EDITORS-IN-CHIEF: NEHA DALAL & JAMES WATKINS

What have we done? kk We think we have done a good job at implementing many of the programs that we proposed during our candidacy, such as the now universal Google Drive-hosted HIR Database (PLEASE everybody continue using this for anything and everything HIR-related; it’s so important both for our ability to co-ordinate the whole organiza-tion and for institutional memory for years ahead), the HIR Handbook, a document clearly defining roles and responsibilities of each staff member, a clearly defined pro-duction calendar, and so on.

We think that we have made some progress on our main three promises to make the HIR social scene more inclusive, and to improve the transparency & efficiency of our organization, and increasing our web presence. This newsletter will hopefully explain how far we have come, what more we have to do, and to receive feedback from you guys about our progress. The data below is an update on where the HIR currently is doing, and we would like you to all take the survey attached to this newsletter.

Harvard International Review

Year in Review2014

Taking Stock: where we are right nowWe promised during our candidacy that we would clarify a lot of the un-knowns about the business side of the HIR. That has proved to be a semes-ter-long struggle, but we have made a lot of progress, and here is what we know …

2,350 copies of the Fall/Winter issue that we just wrapped up will be sold on news stands worldwide. Although the number changes daily, we have roughly 450 sales to subscribers each quarter.

We are on newsstands in 375 stores across every states of the US, 15% of the number of stores that Foreign Policy magazine appears in. [Store-level data is not available internationally].

Before conducting a comprehensive readership survey, it is impossible to know exactly how many countries we are sold in; our distributor can only tell us which middle-man distribution companies the HIR is sent to, of which there tends to be one for an entire region. But, from that data, we can see that regional distribution companies buy and distribute our magazine on every continent in the world, with Australia, India, southeast Asia, Western Eu-rope, and Southern Africa being particular global sales hotspots.

US/Canada sales are roughly 14% of that of Foreign Policy; global sales are roughly 7% of that of Foreign Policy.

But, as we have acknowledged, most of our interests should now be fo-cused towards the website …

We average around 5,750 page views per week, equating to 300,000 per year. With current growth rates, we aim to hit half a million this year. This is up from around 43% of our online readers around the world are from the US, with the UK, Canada, India, and Brazil being the next largest markets.

Since turning on Google analytics in October, we have been viewed at least once from 159 countries. (Some extra marketing needs to be done in Chad, the Western Sahara, Syria, Turkmenistan, & Papua New Guinea).

32% of our readers are aged 18-24; 34% are aged 25-34. 57% are male.

We have 843 followers on Twitter (up from 787 in October), and 2,805 likes on Facebook (up from 2522 since October).

If you are on the HIR staff and do not follow us on Twitter and like us on Face-book, DO IT NOW!!!

Projects Going Forward k We still have a lot to work on in terms of continuing to im-plement our more continuous production cycle to drive dai-ly content. Mahnoor will also be starting a project in the new year to send out weekly content newsletters to members of the public who subscribe, featuring both our own articles and interesting pieces of commentary from other global me-dia organizations, which will hopefully drive further traf-fic to our site. We are also hoping to fully implement online advertisements to take advantage of this revenue stream.

We are hoping to start a project during J-term to complete the digitization of our archives, and properly tag all articles on the site, making the HIR’s full history navigable easily through the website.

The other major project for December & January will be wrap-ping up and publishing the Anniversary Book, which we are excited to announce is finally nearing completion.

As always, we are anticipating next quarter’s magazine release on the Arctic (as our gorgeous House Ad from the Winter magazine below reminds us), with the final content deadline on January 26th. It’s gonna be a good one!

CHIEF Content Director: Ava Zhang

Hey all! So the role of the Director of Content (as the name might imply) is to oversee the production of all HIR content across print and web, and so I feel confident in declaring that content is killing it so far this year. Daniel, Ashley, Shahrukh & Edyt will provide up-dates on the exciting work that each specific board is doing, so I’ll just talk a bit about content-wide achievements.

