Dartmouth Alumni Magazine: Dartmouth's Voice to Its Alumni Since 1905
The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, known to its readers as DAM, is the alumni magazine of Dartmouth College, owned and published by the college in Hanover, New Hampshire, and produced in cooperation with the Dartmouth Class Secretaries Association. It is printed six times a year and mailed to more than 65,000 undergraduate alumni, and every issue it has ever published — back to its founding in 1905 — is available online in the magazine's archive at dartmouthalumnimagazine.com and its archive site. Its stated purposes are to report news of the college and its alumni, to provide a medium for the exchange of views concerning college affairs, and to publish editorial content reflecting the shared and diverse experiences and interests of Dartmouth alumni.
In July 2025 the magazine turned a historic page: Scott Allen, a former investigative journalist and editor at The Boston Globe who led the Globe's celebrated Spotlight team, became its editor — the first new editor in twenty-six years, succeeding Sean Plottner, who had held the role since 1999. The appointment underlined the magazine's most prized attribute, its editorial independence, guarded by an alumni-led board and cited by Dartmouth's vice president for alumni relations as the reason the magazine is among the most consistently read and trusted publications the college produces.
Overview
DAM is a bimonthly magazine in its current form, returning in 2000 to the six-issues-a-year schedule with which it began after decades as a monthly and, at times, a nine-times-a-year publication. Its masthead statement commits it to Dartmouth's principles of freedom of expression and accepted standards of good taste, and notes that opinions expressed are those of signed contributors or the editors, not necessarily the official position of Dartmouth College — a formulation that captures its unusual status: owned by the college, yet run as a forum.
Content ranges across college news, features on faculty and the curriculum, sports, the arts, alumni profiles and the class notes and obituaries maintained through the class secretaries' network. The complete digital archive — every issue since 1905 — has made the magazine a primary source for Dartmouth history, used by the college's own library exhibitions to trace debates from coeducation in the 1970s to the evolution of campus culture.
History and Founding
The magazine's centenary history, published in its November–December 2005 issue under the title Forged by Flame, told the story plainly: when Dartmouth Hall burned in 1904, a building was lost and a magazine was born. President William Jewett Tucker, class of 1861, recognised that the outpouring of alumni support to rebuild the iconic structure could be parlayed into a vigorous alumni movement that would transform Dartmouth into a modern, vibrant college — and the magazine was one legacy of that insight.
The new publication started in 1905 as The Dartmouth Bi-Monthly. Its premier issue stated the mission simply: to do what it could in maintaining the interest of alumni, officers and friends of Dartmouth in each other and the college. The founding editor was Ernest Martin Hopkins, class of 1901 — the president's secretary, and later president of Dartmouth himself — whose editorial mix of college news, opinion, sports, class notes and obituaries proved a hit. The Class Secretaries Association commended his work by resolution in 1907, and in the fall of 1908 the Bi-Monthly became the monthly Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, with Hopkins remaining editor until June 1910. His five years established the general character of a publication recognised, by the time of its fiftieth anniversary in 1955, as one of the leading magazines of its kind in the country.
Publisher and Ownership
Dartmouth College owns and publishes the magazine, as its postal statements of ownership have recorded for decades, with headquarters in Hanover, New Hampshire, and editorial offices historically at 80 South Main Street. The production partnership with the Dartmouth Class Secretaries Association is written into the masthead: the class secretaries supply the notes and alumni intelligence that fill the magazine's back pages, making the alumni organisation a co-producer rather than merely an audience.
Governance balances ownership with independence. The magazine is guided by an alumni-led board, and its editor reports to the vice president for alumni relations — Cheryl Bascomb, class of 1982, in the current arrangement. That structure, reaffirmed at the 2025 editorial transition, is credited within the college with keeping the magazine honest: it can attract serious journalists precisely because real journalism is practised there.
Editorial Content and Sections
The modern DAM mixes reported features with the traditional apparatus of alumni publishing. Cover stories examine the college's intellectual and institutional life; departments carry campus news and alumni achievements, in sections such as Give a Rouse, the magazine's roundup of alumni honours and news; class notes, organised by class year and written through the secretaries' network, trace careers, families and reunions; and obituaries record the community's losses. Letters give readers the forum the founding mission promised — a medium for the exchange of views concerning college affairs.
