The Enduring Legacy of Student Journalism: A History of the Yale Daily News
Yale's culture of student journalism is one of the oldest and most long-standing in North America. Like Elihu Yale himself, Yale College was born amidst an historical "news boom" during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. For more than 130 years, the Yale Daily News has been the primary source of news and debate at Yale. Since its founding in 1878, YDN has been a financially and editorially independent student-run newspaper, serving the Yale and New Haven communities. The Yale Daily News is a student newspaper published by students at Yale University, an Ivy League university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States since 1878. Many of the paper’s student editors, writers, and contributors have gone on to prominent careers in journalism and public life. Yale Daily News alumni have also pioneered new forms of American journalism.
The Genesis of a College Daily: Founding and Early Years
The Yale Daily News, founded on January 28, 1878, is the oldest college daily newspaper published in the United States. After the Civil War … on almost every campus a publication was established which modeled its form, content, and purpose on regular daily newspapers. The Yale Daily News, first to be founded, is still in operation. The News calls itself the "oldest college daily" in the United States, a claim contested by numerous college student newspapers.
Independence and Editorial Stance
Financially and editorially independent of Yale University since its founding, the Yale Daily News is published online by a student editorial and business staff Monday through Friday, in addition to a Friday print edition, during Yale's academic year. A single chairman led the editorial and business sides of the News until 1970. In 1920, the News began to report on national news and viewpoints. Each day, reporters, mainly freshmen and sophomores, cover the university, the city of New Haven and sometimes the state of Connecticut. Staff members generally serve as editors on the managing board during their junior year. Expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, the Yale Daily News announced that it did not support involvement in the student strikes occurring across the nation, making it the only Ivy League college newspaper to disagree with the protests. In response, fifty pro-strike demonstrators visited the News offices and called the editors 'fascist pigs'.
Embracing Coeducation: Women at the News
When women first arrived at Yale College in the fall of 1969, the News 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. The News was also among the first student organizations to elect women to leadership roles at Yale. Zaleznik was elected Associate Executive Editor in 1970. Amy Oshinsky became the first female publisher in 1975.
Financial Sustainability and Support
The News survived for a century solely on income generated by subscriptions and ad sales. In 2018, the Foundation changed its name to the Yale Daily News Foundation 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.
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Reporting on Campus Issues: The Faherty Case
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.
The Yale Daily News Historical Archive
The Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University has an extensive Yale Daily News Historical Archive, containing digitized versions of printed issues. The library also tells a physical history of news, because Newspaper and Periodical Rooms have been a part of Yale as far back as its first purpose-built library structure. This exhibition investigates different facets of news history through the use of newspapers available in Yale’s Library system. Moreover, Yale's Library system has an abundant collection of historic newspapers from all time periods: spread over its many collections are examples spanning more than four centuries and five distinct types of media. There are now approximately 23,929 issues of YDN available in digital format-including occasional special issues and supplements-that users can search, view, and download in PDF format. The full text of these issues is indexed and searchable through the web interface. The historical archive is open to the world and includes over 140 years of YDN reporting. Issues were scanned from print volumes held by the Yale Library and, for more recent issues, collected in PDF format from the Yale Daily News. In some cases, issues were missing from Yale’s collection. In 2021, an anonymous Yale College alumnus made a significant gift to the Yale University Library in support of the Yale Daily News Historical Archive project. Digitization of issues from 2021 through the present is currently underway.
Digitization Project and Platform Migration
The library developed the digitization project in partnership with the Yale Daily News Foundation. In 2021, a generous gift from an anonymous donor-a Yale College graduate and former reporter for YDN-supported the work of expanding the archive. The collection is now current through March 19, 2021. This recent phase of work required digitizing the older print issues in the library’s collection. Due to the scale of the project, Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, Massachusetts, converted the 1,778 print issues. The same donor’s gift also enabled the library to migrate the archive from CONTENTdm, its previous digital platform, to Veridian. This new platform makes it easier for users to search, browse, and navigate the database.
Notable Alumni
Yale Daily News alumni Briton Hadden and Henry Luce co-founded Time.
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