One of our main ambitions this year was to spearhead the “online revolution”, with the aim of greatly amping up our online pres-ence. Given that the website is not subject to the space and timing concerns that constrain what can be published in print, we wanted to take advantage of it as a platform through which we could not only share a lot more of your voices, but also allow you to publish on more current topics and engage with a vast potential readership. We completely restructured the production cycle at the beginning of the year to be more web-friendly, which is why most of your boards meet on a fortnightly basis and constantly assign new pieces. The new procedure that we institutionalized for how pieces are upload-ed and published on the website (see: so many pages in the Hand-book) is working smoothly; we’ve also been quite successful with decreasing turnaround and making sure that your work goes up as soon as it’s ready to go.

We had set ourselves the (admittedly ambitious) objective of getting one article up per day, but what’s amaz-ing is that we actually managed to meet that up until we ran into the giant black hole that was Thanksgiving and is now exam season. How to make sure that content stays constant during parts of the year where all of us students are on vacation (or stressed out of our minds) is a challenge that we still have to tackle, but overall, it’s promising that we’ve been able to dramatically increase web presence in such a short period of time. And Jonathan has done a fantastic job of making sure that we’re getting out there on social media, with Twitter posts going out to publicize every single article.

On the print front, we churned out the first issue of the year with minimal bloodshed (actually, none, but that sounds less badass) and already have some exciting pieces in the works for Spring 2015. We’ve focused a lot on making sure that deadlines are clear, consistent, and set well in advance, and that our leadership structure is set such that you all feel like you can pursue your own ideas while receiving as much support and guidance as you need. A lot of my work tends to be in the background, whether that be organising proofreading parties, coordinating when pieces are released, or emailing your chairs incessantly for updates, but if you ever want to share ideas about where you want the HIR to go – or thoughts about how things could be better managed or what more you want to see from your chair heads, please let me know, and I’m happy to chat :). Best wishes for exams and the holidays, and remember your deadlines.

As Head of Ops, I have spent majority of this semester working on bigger picture ideas for the HIR as well as making sure our newest leadership staff is comfortable and able in their new positions. All three boards under the Ops umbrella (excluding House) have grown signifi-cantly. Most notably is tech, which no longer consists of a one man team. Biz has been lucky enough to welcome a phenomenal comp class whose dedication to their proj-ects will continue throughout the year. Media has been as busy as ever but perhaps a bit more comfortable with their HIR workload due to Content’s promptness in turn-ing articles in. The thing I am looking forward to most in the Ops divison is the Anniversary Book, which is being compiled by Media and distributed through Biz. A great year so far and an HIR-changing one to come.

Chief Operations Director: Zoe Simon

Books & Reviews Head: Benjamin LegesseReviews has expanded to a larger size than I have ever seen it before in my time as a member of the HIR. My staff have shown a lot of interest in the books that are available to review and the rest of the writers from the other boards also seem interested in writing reviews. Thanks to the many books that are sent in to us for review there are plenty of opportunities for everyone. I go and check our office in the Quad every two weeks for new books that have been sent in for review and inform the rest of the writ-ing staff on the new books. I haven’t yet received any drafts to edit and provide feedback on since the reviews cycle began just 2 weeks ago and no drafts are expected until after break but that is another part my job as the head of Reviews. Going forward I hope the excitement about reviewing books doesn’t die down and that there will be many drafts being sent to me for feedback.

Soliciting Chair: Ashley Collins

1)Soliciting has accomplished quite a bit this semester. We have put out more online content through the Guest Blog and Perspectives sec-tions and have featured exciting names both on the website and in print magazine, including Jordan Ryan, Director of the United Nations Development Program’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery; Robert King, US Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea; Barry Bloom, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Former Dean at the Harvard School of Public Health.

2)As the head of the soliciting board, I work to coordinate the efforts of the Guest Blog, Perspectives, and Interviews teams. The main job of these teams is to solicit outside content for the magazine. This includes heads of state, ambassadors, professors, or anyone else who is doing interesting work in the field of international relations.

3)As we look towards next semester, we are going to be turning our focus to increasing the HIR’s online presence even more and trying some new formats for Interviews. In terms of who we are soliciting, we know right now that we will be receiving an article from Ertharin Cousin, the Executive Director of the World Food Programme, among other exciting names.

