In April, eight residents (Mattie Beard, Brad Besse, Jane Biering, Lucinda Bowen, Pradeep Khurana, Brian Moore, Joe Theriault, and Molly Waring) answered the call to join the inaugural Harvard Press Community Advisory Board (CAB). This diverse group of volunteers is committed to supporting the Press’ process of self-reflection and self-improvement. The role of the CAB is to provide feedback on editorial policy, news coverage, reader interests, and underreported or controversial issues in our town.
So far, we have immersed ourselves in the inner workings of the newspaper, learning about subscription rates and how stories get covered through traditional beats. We have gotten to know the editors and owners, who shared the strategic questions that keep them up at night. We collaborated with Press staff on updates to the Letters to the Editor policy and are working to develop the first reader survey in almost a decade (coming to your inbox in early fall!).
Through a reflective process, we have proposed two goals for the CAB for the coming year:
To sustain and strengthen the award-winning newsroom by recruiting, training, and developing a diverse new generation of reporters—expanding the paper’s capacity, deepening community coverage, and ensuring the long-term vitality of our reporting team.
To design and implement surveys that help the Harvard Press better understand its readers—what they value, what they want the paper to cover, and how they prefer to receive their news—so as to become more indispensable to the community, strengthen the Press’ editorial and advertising strategies, and evaluate its performance in relation to our mission.
We are eager to hear your ideas and opinions about how the Press can be an even more vibrant component of the Harvard community. Please reach out to any one of us with questions and ideas.
In an era where print journalism is in decline, we are honored to support this hardworking core of writers, editors, and photographers to support the Press as a hub of community insight, connection, and information.
Lucinda Bowen, for the Harvard Press Community Advisory Board
