Founded in 1969, the Harvard Political Review is the oldest undergraduate political review in the country. The magazine is released on a quarterly cycle and does not represent one ideology and takes no editorial positions on political issues, allowing students to write freely and share their individual opinions. Our pieces range in style of writing, including feature pieces that require at least three interviews to op-eds to fast-track news analysis pieces. We also have Columns and Red Line initiatives, which are only available to staff writers. There are four main sections within the HPR including US, Campus, World, and Culture, with Interviews focusing on transcripts NPR-style interviews and Covers generating the content for the magazine. The HPR is housed within the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics and works in collaboration with the other IOP programs. 

I start my editor position at the beginning of this year, and as our current President, Lexi Mealey, has noted, this is a very reform-minded Masthead. Just within these few months, we have switched to using the AP style guide, undergone a website redesign, and instituted many new series’ and partnerships with other organizations. In the first four months, we have published over 100 articles just online, excluding the magazine. We are currently introducing institutional reforms which would further engage our staff writers, increase content generation, and expand the sections that our compers engage with. We have also recently launched a summer journalism fellowship, aimed at enticing pre-frosh with a resume-building fellowship to train them in journalistic standards and generate content over the summer for the HPR.

As the Associate Campus Editor, I work closely with my senior editor to generate content and engage with writers on articles which are related to Harvard and/or campus life. Together, we analyzed the publishing trends of the last year, noting that the campus section had 30 writers and published 24 articles, where some articles have multiple authors. As of April 4th, 2020, we have published 25 articles, surpassing the total of last year’s published articles, while engaging 15 different writers. It is obvious from this fact that we have more engaged writers within these first four months, with campus boasting two columnist writers. In addition, another goal is to increase the quality of our content, focusing on improving the structure, simplicity, and statistics of pieces. We have also created a campus specific newsletter, being the first section to do so, and inspiring similar newsletters within other sections. We aim to provide writers with more writing opportunities by sending out suggestions through this newsletter. 

I have noticed the most changes within the campus section as compared to last year’s content. The purpose of this project is to engage with other sections to see what their methods of recruitment and content generation are. We have also noticed that pieces which are in the current news cycle gain the most traction in viewership on the website. In order to explore these interests at an HPR-wide level, I interviewed the senior editors of each section and compiled viewership data from the last five years of the HPR, separated by individual articles and sections.