A Brief History of Dartblog
Dartblog is back, once again! Since 2004, when it was known as Joe’s Dartblog after its founder, Joe Malchow ’08, Dartblog has been a source of breaking news and analysis ever since Mr. Malchow stepped foot in English Professor Alexandra Halasz’s class. However, the Dartblog you see today is very different from the Dartblog that was first envisioned [scour our archives here].
Dartblog originally was an outlet for Mr. Malchow’s thoughts on all things past, present, and future, and not necessarily centered around the College on the Hill. The first post, dated August 5, 2004, is a verbatim copy of Malchow’s editorial in The Dartmouth entitled ‘Raising the Minimum Wage.’ On the subject, he “concede[s] that John Kerry might be able to convince France to hate the United States a little less”. On the other hand, Kerry’s economic policy ideas, Malchow declares, “are as unhealthy as cotton candy.” Another article four days later ensued on the same subject, and the fascination with John Kerry skipped September through October. At the turn of the year, Malchow made a surprising but revealing confession: in a post titled ‘Don’t Panic’, he admitted that his then girlfriend did not read the blog. This, presumably, was the same companion that first drew Malchow, quite accidentally to Dartmouth. He revealingly tells Jake Tapper ’91 for a DAM profile that “Dartmouth was the best and closest to his then-girlfriend’s college, Tufts.” And that, is how Dartblog came into being.
On January 12, 2005, Malchow voiced a concern that hurts students even today: “The network/ internet is slow today….” Early Dartblog had the potential to look into the crystal ball and examine, often within the expanse of a little more than a few words — barely more than a sentence — pressing issues of the day that would be persistent and of either administrative cause or disposition. However, the single-sentence issues did not evolve into a deep-seated profession of faith or love for Dartmouth and its political and administrative intrigues until a fellow blogger, Prof. Todd Zywicki ’88 of George Mason University’s Law School and blogger at the Volokh Conspiracy declared his candidacy for a seat on the Board of Trustees as a Petition candidate. On January 31, 2005, Joe Malchow made a tryst with Dartmouth’s destiny — and we’re here, in our own way, to redeem it, once again.
By the end of his freshman year, the good offices of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine were fawning over him. An intern, Sue DuBois ’05, included Dartblog in the May–June 2005 issue with a list of her favourite Dartmouth-related blogs, none of which save for this survive today:
“Posted as ‘Joe’s Dartblog’ by the prolific Joe Malchow ’05, this site provides a conservative look at national and world events.”
But the best was yet to come. Starting in the Fall of 2006, Malchow, armed with extensive documentation and information with enough to fill a Parkhurst-only edition of Page 3, he cranked out as many as a dozen posts a day on topics as varied as the University of South Dakota’s Director of Athletics’ response to the Dartmouth Indian mascot regarding its offensiveness, to a scrutiny and analysis of the amendments to Dartmouth’s constitutions regarding radical changes the Trustees seemed to want to make in imposition of their high-handed moral fervour.
Since the middle of the 19th century, the College had lived in a unique division of powers: alumni and trustees held each other accountable. Though the sturdy sons of old Dartmouth had roamed round the girdled earth, “Her spell on them remains.” And this is precisely what happened. A group of enchanted alumni spent their post-College careers in pursuit of checks and balances on the administration, setting the trend for members of the Wheelock Succession, two of which: Samuel Colcord Bartlett and Nathan Lord, had the infamy of facing alumni revolts, the first over his high-handedness and the second over his support for slavery. From 1891 onwards, after the last revolt — that of Bartlett’s — until 1990, alumni had the right to elect Trustees, much like a representative democracy.
For Malchow, then a freshman, to tap into this body of discontentment with the present circumstances, and transform it into what Tapper christened “an unlikely media empire.” Dartblog’s origins lie in a preservation and propagation of those values the Dartmouth once truly believed in and now is invested in paying lip service to. Dartblog stood apart as a source of veritas clamantis in deserto, of accurate information and incisive analysis, and we hope to continue that. Malchow’s fight to put petition trustees on the Board — a successful one, remarkably — spawned one of Dartblog’s most prominent contributors.
A year after Joe Malchow graduated, another Joe joined Dartblog — Joe Asch ’79. When John Kerry had failed to make the French any friendlier to the Stars and Stripes, Asch, who fell in love with Paris on a French FSP to Paris and moved there after a stint at Bain and Yale Law School, moved back to Hanover — and into the arms of Dartblog. While Dartblog has had other contributors, along with Joe Malchow, Joe Asch set the tone for much of Dartblog’s engagement with the administration and the community at large. From stunts like this one — Asch’s last April Fool’s Day prank before his unfortunate passing later in the year — to decrying rightfully the decline of artful and impactful writing even in the Humanities, echoing Cicero’s clarion call about the decline of the studia humanitatis, Joe Asch covered everything in a manner as prolific as Joe Malchow’s.
In 2010, Asch took a hiatus from Dartblog in the aftermath of a contentious race for petition trustee that pitted him against an administration and board that was rigorously and systematically trying to dismantle the Dartmouth he loved. In 2018, Asch laid bare the “product placement” programme that The Dartmouth continues to churn out for the College. In 2016, Asch called out then-Provost Carolyn Dever for her refusal to punish student protestors who “violently disrupt the studies of other students with racist speech.” Another piece of in-depth reportage and analysis took apart the College’s increased debt while pursuing a capital campaign. Asch also broke the story of N. Bruce Duthu ’80 and his authorship of an anti-Israel BDS petition when Duthu was nominated to become Dean of the Faculty.
Nothing was too small or too big, too hidden or too obvious, for Dartblog’s coverage, and for those who cared about the (small) College on the Hill. And it is this very tradition that this relaunched Dartblog intends to continue — to publish and foster the best investigative journalism and analysis of Dartmouth College and its ethos of classical liberal arts education. We aim to pursue the truth relentlessly in order to scrutinise and sharpen the practical leadership and administration of the College; advocate for classical liberal arts education and the College’s mission to advance knowledge and truth; celebrate the College’s commitment to high-quality teaching and scholarship and the excellence of students, alumni, and faculty; and reject the encroachment of identity politics, corporatism, incivility, administrative bloat, and whatever else does not befit our small College and those who love it. This is what Dartblog has always done, and this is what one shall befittingly expect from this relaunched, redesigned version of Dartblog.
