About

The Mercer Cluster began publication as Mercer University's long-running student newspaper in Macon in 1920. The paper is named for school founder Jesse Mercer's hymnal, The Cluster of Spiritual Songs, Divine Hymns, and Sacred Poems. Since its inception the newspaper has covered stories and editorials about campus events, sports, sororities and fraternities, local issues, religious affairs, and club activities. The former staff of the Cluster is a who's who of southern journalists and writers, including Buford Boone who served as editor-in-chief of the Mercer Cluster in the late 1920s. Boone moved to Alabama in 1947, where, as owner and editor of the Tuscaloosa News, he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for his work. In the late 1930s, Jack Tarver began his journalistic career as the Mercer Cluster's sports editor before eventually serving as the publisher for the Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution in the 1960s and 1970s. Best-selling author and Georgia Writers Hall of Fame member Ferrol Sams worked as both a writer and advertising manager for the paper in the early 1940s. Other former Mercer Cluster staff members include author and attorney Robert L. Steed, Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor J. Reginald Murphy, U. S. Attorney General Griffin Bell, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Malcolm Malone Johnson, whose work inspired the film “On the Waterfront”. Known today simply as The Cluster, the newspaper has remained in continual publication since its founding and maintains a bi-weekly circulation of 1,500 copies. Since 2001, The Cluster has been presented in both paper and online formats for the Mercer University community.