The_Yale_Daily_News

<i>Yale Daily News</i>

Yale Daily News

Student newspaper of Yale University

The Yale Daily News is an independent student newspaper published by Yale University students in New Haven, Connecticut since January 28, 1878. It is the oldest college daily newspaper in the United States.

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Description

Financially and editorially independent of Yale University since its founding, the Yale Daily News is published online by a student editorial and business staff five days a week, Monday through Friday, during Yale's academic year. Although the paper historically produced a daily print edition, it transitioned during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to a weekly print schedule and now prints only a Friday paper. Called the YDN (or sometimes the News, the Daily News, or the Daily Yalie), the paper and the website are produced in the Briton Hadden Memorial Building at 202 York Street in New Haven and printed off-site at Valley Publishing Company in Derby, Connecticut.

Each day, reporters, mainly freshmen and sophomores, cover the university, the city of New Haven and sometimes the state of Connecticut. Besides updating its website with new stories five days a week, the YDN sends out daily, weekend and breaking -news newsletters and posts its contents to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. Its robust multimedia platforms include YTV, which produces video news, features and commentary, and numerous podcast series.

The YDN also publishes a daily opinion section, a Friday "Weekend" section and special issues focusing on the experiences of Latinx, Black and Asian students in October, February and April, respectively.

Staff members generally serve as editors on the managing board during their junior year. A single chairman led the editorial and business sides of the News until 1970. Today, the editor-in-chief also serves as president of the Yale Daily News Publishing Company, while the publisher oversees business operations. An editorial board, independent of the newsroom, publishes a monthly column

In addition to the newspaper, the Yale Daily News Publishing Company produces the Yale Daily News Magazine and special newspaper issues for the incoming freshman class, Yale's Class Day and Commencement and The Game against Harvard University.

History

In its inaugural edition on January 28, 1878, the newspaper's first editors wrote: "The innovation which we begin by this morning's issue is justified by the dullness of the times, and the demand for news among us."[1]

In 1920, the News began to report on national news and viewpoints. In 1940 and 1955, when professional dailies were not operating due to unrest among its workers, the News continued to report on national topics.

From 1968 to 1970, the YDN published a cartoon strip called Bull Tales by Garry Trudeau '70, parodying the exploits of Yale quarterback Brian Dowling. The strip which was reborn as Doonesbury and syndicated in newspapers nationwide for decades.[2]

During the student strike of 1970, in response to the US expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, the Yale Daily News announced that it didn't support involvement in the students strikes occurring across the nation.[3] This decision made it the only Ivy League paper to disagree with the protests.[3] In response, fifty pro-strike demonstrators visited the News offices and called the editors 'fascist pigs'. In its editorial, the Yale Daily News warned that "radical rhetoric and sporadic violence, such as marked the weekend demonstrations at Yale, only added fuel to the ‘demagoguery of Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, John Mitchell and the other hyenas of the right.'"[3]

When women first arrive at Yale College in the fall of 1969, the YDN was one of Yale's first meaningfully coed student organizations. Within weeks, the newspaper published bylined articles by five women—Dori Zaleznik, Shelley Fisher (now Fishkin), Martha Wesson, Linda Temoshok (now Lydia Temoshok] and Ruth Falk. That first year, Fisher and Zaleznik were elected to the 1971 Editorial Board and Falk and Temoshok to the 1972 Editorial Board.[4]

The YDN was also among the first student organizations to elect women to leadership roles. Zaleznik was elected Associate Executive Editor in 1970. Amy Oshinsky became the first female publisher in 1975. Anne ("Andy") Perkins was elected the first female editor-in-chief in 1979.[5]

The News survived for a century solely on income generated by subscriptions and ad sales. But by the mid 1970s, its Gothic building on the Yale campus had fallen into disrepair and help was needed to maintain it. In 1978, a group of News alumni including Eric Nestler '76, Jonathan Rose '63, Jim Ottaway '60 and Joseph Leiberman '64 created the Oldest College Daily Foundation to solicit philanthropic support for building repairs and capital expenditures.[6]

The Foundation changed its name to the Yale Daily News Foundation in 2018 and now provides financial support to News staffers who would otherwise need to take paying jobs during the academic year and staffers taking low-paying journalism jobs during the summer. The YDN student staff continues to be responsible for all editorial and business decisions.[7]

The YDN has won numerous awards for its design and editorial content. Its front page design for November 5, 2008, the day after Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 Presidential Election, was featured in the Poynter Institute book: President Obama Election 2008: Collection of Newspaper Front Pages by the Poynter Institute.[8]

In 2009, the Yale Daily News won the Associated Collegiate Press Newspaper Pacemaker Award.[9] On September 10 of that year the News broke the news of the murder of Annie Le, a Yale graduate student reported missing and subsequently found murdered in the basement of her laboratory.[10] On November 21, 2019, the News published an article detailing allegations of impropriety and sexual misconduct against Brendan Faherty, the Yale women's soccer coach, by former players when he was coach of the women's soccer team at the University of New Haven from 2002 to 2009. Yale announced Faherty's departure the same day.[11]

In summer 2010, the 78-year-old Briton Hadden Memorial Building was renovated, increasing the amount of usable space in the basement and adding a multimedia studio in the heart of the newsroom.[12]

The Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University has an extensive Yale Daily News Historical Archive, containing digitized versions of printed issues from 1878 through 1995. Digitization of issues from 1996 through the present is currently underway. The collection is indexed, searchable and available to the public.[13]

Contested claim

The News, founded in 1878, calls itself the "oldest college daily" in the United States, a claim contested by other student newspapers.

