The Harvard Crimson, Harvard’s daily student newspaper, is 149 years old for this year. Starting in the fall, it will follow many other newspapers in reducing its print schedule to once a week, the paper’s editors announced in a letter to readers on Thursday.

The Crimson will publish daily on weekdays online.

From The Crimson’s story:

The Crimson abruptly transitioned to an online-only daily format during the escalating Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. The paper did not resume daily printing until fall 2021, during which then-Crimson president Amanda Y. Su ’22 convened a working group of undergraduates and alumni to craft strategic recommendations regarding the paper’s digital future.

“Producing high-quality independent journalism today requires an innovative digital-first approach. This change will allow us to invest our resources into meeting our readers where they are: online,” Crimson president Raquel Coronell Uribe ’22-’23, managing editor Jasper Goodman ’23, and business manager Amy Zhou ’23 wrote. “And to prepare the next generation of journalists, we must train them on the tools of tomorrow — no longer just a broadsheet newspaper.”

The Crimson is far from the first college paper to cut back on print, of course, and the pandemic accelerated the digital-only trend, though it’s tough to find exact numbers. When daily print editions of college papers have existed, they’ve often been the only daily print papers in their communities, and that was true here in Cambridge, too: The Crimson has been our city’s most frequently published print newspaper.

“In the fall, Issue No. 72 of the 149th Volume will come in a brand new weekly format that will be redesigned and expanded to include our best journalism, complete with the original reporting, analysis, and opinion our readers expect,” Crimson leadership wrote. “Online, we will remain a daily news operation as we extend our commitment to providing minute-by-minute information to the communities of Harvard and Cambridge on our digital platforms.” Here’s to the next 150 years.

🚨Today we announced a historic change to @thecrimson. Beginning this fall, we will shift to producing a weekly print edition to prioritize our digital content. Thread 🧵:https://t.co/m3ekybGHYS pic.twitter.com/PprLXzMlpn

— Raquel Coronell Uribe (@raquelco15) July 14, 2022