This cycle has been an excellent one for the new soliciting team; all five new team members were able to reach out to a wide audience of potential contributors. Ranging from some of Harvard’s most engag-ing faculty like Mary Elise Sarotte, whose recent book, The Collapse, is one of the most engaging accounts of the Fall of the Berlin Wall to date, all the way to country presidents like Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who is trying to navigate her country through the Ebola crisis plaguing the nation, our solicits will ensure that this new cycle will be one of diversity and excitement.Our new team members have shown dedication and passion, and their hard work has demonstrated that the Perspectives team will be able to match the new policy of a continuous production cycle pio-neered by our new EICs this year. Moreover, our new team members have shown a willingness to communicate with each other to bring the Perspectives team closer together than before, and we are looking forward to another great cycle of continually updated and stream-lined content in the Spring.

Writing Chair: Daniel EpsteinOver the past semester, the Writing team has worked to feel out a stream-lined division of responsibilities as well as refit its production schedule to-ward more consistent, online content. While writers have adjusted well to the new framework, editors are still adjusting. It has been more difficult than we expected to turn pieces around quickly given the new volume of content, and this is something we will work to get better at. One thing that may help is the implementation of in-person conferencing. I had hoped to institute this at the beginning of my term, but it has proved challenging to coordinate and communicate timing. I am hopeful that the new semester will grant the op-portunity to establish regular conferencing times and begin to make use of this outlet to help streamline editing. Finally, a central Writer’s List has been implemented. While this has been an invaluable organizational tool for me, it has so far not developed into the center of overall board communication I had hoped it would. Part of this, I think, is my fault for not being more ex-plicit about its uses. Moving forward, I’ll emphasize it more, and I’m confi-dent it can become an asset for both writers and editors.

Despite these kinks, however, the machine is beginning to click into gear. Many of our newest writers have had the opportunity to publish pieces only weeks after completing their comp, and we’ve had some wonderful content hit the website. While the volume so far isn’t quite what we dreamed of, we are publishing as much as or more than past writing boards have published, and the pace should only increase as we continue to fine-tune the process. We are also excited to roll out new themed blog features such as “IR and Me” (and potentially others), which will see its inaugural post in the coming weeks. Over the winter break, we will be focusing on preparing content for the Spring Issue, which promises to bring some high-quality GN/WIRs and a handful of book reviews (!!!). After that, we’ll pick up where we left off, utilizing the space, time, and new energy the new semester will grant us to make the Writing boards more prolific and efficient in 2015.

Most of all I hope to do better with finding events to review since that is now part of Reviews. This part is new to me so I will have to work on it but I hope that it will be an enjoyable experience to the reviews staff and any

Perspectives Head: Nick Ackert

Guest Blog Head: Cyndia Yu

Interviews Head: Emilie Robert Wong

Hi HIR! My name is Emilie Robert Wong, and I am head of Interviews this year. My main goals for Interviews in-clude increasing the number of interviews per publishing cycle, strengthening partnerships with other organizations on campus to encourage more in-person / on-site inter-views, and fostering multimedia exploration with video and audio interviews to be published on the new website. So far this semester, our board has been off to a great start: both new compers and returning members have sent out solicits and are eagerly awaiting responses from the likes of the queen of Iran, Mary Robinson, and Chelsea Clinton, among others. Of course, if anyone else on the HIR wants to contribute an interview, you are all more than welcome to do so!

Special Projects Chair: Edyt Dickstein

Special Projects has really hit the ground running after just being formally introduced as a new board this past semester. Members are working on podcasts, developing an interactive timeline for the website, creating a new newsfeed-style reel of articles based on current events, and constructing crossword puz-zles based on recently published articles. We’re really excited about our new team, and cannot wait to start putting things out next semester!