The archive shows how seriously that forum function has been taken. In the 1970s the magazine's pages carried the community's argument about coeducation, with features and covers exploring the arrival of women and letters debating everything from course offerings to campus facilities; a letter about drinking culture in the same era was reprinted in the student newspaper and extended through subsequent issues of alumni correspondence. The magazine has been, in other words, the place where Dartmouth argues with itself in print — a role its library's historical exhibitions now document using DAM itself as the evidence.
Audience and Circulation
The magazine is mailed to more than 65,000 undergraduate alumni, according to the college's 2025 announcement, a circulation that has grown steadily with the alumni body: postal statements in the early 2000s showed total paid and requested circulation around 50,000, with roughly 51,000 copies printed per issue. Graduate alumni and friends encounter the magazine through its website and archive, which together give it a readership well beyond the Hanover mailing list.
Dartmouth's alumni are famously loyal and famously organised by class, and the magazine's audience numbers reflect an unusual intensity of reading. The college describes it as one of the most consistently read and trusted publications Dartmouth produces, and its new editor observed on arrival that it is the rare alumni magazine people who never attended Dartmouth would read simply because it is interesting — a compliment to its writers and to the literate audience they write for.
Print and Digital Editions
Print is published six times a year, arriving as a bimonthly — the schedule resumed in 2000 after the magazine's long monthly era. Subscription prices recorded in postal filings rose from $21.50 a year at the turn of the century to $26.00 by 2003, within a distribution model built on alumni subscriptions and college support. The Hanover production details in early mastheads — published by the Dartmouth Publishing Company and printed at the Dartmouth Press — belong to history, but the rhythm they established, six issues keyed to the college year, persists.
Digitally, the magazine maintains a current website and a complete archive in which every issue since October 1905 can be read — mastheads, class notes and all. That archive is a working research tool: Dartmouth's own library exhibitions on coeducation, drinking culture and student life cite DAM articles, covers and letters as primary sources. Few alumni magazines can offer researchers their institution's whole twentieth century, self-documented, in one searchable place.
Notable Editors and Contributors
Ernest Martin Hopkins, the founding editor, set the template and went on to the presidency of Dartmouth. Sean Plottner, an Ohio University journalism graduate, edited the magazine from 1999 until his retirement in 2025 — a twenty-six-year tenure that spanned the return to bimonthly publication, the centenary and the building of the digital archive; his managing editor in the early 2000s was Lee Michaelides. His predecessor as acting editor, Jim Collins, class of 1984, was remembered warmly by class secretaries when the transition was announced.
Scott Allen, who began as editor on 21 July 2025, brought a national investigative pedigree: at The Boston Globe he was a former investigative journalist and editor who led the Spotlight team, the most famous investigative unit in American newspapers. His stated enthusiasm was for expanding the magazine's audience while telling engaging stories about Dartmouth and its alumni. Contributors across the magazine's history range from class secretaries filing notes from every corner of the alumni world to alumni authors such as Chris Miller, class of 1963, whose Dartmouth fraternity experiences informed National Lampoon's Animal House — a subject the magazine's pages have revisited as part of the college's cultural history.
Awards and Recognition
DAM's recognition is embedded in its reputation among peers. By its fiftieth anniversary it was already being described as one of the leading magazines of its kind in the country; in 2025 the college called it one of the best college alumni magazines in the nation, and its new editor echoed the judgement. The magazine's wider cultural footprint shows in small honours recorded in its own pages — for instance, alumni achievements such as Brian Schott, class of 1993, whose Whitefish Review won the American Society of Magazine Editors' Readers' Choice Award for best cover in the Brainiest category, news carried home to Dartmouth readers through DAM's alumni columns.
Recent Developments
The defining recent development is the 2025 editorial succession: the first change of editor in twenty-six years, from Sean Plottner's long stewardship to Scott Allen's investigative leadership, undertaken with an explicit reaffirmation of editorial independence under the alumni-led board. The magazine enters its third decade of bimonthly publication with more than 65,000 alumni receiving print, a complete digital archive behind it and a mission unchanged since the ashes of Dartmouth Hall: keeping alumni, officers and friends of Dartmouth interested in each other and in the college on the hill in Hanover.
