In 1930, Edwin Forrest Harding—namesake of the Harding Project, which I’ve had the privilege of leading over the past sixteen months—penned the foreword to a renewed Mailing List. As an instructor at the Infantry School, he introduced a modernized publication, “different in form and content from that of previous years.” But he hadn’t made these changes lightly. First, he’d done his homework, finding “not over ten per cent of the subscribers to the old mailing list ever read it.” Understanding his audience as those in the Army who were “willing to devote occasional odd half hours to the study of their profession,” Harding shifted the Mailing List to a “convenient volume, the greater part of which [subscribers] will want to read.” Fundamentally, Harding knew that military journals existed to disseminate and stimulate military thought.

Harding also knew his experiment remained “capable of much improvement.” To take stock of progress, he called for “adverse as well as favorable comment” to continue to strengthen the Mailing List. The response showed a positive reception. The introduction to the second volume describes letters approving “the form and content of the new type Mailing List,” while the introduction to the third volume describes letters as “gratifyingly favorable” and accompanied with a “steady gain in the number of subscribers.”

Now, more than a year into the Harding Project, we again lean on Harding’s example as we take stock of our progress so far—and chart a path for the next year.

Taking Stock

Before the Harding Project, the Army’s journals were in a similar place to the Mailing List ahead of Harding’s intervention. They published less content, less often, and more erratically than in decades prior. Engagement was also low, with few readers, weak social media engagement, and no citations. While sites like the Modern War Institute and War on the Rocks showed how web-first, mobile-friendly platforms with rolling publication could succeed, the Army’s branch journals were rarely printing and largely hadn’t modernized their presence or processes.

With a clear picture of these challenges, the Harding Project aimed to renew the Army’s journals as Harding had with the Mailing List and the Infantry Journal. Here’s how we’ve progressed toward the four goals set out when we launched.

Steward the Army’s journals with improved staffing. Army University Press at the Combined Arms Center now stewards our system of journals. At least three times each month, Army University Press, the Harding Project team, and the Harding Fellows at branch centers of excellence meet virtually to refine the Line of Departure and discuss how to strengthen the Army’s journals. Eleven journals have dedicated military and civilian editors to ensure high quality. And the newly established Harding Fellowship will send the first cohort of five editors to earn a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication at the University of Kansas this summer. They’ll report their branch centers of excellence to start editing their journals in 2026 as the next cohort starts school.

Still to do:

  • Update the tables of distribution and allowance to create permanent billets for military and civilian journal staff at each center of excellence.
  • Recruit the next cohort of Harding Fellows for the 2026 academic year.

Establish a modern platform. The Line of Departure—a web-first, mobile-friendly platform for all of the Army’s branch journals—launched in October (Thanks to our beta-testers!). This site built on the republishing of DA Pamphlet, 25-40, which set modern procedures for professional bulletins. The Line of Departure now has hundreds of unique users a day, more than many journals had in a month in 2022 and 2023.

Still to do:

  • Increase the Line of Departure’s weekly readership to five thousand users.
  • Promote the Line of Departure more effectively through targeted outreach and social media campaigns.

Improve archive accessibility. We’ve had the most trouble with this one. The good news is that back issues of the Army’s journals largely are digitized and that our partners at the Defense Technical Information Center are assigning digital object identifiers to new articles and starting a special, searchable collection for them. The not-as-good news is that we’ve had less luck charting a way to consolidate, split, tag, and index the approximately 150,000 articles published over decades so we can mine their insights.

Still to do:

  • Explore automated systems for splitting, tagging, and indexing historical articles.
  • Consider partnering with archive.org to host Army documents in a searchable format.

Refine military education. Our work on this line to date has focused on welcoming noncommissioned officers into professional writing. The NCO Leadership Center of Excellence has instituted a citation requirement that will gently reintroduce our sergeants to the Line of Departure at each level of their professional military education. The Sergeants Major Academy also launched the Ultima Scholars. Similar to programs at the Army War College and Command and General Staff College, the Ultima Scholars program invests in those with the aptitude and inclination to research and write. We’ve also heard great reports of Line of Departure integration into the Command and General Staff College’s small groups and other educational courses.

Still to do:

  • Standardize the implementation of the citation requirement across all noncommissioned officer academies.

Way Ahead

I’m proud of the community that has come together around the Harding Project. To answer questions about how to get started, we sent fifteen thousand physical copies of our special issue of Military Review so that every single Army unit at the battalion level and above received it. We’ve also grown the community of interest. In a typical month, more than thirty thousand people view the Substack that goes out to a mailing list of more than five thousand subscribers.

The Harding Project has significantly accomplished its goals over the last year. We’ve also said goodbye to Sgt. 1st Class Leyton Summerlin and welcomed new team members like Sgt. 1st Class Marcel Blood, the project’s deputy director, and Capt. Sarah Chamberlin, our Substack editor.

Building on the progress made so far and with new team members onboard, in this new year, the Harding Project will focus on consolidating gains in targeted areas. The first is Line of Departure. This flagship initiative makes the Army’s branch journals accessible on your phone or computer. The Line of Departure team aims to clear the article backlog and start publishing about an article a day by March. We’re also working to make sure that content comes to you. The Line of Departure recently launched its social media presence (follow on X, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn!) The team will also launch an app later this spring with push notifications. And I encourage you to look for the winners of the Line of Departure promotion competition later this month. Insights from participants in that competition will help drive promotion of the content published by all of the journals on the platform this year.

The second area of emphasis is outreach. Sgt. 1st Class Blood will travel to posts across the Army to raise awareness of the Line of Departure, standardize implementation of the citation requirement, and lead writing workshops. Send him a note if you’re a division-level unit interested in hosting a one- or two-day workshop.

Third is force structure. Consolidating gains means locking in the positions for military and civilian editors. We’ll work with our partners at the Combined Arms Center, at Training and Doctrine Command, and on the Army Staff to complete this.

Fourth is the Harding Fellowship. As the Army’s newest broadening opportunity, we’ll work with our partners at Army University Press to ensure a world-class developmental experience for our new fellows.

Finally, the project will work to improve the archives. This remains important to me personally as I’ve learned so much from the Army’s archives and benefited from reading Harding’s words in the Mailing List and the Infantry Journal.

That’s a lot. We appreciate your support on this journey and look forward to consolidating gains in this next year. But what else should we think about? As Harding requested feedback on his Mailing List changes, we want yours. Share your thoughts on social media or send in your ideas as a potential post for the Harding Project Substack to submissions@hardingproject.com.

Zachary Griffiths is an Army officer. He directs the Harding Project to renew professional military writing.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Sgt. Alyssa Blom, US Army Reserve