Journalism at Albright: Home

Serving Albright College Since 1903

Courtesy of Pi Delta Epsilon

Just as the beginnings of Albright College as Union Seminary in New Berlin, Pa, were small and obscure, so the beginnings of journalism at Albright were halting and unpretentious.

The first forerunner of today's Albrightian was a small pamphlet published by one of the literary societies where were so important in the campus life at New Berlin. Organized for discussion and debate of current literary and political questions, the societies were the principal extra-curricular activity fo the day and carried on their rolls acceptance of honorary memberships from such figures as Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. One of them, the Excelsior Literary Society, began publication in 1858--two years after the seminary's founding--of The Excelsior Literary Gem. The pamphlet appeared every six weeks during the school terms until June, 1863, when activities at the seminary were suspended with the Civil War at a crisis and Lee's Confederate army threatening Pennsylvania. When the school resumed activities, The Gem did not; it was thereafter published only on special occasions such as commencement or the anniversary of its sponsoring group and soon disappeared altogether.

Several Literary Attempts

From time to time attempts were made to establish an all periodical, but, The Seminary Guard and The Students Visitor were both short lived. Shortly after Union Seminary became Central Pennsylvania College in the spring of 1887, a new effort was made. The Central Pennsylvania Collegian now appeared, a 24 page magazine, 7x10 inches in size; financial trouble and poor student cooperation forced it discontinuance, in 1888, however, after only four issues had been published.

The following year a small newspaper, The Daily News, was issued during the eleven days of commencement period. In February 1890 The Collegian was revived; a small printing press saved from the hands of the sheriff, but the publication again failed in June because of "Poor support of the students and advertisers."

In 1903 journalism at Albright finally found itself. In that year Central Pennsylvania College moved to Myerstown, Pa., to merge with Albright Collegiate Institute. "A Greater Albright" was the slogan of the day and in keeping with the high aims of the occasion publication ofThe Albright Bulletin was begun. From its start, The Bulletin was a success. Published at first in magazine form, it grew from a periodical of only a dozen pages of pring to a monthly often numbering over thirty pages. Then in 1926 The Bulletin was transformed into a weekly newspaper, taking the general form of today's Albrightian. As a weekly The Bulletin moved to Reading, Pa., with Albright College when that institution merged with Schuylkill College in 1929.

Meanwhile at Schuylkill the students had banded together in 1904 to publish The Narrator, a monthly similar to the early Bulletin. In 1923 The Narrator preceded The Bulletin in the change to a weekly newspaper. As Schuylkill News it appeared regularly until 1929, when upon the merger with Albright it was absorbed by The Albright Bulletin. In September of that year the editors of The Bulletin decided that a new name should be adopted for the newspaper of the new Albright, and The Albrightian was born.

The Albrightian Today

The Albrightian has continued as the student newspaper of Albright since that time and has undergone few major changes in policy. Makeup of the paper has changed periodically in conformance with journalistic trends. With the beginning of the 1947 year, advertising was dropped from the columns of the paper, and in September, 1951, The Albrightian resumed after a lapse of several years the use of newsprint. Through the early 1930s the paper was published at rather irregular intervals because of financial difficulties, but for more more than a decade The Albrightian is listed in N. W. Dyer's Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals, Philadelphia, Pa.

The Albrightian's sister publication, The Cue, the college yearbook, traces it origin to yearbooks which have appeared since the earliest days of Union Seminary. The Cue, first appeared after the merging of Albright and Schuylkill Colleges in 1929, and during the 1930s it grew from a small paper-bound publication to a stiff-covered, substantial record of each year's activities. During the Second World War period, small enrollments at the college forced The Cue to publish only every other year but in 1947 it became an annual.

Source: The Albrightian, September 23, 1955