"THE DAILY COLLEGIAN: is one of the nation's oldest college daily newspapers. A precursor, the Free Lance, published monthly beginning in 1887, was succeeded in 1904 by the State Collegian, a weekly, and the semi-weekly Penn State Collegian in 1920. The Daily Collegian appeared in 1940. An independent student voice, the newspaper had its offices in various locations, including many years in Carnegie Building."
Since I couldn't get together any blueprints like I promised last week (I am not an architecture major), instead this post will be devoted to a much better piece of paper: the Daily Collegian, that student-run daily newspaper you all know and love. Or at least I think you do...Come to think of it, I've never actually seen anyone take one of those newspapers. But that's not important. What is important is how the newspaper has changed through the years. As this sign states, it all began with the Free Lance in 1887.
The Free Lance got off to a pretty rocky start. Its first issue lamented the fact that few Penn State students were much interested in the idea of a student-run newspaper before its creation. Unfortunately for the fledgling newspaper, few Penn State students were much interested in the idea of a student-run newspaper after its creation either. During its seventeen-year run, the Free Lance ran on a mix of news articles, literary articles from the literary societies that had formed it (these articles were originally to be kept at a minimum so that ordinary readers wouldn't get bored), and short contributions of poems, jokes, and short stories from around campus by readers. By 1904 its creators were begging their readers to send in money instead of articles to keep the newspaper running. They could not raise enough money, so the paper shut down.
The staff of the Free Lance weren't quite ready to give up yet, though. That very same year, some of the people who had previously worked on the Free Lance created a new newspaper, the State Collegian. The Free Lance attributed its failure to its schedule of releasing monthly and thus being unable to keep up with new information, as well as its focus on literature which became overbearing in its later years; the State Collegian released weekly and made reporting on more practical issues its goal, since Penn State was after all more of a technical school at the time.
This plan worked splendidly. A better sense of focus along with increasing interest in journalism led the press to success. By 1920 the State Collegian (with a slight name change to Penn State Collegian in 1911) was able to double its publication to twice a week; in 1940 it became the Daily Collegian, which as its name implies was to release once a day.
Naturally, World War II came along in 1941 and came close to ruining yet another hopeful Penn State project. Publication of the "Daily" Collegian was reduced to one or two issues per week at best, just as it had been before. Yet student interest kept the paper alive through the war, and despite the lack of resources resulting from the war effort the paper did not totally die. After the war, the Daily Collegian was able to return to its daily update schedule, and went on to win awards for its news, advertising, and editorial content in 1948 and 1949.
As technology progressed, so did the Collegian. The first online version of the paper, the Digital Collegian, went up in 1996, containing all new editions as well as some previous ones. This still runs alongside the print edition, which might explain why I don't see many people picking up the physical copies. The online Collegian has proven to be a wise move, since technological advances have led people toward the Internet as a news source rather than newspapers. In a time when the newspaper format is often struggling, the Daily Collegian seems to be alive and well despite setbacks, and hopefully it will continue to provide lots of quality news articles about important college issues, as well as sports, for a long time.
Since you've read all the way to the bottom of this post, it's fairly evident that you have at least some interest in the history of the Penn State newspapers. And, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you're probably also interested in the history of Penn State in general. Good news! You can learn more about both! The University Libraries have kindly archived hundreds of past issues of every single one of these newspapers and digitized them so they can be viewed online right over here! This has been an invaluable resource in writing this blog, and I hope that it is of use to its readers as well.
I pass these signs almost every day, but never actually pay attention to their content. It's amazing how much history that they hold. I really enjoyed your post and was pleasantly surprised by how well it read, even though it was a continuous stream of text.
ReplyDeleteMy first job ever was a paper boy, and this brought back some memories. I won't say every, but most good things find complications down their roads, and by the sounds of it this fits the Daily Collegian well. I'll try to remember to pick up a print copy next time so they don't feel like they've been left in the dust! Keep it up!
ReplyDeleteI really love this blog idea, especially since we can all relate to the places you are talking about! Your style of writing is fun to read, while still being informative. I also get a kick out your title, it is so clever!
ReplyDeleteLike John said, I am usually fairly oblivious to the content of these signs. While I'm neither a history buff nor a printed media fan, I enjoyed reading your blog that somehow combined the two in a way that was very appealing and easy to read. Very informative, but also engaging and easy to read. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteAnother good post! Your use of humor is very good at making the topic interesting. This post, though, seemed a little rushed. This is completely understandable, as you had a lot of history to cover in a short blog post, but maybe you can in future posts not feel like you don't have to cover all the history and can go into more detail on specifics.
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