Features Head: Sharukh Khan

Features Board has gotten off to a fantastic start with solicits for the upcoming issue, “The Arctic.” We solicited heavily in these past few weeks and have had remarkable results. Our inside joke is that we are cheetahs on a hunt for gazelles, and so we call a confirmed solicit a “caught gazelle.” We have caught 7 gazelles so far, ranging from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway to the For-mer Secretary General of NATO and Prime Minister of Denmark. Staffers will continue to solicit throughout the production cycle and will also write their own articles on the “The Arctic.” A big shoutout to the new associates for doing such a great job. We hope to make this upcoming issue full of insightful thoughts from individuals of many fields, ranging from politics to the environment to de-fense.

It’s been a productive semester for the HIR blog! Following the comp, the writing board made a major change to the blog: pre-viously, the blog team had been a separate group of writers, but we decided to integrate blog writers with GN and WIR writers, creating one writing staff. The writing board also introduced weekly pitch meetings where staff can pick up blog pitches along with GN, WIR, and books and review articles. Both of these changes have proven to be effective in generating more blog content. We’ve published fascinating articles on a range of top-ics: Nobel Prize disparities between East Asian countries, North Korea’s use of art as a form of diplomacy, and the foreign poli-cy implications of the U.S. midterm elections. As we approach winter break, there are a number of blogs still in the works that should be published soon. Over the break, we’re hoping to keep content going by publishing some of the blog articles that were written during the comp process.

Blog Head: Jessie Dorfmann

The Guest Blog has successfully published a number of interesting pieces this past semester, including be-ginning what looks to be a successful partnership with OpedSpace. The board is dedicated towards publish-ing more timely pieces that consider recent events, developments, and trends in brief from notable leaders and scholars. Board members are focused in particular on soliciting authors who may be able to contribute regarding time-sensitive information and authors who, due to time constraints, may be unable to offer longer pieces for Perspectives articles. In the coming semester, Guest Blog hopes to improve its continuous produc-tion of pieces and offer more content for online read-ers, particularly in soliciting larger names and offering more timely analysis.

tech Chair: SERGUEI BALANOVICH

Media Chair: Anna KIM

At the beginning of the season, Media’s main goals included im-proving the efficacy of the article layout/wrap-up processes and maintaining better communication with the other boards. Reflect-ing on the (occasionally frantic) production of this year’s first is-sue, I think we have made important progress towards the achieve-ment of said goals. Several adjustments were made to wrap-up procedure, including holding an in-person senior staff meeting for edits instead of over email as we have traditionally done. There was increased aesthetic input from other boards, most notably in regards to this issue’s cover. There are many mistakes to be learned from and improvements to be made, but I think greater integra-tion has proven to be a positive force for the magazine. As always, Media is looking for new members, so if you have any interest in design or learning to use programs like InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop, make sure to contact me! Happy Holidays everyone!

When the Tech Board was established at the outset of this se-mester, it was founded based on a single, central mission state-ment, and several short and long term aims. Verbatim, “the mission of the Technical Board will be to maintain and devel-op the online presence of the Harvard International Review both externally for the benefit of our readers, and internally as a well-structured board of the HIR organization.” In order to uphold this mission statement, in the short term, it was expect-ed that the board would gain full control of the website from the current developer so as to be able to make changes rapidly and efficiently on both the front and backend without any over-head. Additionally, it was planned that in the short term the tech board would eradicate all bugs and unwanted behaviors on the website and implement the features that would allow it to more closely resemble the old HIR website in terms of functionality. The final short term aim was internal integration of the team into the HIR organizational structure by working with different boards and individual members to create specif-ic solutions tailored to each board’s needs. Finally, in the long term, the proposal was to develop the groundwork for a com-prehensive leadership hierarchy and comp process for the tech-nical board so that the board could grow in size and legitimacy beginning as early as next semester.As its first semester comes to a close, the tech board can eval-uate its progress towards each of these goals. The first two short-term aims, complete ownership of the website and the implementation of basic functionality, has been completed successfully. From a re-organization of links and article presen-tation on the home page, to the implementation of plugins for features such as blocking spam, notifying authors and board members of new article publications, and even experimenting with minimalistic advertising, the board has successfully taken

