The Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper of Harvard University, is the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates. It is also one of the few college newspapers in the U.S. that owns its own printing presses.

It was one of many college newspapers founded shortly after the Civil War and describes itself as “the nation’s oldest continuously published daily college newspaper,” although this fact is hotly contested among other college newspapers.

The newspaper traces its history to the first issue of The Magenta，published January 24, 1873. The paper changed its name to The Crimson in 1875 when Harvard changed its official color by a vote of the student body. But before the official vote by the Harvard Corporation, students’ color of choice had at one point wavered between crimson and magenta. Pulished by popular debate to decide, Harvard undergraduates held a plebiscite on May 6， 1875, on the University^ color, and crimson won by a wide margin. The student newspaper —which had been called The Magenta — changed its name with the very next issue.

By the 1880s, it had been published every other week. Then in 1880s, The Crimson included more substance, as the paper’s editors were more eager to engage in a quality of journalism like that of muckraking big-city newspapers. It was at this time that the paper moved first from a biweekly to a weekly, and then to a daily in 1883.

The paper flourished at the beginning of the twentieth century with the acquisition of its own (and current) building in 1915, the purchase of Harvard Illustrated Magazine and the establishment of the editorial board in 1911.

The 1930s and 1940s were dark years for The Crimson, due to reduced financial resources and competition from a publication established by ex-editors meant serious challenges to the paper’s viability.

The paper was administered during the war time by a board of University administrators, alumni, and students.

The paper went back to its civilian version in 1946，and as the Army and Navy moved out of Harvard, The Crimson grew larger, more financially secure, more diversified, and more aware of the world outside the campus during the early Cold War era than its pre-WWII predecessor had been.

The Harvard Crimson, Inc. was incorporated as a nonprofit Massachusetts corporation in 1967; the incorporation was involuntarily revoked, then revived, in 1986.

Now, The Crimson publishes every morning, Monday through Friday, except on federal and University holidays. In addition to the daily newspaper, The Crimson publishes an extended sports section on Mondays; Fifteen Minutes，the weekend magazine of The Crimson on Thursdays; and an arts section on Fridays.