All in The Swarthmorean
This month, we’ll be unveiling our new e-edition of The Swarthmorean. It will completely replace our current website. At the core of the experience will be a robust digital replica of the paper (called “page view”) — an online experience that looks and feels exactly like the print paper. The new e-edition will offer some key enhancements that we think you’ll love.
Morgan McErlean, a rising senior at Strath Haven High School, will be joining The Swarthmorean as an intern this summer.
Editor Rachel Pastan says goodbye to The Swarthmorean and shares final thoughts about issues facing the borough.
Ads in old copies of The Swarthmorean are always fun to read. The prices alone make me long for the miracle of time travel. A brand-new Chevrolet for less than $525? A five-bedroom stone house in the Swarthmore Hills, complete with stable, for $9,500? What’s not to like?
Rereading articles from this past January and February is like peering through the wrong end of a telescope into a lost world. Here’s a review of what we were doing and thinking about in 2020, as it showed up in the pages (and website) of this newspaper — both BC (Before COVID) and AD (After Distancing).
A catalog of the Swarthmorean’s changes over the past year, and a shout-out to the many who helped.
As we endure the COVID-19 pandemic and struggle to find the sweet spot between prudent conduct and paranoid germophobia, we can understand the toll that fear of contagion took 91 years ago.
Retired history professor and former Swarthmore resident Laurie Bernstein has been busying herself during the pandemic by cataloging the articles in back issues of the Swarthmorean. Starting with Volume I, Number 1 from 1929, when the Swarthmore News changed its name to the Swarthmorean, Bernstein is slowly working her way forward. From time to time, we will reprint an article she selects from our archives with her commentary.
I could write a whole editorial about the decline of newspapers as a kind of found poem: a series of dire headlines. Even before the pandemic — even before accelerated attacks on the press by the occupant of the White House and police targeting of journalists during protests across the country — things were looking grim for newspapers.
Underneath the newspaper’s name, the Swarthmorean banner reads “Serving Swarthmore and Surrounding Communities Since 1893.” This publication seeks to support and lift up the community it represents. I find that a noble mission and ambition for a local paper. When I learned that the position of associate editor was available, that mission drew me in.
The Swarthmorean is seeking an associate editor to work part-time (20 hours/week) assisting with many aspects of writing and producing the paper, which has been published every week since 1893.
On November 1, 1918, Swarthmorean readers learned that there had been only two influenza deaths in the borough, “a fact which speaks well for the place and its fine force of doctors.” As of this writing (Tuesday morning, March 31, 2020), there are seven confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Swarthmore and no deaths. The Swarthmorean survived the 1918 pandemic, and we plan to survive this one too, with your help.
“A fine new roof is going on Mr. F. Sauter’s house on Dickinson Avenue.” That quote comes from the News Notes section of a 1920 issue of the Swarthmorean. Back then, News Notes consisted of seemingly mundane details about the lives of people in Swarthmore. In other words, the “News Notes” section — or the “Personals” as it would be called by the 1940s — looked a bit like a Facebook or Instagram feed does today.
How to inventory a whole year? What to remind you of, and what to skip? What would you rather forget, but maybe shouldn’t? What have you already forgotten that might interest you to recall? Collecting (recollecting) these happenings and lives and milestones is a way to consider what we have accomplished and aspired to and worried about as a community, as we take the first steps into 2020. To think about where we have succeeded, where we have more work to do, and where we might want to start all over again.
The Swarthmorean has finished its first full year under new leadership. Todd Strine, Rob Borgstrom, and Greg Hoy have done a remarkable job renewing a much-loved institution. Subscriptions are up, finances are healthy, and a new beautiful website has been launched. We want to thank everyone who contributed this year to the idiosyncratic but buoyant ship that is the Swarthmorean.
Stefan Roots has joined the Swarthmorean team as a regular contributor. We found him writing a community paper and blog in Chester and invited him to share his talents with us.
When I moved to Swarthmore in June 2000, our real estate agent gave us a year’s subscription to The Swarthmorean. I remember how happy it made me to leaf through those pages. The articles, the ads for local business, the calendar, and the classifieds were all windows into this new, unknown community I was joining. In the nearly 20 years since, I have looked forward every week to getting the paper. Even as I came to know my neighbors, get drawn into local organizations, and see my kids’ procession from first grade at SRS all the way through the high school, I have counted on The Swarthmorean to inform me, enliven me, and help me feel connected. My goal as editor will be to continue these missions and to broaden outward.
This week’s edition marks a changing of the guard here at The Swarthmorean. We want to express sincere gratitude to our departing editor, Chris Reynolds, who for nearly half a decade has done a masterful job functioning as the paper’s heart and soul. We are delighted to have found Rachel Pastan, a writer, editor and writing teacher with more than 30 years of professional experience, the past two decades of which were spent in Swarthmore.
I’ve spent the past 4½ years sitting at a big desk looking out onto Swarthmore, as I arrange words to describe what’s going on beyond the window. I’ll miss the work, and I’ll miss the view — the village of Swarthmore, whose sidewalks beckon you to stroll and explore; whose avenues invite you to ride a bike; whose yards and parks burst with vitality and imagination.
Circle the afternoon of Sunday, November 17, on your Fall festival calendar. That’s the date when The Swarthmorean presents its first barbecue cook-off in the alley next to waR3house3, 100 Park Avenue, Suite WH3. Between 3 and 8 p.m., there will be beef, pork, and who knows what other forms of meaty goodness on the grills of ten local amateur BBQ masters as they compete for Swarthmore’s highest grilling honor. If you want to be one of them, act quickly! The cost to enter is $50.