The Harvard Crimson calls itself "the oldest continuously published college daily",[14] but it was founded in 1873 as a fortnightly publication called The Magenta and did not appear daily until 1883.[15] (The News ceased publishing briefly during World War I and World War II after editors volunteered for military service.) The Daily Targum at Rutgers University was founded in 1869 but was published initially as a monthly newspaper and did not gain independence from the University until 1980. The Columbia Daily Spectator, founded one year earlier than the YDN in 1877, calls itself the second-oldest college daily, but was not independent until the 1960s. Similarly, the Daily Californian at the University of California, Berkeley, was founded in 1871 but did not achieve independence until 1971. The Cornell Daily Sun, launched in 1880, calls itself the "oldest independent college newspaper", notwithstanding the YDN's independence since its founding two years earlier. The Dartmouth of Dartmouth College, which opened in 1799 as the Dartmouth Gazette, calls itself the oldest college newspaper, though not the oldest daily. Most accurately put, the News is the oldest independent college daily newspaper.

Alumni

The News serves as a training ground for journalists at Yale, and has produced a steady stream of professional reporters who work at newspapers, magazines and websites including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, The Economist , ProPublica and Politico.

Yale Daily News alumni have also pioneered new forms of American journalism. Shortly after graduating from Yale, classmates and rivals Briton Hadden '20 and Henry Luce '20 co-founded Time Inc. and its magazine empire.[16] In 2010, Paul Steiger '64, the longtime managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, co-founded ProPublica Inc., a nonprofit online newsroom that has won six Pulitzer Prizes for investigative journalism.[17]

Politics

Journalism

Other

References

  1. [1]
    Yale Daily News at 125: An Anniversary Retrospective. New Haven, CT: The OCD Foundation. 2003. p. 112.
  2. [2]
    Nopany, Urvi (October 5, 2010). "Doonesbury through the ages". yaledailynews.com.
  3. [3]
    Charlton, Linda (May 5, 1970). "Antiwar Strike Plans in the Colleges Pick Up Student and Faculty Support". New York Times. Retrieved April 10, 2019.
  4. [4]
    "The Yale Daily News Historical Archives".
  5. [5]
    Yale Daily News at 125: An Anniversary Retrospective. New Haven, CT: The OCD Foundation Inc. 2003. pp. 150–152.
  6. [6]
    Yale Daily News at 125: An Anniversary Retrospective. New Haven, CT: The OCD Foundation. 2003. pp. 3–4.
  7. [7]
    Beck, Melinda (May 25, 2019). ""The YDN, Then and Now"". YaleDailyNews.com.
  8. [8]
    New, The (December 16, 2008). President Obama Election 2008: Collection of Newspaper Front Pages by the Poynter Institute (9780740784804): The Poynter Institute: Books. Andrews McMeel. ISBN 978-0740784804.
  9. [9]
    "ACP – Contest Winners". Studentpress.org. Retrieved March 21, 2011.
  10. [10]
    Korn, Harrison; Ross, Colin; et al. (September 10, 2009). "Graduate Student Reported Missing". Yale Daily News.
  11. [11]
    "Women's soccer coach leaves amid allegations". yalealumnimagazine.org. January–February 2020.
  12. [12]
    Peter Vidani. "202 York Street". 202york.yaledailynews.com. Retrieved March 21, 2011.
  13. [13]
    "Yale Daily News Historical Archive".
  14. [14]
    Crimson ABOUT page
  15. [15]
    Colorful Crimson History Began with Off-Color Magenta
  16. [16]
    Wilner, Isiah (2006). The Man Time Forgot: A Tale of Genius, Betrayal and the Creation of Time Magazine. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
  17. [17]
    "Leadership". propublication.org.
  18. [18]
    Yale Daily News (July 10, 2018). "Decades before nomination Brett Kavanaugh wrote about college sports". Yale Daily News. The Yale Daily News Publishing Company. Retrieved July 10, 2018.
  19. [19]
    Story, Louise (August 25, 2005). "Condé Nast Plans Business Magazine and Web Site". The New York Times.
  20. [20]
    "Thayer Hobson, 1897–1967". University of Texas. Archived from the original on September 1, 2006. Retrieved June 24, 2008.
  21. [21]
    Frank, Peter H.; Rosenthal, David (December 7, 1988). "Orioles are sold: $70 million; Jacobs is quiet deal-maker". The Baltimore Sun.
  22. [22]
    "I was rather literary in college – one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the 'Yale News'" – Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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