over control of the website and has created the much-needed functionality that had been present in the pre-vious version of the website. However, in terms of the final short-term goal of integrating the board into the rest of the HIR, we have not been accomplished as successfully. Partly due to the small and fluctuating size of the board and partly to the time-intensive nature of the tech board’s other work, we have not had a chance to interact with and to take requests from the other boards as much as we would have liked. We are currently working on three projects in tandem with the Special Projects team, but outside of that there has been little inter-committee interaction. It is our hope that with a stronger comp process and a more comprehensive team structure and roadmap next semester, this part of the tech board’s goals will be accomplished much more sat-isfactorily.One of the biggest non-technical projects for the board now, therefore, is to establish this comprehensive comp program. It will be necessary to outline clearly the skills required for a member of the tech board and the ex-pectations of each member. We will also work extensively over break to establish a WordPress and HIR web-site crash course so that the first two weeks of the comp may be devoted to the onboarding process and the remainder set aside for individual board member projects, the quality of which will be used as an evaluator tool to determine whether the member will be invited to remain after the comp. Finally, it is our hope to estab-lish more modularization of the website, and given a sufficiently large team, to delegate certain aspects of the website to different members. These developments in organizational structure, coupled with the exciting proj-ects coming to fruiting through our collaboration with the Special Projects board, indicate really exciting times ahead for the tech board! By next semester, we hope to solidify some of the more ambitious projects that we laid out at the outset of this year – improving search, successfully integrating the archives for all readers, and establishing a constant stream of communication with our subscribers through a weekly newsletter. Though the board did not successfully accomplish all of its short term aims this semester, we think there is still great potential, and given the upcoming break for reflection and restructuring, the spring semester will bring with it much opportunity to see these initiatives through to completion!

Outreach Chair: Layla Stahr

This semester, I have been working to revamp Outreach as a board. This task has included looking into better structures for the board and determining the structure that will best fit the goals of the board for this and next semester. By the start of next semester, Outreach will be have a list of Outreach members and individual tasks for them to complete over the course of the re-mainder of the school year. I have also been working on various alumni tasks, including sending out a letter about the Anniver-sary Book Launch and the leadership turnover. I am currently sorting out the best ways to bring together the authors and writ-ers showcased in the book for the launch next semester as well. Going forward, Outreach will focus on publicizing the book and the launch event, strengthening our presence on campus through greater communication with the houses and the freshman dorms, and furthering communication with other IRC and Harvard groups. At the beginning of the semester, I sought out to increase the size of the outreach board, maintain a monthly newsletter for all HIR members and interested alumni, increase outreach to freshmen and in houses, and create stronger relationships with other IRC programs. Increasing outreach to freshman will come to fruition once the next magazine comes out, at which time we can have a table in Annenberg to distribute copies and get fresh-man interested in the content. Increasing the size of the outreach board will be completed by the end of this semester. Unfortunate-ly, I have not had the chance to increase cooperation with other IRC programs, but I hope to hold a meeting with the heads of these programs to see how we can work together early next

semester. Finally, in terms of the monthly newsletter, this semester will yield one newsletter for alumni over the approximately two and a half month period that I will have been in charge of Outreach. Next semester, I hope to better accomplish this goal of a more frequent alumni newsletter to fill in the alumni about the things we have been working on.

Event Chairs: Akshay Verma & Nick Wood

After a successful comp initiation in early November—full of suited-up freshmen, tipsy speeches, and embar-rassing pictures of Akshay that will probably be surfaced for a while—the Events board is planning to kick off social events more into gear soon. We hosted a successful mixer with the Yale Globalist during Harvard-Yale weekend (and the HIR was way cooler than the Globalist), which somehow brought a slew of random Ger-man men who seemed far too old to attend either institution. In late October, we braved a rainy morning and our Saturday morning hangovers for a successful trip to Sky Zone—after, of course, far too many line switches on the T, a sketchy bus ride, and unreliable Uber drivers—where James performed more trampoline flips than one would think humanly possible. And there were many HIR pre-games and post-games throughout the year, with questionable rounds of HIR drinking games—and bonding, of course! With our latest compers now turned associates, we are excited for many new social events next semester, with launch parties for our new issues and anniversary book, fun Boston outings (Laser Tag, anyone?), dinners, and much more.

