The Yale Record
Encyclopedia
The Yale Record is the campus humor magazine of Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

. Founded in 1872, it is the oldest college humor magazine in America.

History

The Record began as a weekly newspaper, with its first issue appearing on September 11, 1872. Almost immediately, it became a home to funny writing (often in verse form), and later, when printing technology made it practical, humorous illustrations. The Record thrived immediately, and by the turn of the century had a wide circulation outside of New Haven — at prep schools, other college towns, and even New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. As Yale became one of the bellwethers of collegiate taste and fashion (especially for the younger universities looking East), so too The Record became a model — even being mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

's novels as one of the harbingers of the new, looser morality of collegians of that time.

Early 20th century

Along with the Princeton Tiger Magazine
Princeton Tiger Magazine
Princeton Tiger or Tiger Magazine is a college humor magazine published by Princeton University undergraduates since 1882. A number of its writers and editors later went on to notable literary careers, including Booth Tarkington, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John McPhee.The magazine's style has not...

, the Stanford Chaparral
Stanford Chaparral
The Stanford Chaparral is a humor magazine published by students of Stanford University since 1899.-History:...

, and the Harvard Lampoon
Harvard Lampoon
The Harvard Lampoon is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.-Overview:Published since 1876, The Harvard Lampoon is the world's longest continually published humor magazine. It is also the second longest-running English-language humor...

, among many college humor magazines
College humor magazines
Many colleges and universities publish satirical journals conventionally referred to as "humor magazines." Among the most famous: the Harvard Lampoon, which gave rise to the National Lampoon in 1970, The Yale Record, the nation's oldest college humor magazine , Princeton Tiger Magazine, the...

, The Record created a wide-ranging, absurdist style of comedy which mixed high-culture references with material dealing with the eternal topics of schoolwork, alcohol, sex (or lack thereof). This college humor style influenced — or in some cases led directly to — The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, Mad magazine
Mad (magazine)
Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century.The last...

, underground comics, The Second City
The Second City
The Second City is a improvisational comedy enterprise which originated in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood.The Second City Theatre opened on December 16, 1959 and has since expanded its presence to several other cities, including Toronto and Los Angeles...

, and Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...

.

From the 1920s to the 1960s, The Record placed special emphasis on cartooning, which led many of its alumni to work at Esquire magazine
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...

 and especially The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

. By the late 1940s, the magazine's ties to The New Yorker were so strong that designers from that magazine consulted on The Records layout and design. By the 1950s, the Record had established the "Cartoonist of the Year" award, which brought people like Walt Kelly
Walt Kelly
Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr. , or Walt Kelly, was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip, Pogo. He began his animation career in 1936 at Walt Disney Studios, contributing to Pinocchio and Fantasia. Kelly resigned in 1941 at the age of 28 to work at Post-Hall Syndicate,...

, the creator of Pogo
Pogo
Pogo is the title and central character of a long-running daily American comic strip, created by cartoonist Walt Kelly and distributed by the Post-Hall Syndicate...

, to New Haven to dine and swap stories with the staff. The Record also played an integral role in then-editor in chief Garry Trudeau
Garry Trudeau
Garretson Beekman "Garry" Trudeau is an American cartoonist, best known for the Doonesbury comic strip.-Background and education:...

's creation of his epochal strip Doonesbury
Doonesbury
Doonesbury is a comic strip by American cartoonist Garry Trudeau, that chronicles the adventures and lives of an array of characters of various ages, professions, and backgrounds, from the President of the United States to the title character, Michael Doonesbury, who has progressed from a college...

.

Recent Years

Although the exceedingly poor economic conditions of New Haven in the 1970s and 1980s made things difficult for The Record, the rise of desktop publishing
Desktop publishing
Desktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...

 gave the magazine new life. This process was repeated on many campuses in the late 1980s, as a generation of people who grew up reading Mad magazine, National Lampoon and Spy magazine
Spy (magazine)
Spy was a satirical monthly magazine founded in 1986 by Kurt Andersen and E. Graydon Carter, who served as its first editors, and Thomas L. Phillips, Jr., its first publisher. After one folding and a rebirth, it ceased publication in 1998...

 used computers to revive sputtering college humor magazines.

With its 140th birthday looming, The Record is one of the preeminent college humor magazines being published today.

The Magazine

The Record is currently published eight times during the academic year and is distributed in Yale residential college dining halls and around the nation through subscriptions. Content from the magazine is made available online and entire issues can be downloaded in .pdf form. Each issue of the current magazine features a particular theme. Aspects of the magazine include:
  • Snews - One-liners in the form of headlines.
  • Mailbags - Humorous letters to the editor, historical figures, or inanimate objects.
  • The Editorial - Written by the editor in chief of the magazine each issue, giving a brief overview of the contents and making of the issue.
  • Cartoons - Captioned, "New Yorker style" cartoons that hail back to the magazine's early beginnings.
  • Lists and Features - Staff generated content pertinent to the magazine's theme.

Master's Teas

Throughout the year, the Record invites notable figures from the world of comedy to Master's Teas, informal interviews hosted by the Record in conjunction with residential colleges. Recent guests have included SNL's Fred Armisen
Fred Armisen
Fred Armisen is an American actor, comedian and musician best known for his work as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, and portraying off-color foreigners in various comedy films such as EuroTrip, Anchorman and Cop Out...

, John Mulaney
John Mulaney
John Mulaney is an American comedian and writer for Saturday Night Live .In addition to writing for SNL, Mulaney has appeared on the show's "Weekend Update" segment. Mulaney also previously made regular appearances on Best Week Ever on VH1. Mulaney appeared multiple times on Late Night with Conan...

