft sharp and distinctive designs and graphics for each edition.
The Dartmouth's new blog, Dartbeat, is one of the paper's biggest and most exciting projects. Launched this spring, Dartbeat is a fresh offshoot of the paper's website, and offers readers a different take on campus happenings through its four sections: Campus Pulse, Muse, The Huddle and Pop. Updated throughout the day, Dartbeat is a great way to stay plugged into campus life.
THE COMPANY
The business side of The Dartmouth, meanwhile, offers unparalleled opportunities for those interested in the dynamics of running an independent business.
The Advertising section is the powerhouses of the company. Business associates in this section serve as account managers for the paper's clients, and provide consulting, marketing and sales services for each client, while researching each business's market.
Business associates in the Circulation and Finance sections operate in a project-oriented environment, expanding The Dartmouth's reach while working to create alternative revenue streams for the company. Staff members of these sections work to enhance profits in areas including a web photo store or an online storefront where you can order posters for your dorm room.
Our Information Technology department gives students the ability to apply their expertise online or using the state-of-the-art equipment in our offices. Because journalism is increasingly shifting to the internet, The D has also been expanding its website. Staffers with knowledge in programming languages like CSS and Ruby on Rails work to code and maintain the site, while others craft a distinctive design that allows us to highlight the frequent web updates on the site, making thedartmouth.com the source for breaking Dartmouth news.
INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
The Dartmouth is run by students every step of the way from content planning to production, to managing client relationships and copy editing. The Dartmouth, Inc. is incorporated in the state of New Hampshire as a non-profit organization, and leases its Robinson Hall offices from the College, which has no financial or editorial stake in the newspaper.
Because The D is independent, our writers can take a hard and critical look at the campus around them, free of any conflicts of interest.
BEYOND HANOVER
The D is committed to developing future journalists, and provides many opportunities for those interested in the fields of journalism and publishing. Our Vox Fund, which draws from the support of The D's dedicated alumni, provides stipends to subsidize travel and living expenses for many staff members to work in press positions with professional writers, editors and publishers.
In recent years, staff members at The Dartmouth have held internships at The New York Times, CNN, The Atlantic, MSNBC, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, the Financial Times, Hearst Newspapers, Fox News Channel and even "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." We also have alumni working at many of these organizations.
Some of The Dartmouth's high-profile alumni include Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Paul Gigot '77, currently the editorial page editor and vice president of The Wall Street Journal; ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper '91; New York Times reporters Jacques Steinberg '88 and David Herszenhorn '94; Fox News host and Roll Call founder Morton Kondracke '60; Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter Frank Gilroy '50; and screenwriting legend Budd Schulberg '36.
Hanover may be a rural community, but don't underestimate the audience your work will receive if you join The Dartmouth. The print edition reaches students and staff here in Hanover and thousands of others, including alumni living around the world, log on to our website every day.
Whenever the College comes into the spotlight and it does it is The D that other media outlets contact for the inside scoop. Presidential candidates routinely stop in Hanover while on the campaign trail, giving our staffers the chance to rub elbows with prominent journalists. This fall, all eyes will be on the College when it hosts a Republican primary debate on Oct. 11.
THE DARTMOUTH'S HISTORY
The Dartmouth Gazette, as the early publication called itself, was first published on August 27, 1799, and was published irregularly for the following years, though its staff included prominent authors such as Daniel Webster. Around 1875, the first year the paper ran advertisements, The Dartmouth became a weekly paper, and in 1920, the editors voted to change to the current daily format.
The D may have changed over the centuries, but the organization has never stopped striving for its ultimate goal sound journalism and unbiased coverage of the Dartmouth community.