Biz Chair: Sarah Sohn

My name is Sarah Sohn, and I am currently the Business Chair of the HIR. As Biz Chair, I am fortunate to have the support of three great team leaders – Jonathan Tan, Auden Laurence, and Willa Wang – as well as our comptroller, Akshay Verma.A few weeks ago, we welcomed our fall class of compers onto the Business Board, and we are so incredibly excited to have them joining us! They presented some interesting and well thought-out projects ranging from a possible high school conference to new partnerships, and I am hoping to incorporate all projects into Biz’s plan of action going forward.This year, unlike past years, we will be trying something a bit different and using the successful projects structure of the comp within the actual board as well. Jonathan will be leading a series of marketing and social media related initiatives (such as promot-ing the HIR’s web content to schools), Willa will be in charge of all advertisement-related ventures (with a particular focus on selling online advertisements), and Auden will be responsible for im

proving the archive of the HIR on our website. All associates will be assigned to one of these three teams by the first week of December and will begin working on a project that will carry them through the rest of the semester and into J-term.

Comptroller: Akshay Verma

Comptrolling this semester has generally entailed of only the most fun things one could do on the HIR—com-pleting reimbursements for Double Stuf Oreos and Spicy Doritos, rushing to the SOCH to mail out checks before Sheridan hunts me down, invoicing after selling an Ad so we make sure we get our money (we sold an ad!!!), and generally ensuring that we don’t end up going twice over our budget by the end of this year (whoops). But in all seriousness, Comptrolling is a truly rewarding and unique opportunity to manage the finances for a decently large business, learn how to use Quickbooks and other accounting tools, deal with a slew of external partners, such as our publisher and distributor, and more generally assure that the HIR is functioning properly when it comes to our finances.

Ads Head: Willa Wang

As director of advertisements this year, I have been work-ing to expand into online advertising while still generat-ing revenue with advertisements in our print magazine. Currently, we are in the process of soliciting online ads from interested organizations on campus, such as the IOP, and the outlook has been very promising. Cornell has also recently purchased a print advertisement with us, contrib-uting significantly to our magazine’s earnings and solidify-ing our long-term relationship with their university press. The advertisement board this year is also playing a large role in the publication of the 35th Anniversary Book, which we are expecting to be on bookshelves in the Harvard Book Store, HSA, and the COOP by the beginning of next year.

External Relations Head: Auden Laurence

External Relations has spent the semester keeping connect-ed with our partners, particularly at Sheridan. We have ac-tively worked on informing our customers of the change in our publication sequence by working closely with Sheridan. We have also been working to learn how to accurately glean information from our multiple databases so that the informa-tion can be used to update our advertising materials. As the next semester draws near, we have been working to begin our archival project and compile the appropriate materials so that our new website may include a comprehensive archive of the HIR. We have been working closely with the EICs on this project.

Marketing/Social Media Chair: Jonathan Tan

In the month since the leadership transition, a more active social media strategy has increased our number of Facebook likes by 11.2% (from 2,522 to 2,805) and our number of Twitter followers by 7.1% (from 787 to 843). More importantly, our social media public-ity has helped bring over 11,000 visitors to the HIR’s website. Our most popular content, such as Dr. Bloom’s article on Ebola, has been read by thousands of people. This is some of the best online performance we have experienced to date, and we are excited to see this trend continue.

Outside of social media, we continue to pursue ways to expand our readership via partnerships with other media outlets or campus organizations. We are in talks with HPAIR about the possibility of having their staff sell the HIR at their conference. We also plan to contact hundreds of schools early next semester in a marketing campaign to promote our free content. All in all, this has been a great month for marketing and social media, and we hope to have more good news to share after the winter break.Auden Laurence

External Relations has spent the semester keeping connected with our partners, particularly at Sheridan. We have actively worked on informing our customers of the change in our publication sequence by working closely with Sheridan. We have also been working to learn how to accurately glean information from our multiple data-bases so that the information can be used to update our advertising materials. As the next semester draws near, we have been working to begin our archival project and compile the appropriate materials so that our new website may include a comprehensive archive of the HIR. We have been working closely with the EICs on this proj-ect.