, Marika Sawyer, and Simon Rich
Simon Rich
Simon Rich is an American humorist, novelist, and television writer, best known for being the youngest writer ever hired on Saturday Night Live and writing the Thurber Prize-nominated humor collection Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations....

; comedy writer Mike Sacks
Mike Sacks
Mike Sacks is an American author, humor writer, and magazine editor based in New York City. Sacks was born in Virginia and raised in Maryland before attending Tulane University in New Orleans.-Career:...

, and comic artist Kazu Kibuishi
Kazu Kibuishi
Kazu Kibuishi is an American graphic novel author and illustrator. He is best known for being the creator and editor of the comic anthology Flight and for creating the webcomic Copper. He is also the author and illustrator of the ongoing Amulet series...

. While residential colleges frequently organize Master's Teas, The Yale Record is known for its humorous ones..

The Old Owl

For over a century, the mascot of the Record has been the "Old Owl," a congenial, possibly sozzled bird who tries to steer the staff towards a light-hearted appreciation of life and the finer things in it. Staff members are referred to as "owls" and "owlets", while former chair, editors in chief, and publishers are referred to as "old owls".

Notable alumni

Notable Yale Record alumni include:

  • Peter Arno
    Peter Arno
    Peter Arno was a U.S. cartoonist.-Biography:Born Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr. in New York, New York, and educated at the Hotchkiss School and Yale University, his cartoons were published in The New Yorker from 1925–1968. They often depicted a cross-section of New York society from the 1920s through...

  • Lucius Beebe
    Lucius Beebe
    Lucius Morris Beebe was an American author, gourmand, photographer, railroad historian, journalist, and syndicated columnist.-Early life and education:...

  • Stephen Vincent Benet
    Stephen Vincent Benét
    Stephen Vincent Benét was an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist. Benét is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body , for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "By...

  • William Benton
    William Benton
    William Burnett Benton was a U.S. senator from Connecticut and publisher of the Encyclopædia Britannica .-Early life:Benton was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota...

  • Peter Bergman
    Peter Bergman (comedian)
    Peter Paul Bergman is an American writer and comedian, best known as a member of The Firesign Theatre. He plays Lt. Bradshaw in the Nick Danger series....

     of the Firesign Theatre
  • Courtlandt Bryan
    Courtlandt Bryan
    Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan , better known as C. D. B. Bryan, was an American author and journalist.-Biography:...

  • Michael Gerber
  • A. Whitney Griswold - Yale President
  • Robert Grossman
    Robert Grossman
    Robert Grossman is an American painter, sculptor, filmmaker, and author.In a career spanning nearly fifty years, Grossman's illustrations have appeared over 500 times on the covers of various national publications...

  • Brian Hooker
    Brian Hooker (poet)
    William Brian Hooker was an American poet, educator, lyricist, and librettist. He was born to Elizabeth Work and William Augustus Hooker who was a mining engineer for the New York firm of Hooker and Lawrence...

  • Dwight MacDonald
    Dwight Macdonald
    Dwight Macdonald was an American writer, editor, film critic, social critic, philosopher, and political radical.-Early life and career:...

  • Reginald Marsh
    Reginald Marsh (artist)
    Reginald Marsh was an American painter, born in Paris, most notable for his depictions of life in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. Crowded Coney Island beach scenes, popular entertainments such as vaudeville and burlesque, women, and jobless men on the Bowery are subjects that reappear...

  • Eric Metaxas
    Eric Metaxas
    Eric Metaxas is the author of Everything Else You Always Wanted to Know About God and thirty children's books. He is founder and host of Socrates in the City in New York City, a forum for philosophical discussion.He lives in New York with his wife and daughter...

  • Robert C. Osborn
    Robert C. Osborn
    Robert Chesley Osborn was an American satiric cartoonist, illustrator and author.-Pre-World War II Career:Osborn was born October 26, 1904, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He entered the University of Wisconsin in 1923, then transferred to Yale in 1923. At Yale, together with Dwight Macdonald, Wilder...

  • Vincent Price
    Vincent Price
    Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.-Early life and career:Price was born in St...

  • Philip Proctor
    Philip Proctor
    Philip Proctor is an American actor, voice actor and a member of The Firesign Theatre. He plays Rocky Rococo and Nancy in the Nick Danger series. He is from Goshen, Indiana...

  • James Stevenson
  • Brandon Tartikoff
    Brandon Tartikoff
    Brandon Tartikoff was a television executive who was credited with turning around NBC's low prime time reputation with such hit series as Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, ALF, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Cheers, Seinfeld, Miami Vice, The Golden Girls, Knight Rider, The A-Team, St...

  • John Templeton
    John Templeton
    Sir John Marks Templeton was an American-born British stock investor, businessman and philanthropist.-Biography:...

  • Garry Trudeau
    Garry Trudeau
    Garretson Beekman "Garry" Trudeau is an American cartoonist, best known for the Doonesbury comic strip.-Background and education:...

     - Creator of Doonesbury
    Doonesbury
    Doonesbury is a comic strip by American cartoonist Garry Trudeau, that chronicles the adventures and lives of an array of characters of various ages, professions, and backgrounds, from the President of the United States to the title character, Michael Doonesbury, who has progressed from a college...

  • Sonny Tufts
    Sonny Tufts
    Sonny Tufts was a United States film actor....

  • Alan B. Slifka
    Alan B. Slifka
    Alan Bruce Slifka was a New York investor and philanthropist, a co-founder of the Abraham Fund and founding chairman of the Big Apple Circus. He was a native of Manhattan.- Personal life :...

  • James Gamble Rogers
    James Gamble Rogers
    James Gamble Rogers was an American architect best known for his academic commissions at Yale University, Columbia University, Northwestern University, and elsewhere....



External links

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