The Oklahoma Daily
| University of Oklahoma | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Type | College newspaper |
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner(s) | OU Student Media |
| Founded | 1917 |
| Circulation | 8,000 |
| ISSN | 0030-171X |
| Website | oudaily |
The Oklahoma Daily is the independent, student-produced newspaper at the University of Oklahoma, with a circulation of 8,000. Though it maintains a connection with OU's Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, the newspaper is not a part of required learning for journalism students at OU. Some classes, however, are offered at The Daily for academic credit.
The Daily is operated by OU Student Media, a division of Student Affairs, which also houses Sooner yearbook, Sower magazine, the OU Visitor Guide and an advertising office. At the paper, students are hired year round on both a paid and volunteer basis. The editor in chief is the only person to serve an entire school year in the same position, and the editorial board changes every semester. The newspaper runs an average of 8 to 12 pages per edition depending on the amount of advertisements sold.
Because The Daily no longer owns an on-campus printer, editions are printed at The Norman Transcript.
In 1897, five years after the University of Oklahoma opened its doors, the first student-run newspaper, The Umpire, made its debut. In 1903, it became a semi-weekly news publication called the University Oklahoman. By 1916, the paper had taken on the name that it still carries today, The Oklahoma Daily.
In the fall of 1921, the circulation for The Daily was 700, plus 200 mail subscribers. And by 1926, circulation had reached 6,000. Also that year, The Daily became a member of the Associated Press — the only college paper at that time with full voting and membership rights.
A poll in December 1946 showed that 72 percent of the student body read The Daily. In May 1956, a libel suit was filed against editor George Gravely and faculty supervisor Louise B. Moore. The suit was dismissed as groundless, but it marked the first time The Daily had been sued for libel.
The Daily moved into Copeland Hall — its current location — in the fall of 1958 (although the building didn’t get that name for three more years). The paper was printed using hot metal, or lead type, set on Linotypes for body type, and a Ludlow for headlines. The shop also had an Elrod machine for lead spacing and a 600-pound gas fired cauldron for remelting the lead and water cooled molds for pouring lead pigs for recycle. The lead had to be remelted from the "Hell box" about once a week.
The flatbed E model bidirectional web fed press which used the type directly was replaced about a decade later by a Goss Suburban web fed offset press of six units, two stacked (total of 4) and two additional inline. The page makeup was still hot metal as before. But each page was now pulled on a hand operated proof press. The photo areas were masked out with black paper and this was photographed on a large Litho camera to produce a tabloid size page negative for each page. The photos were processed separately and pasted into the "windows" produced by the black rectangles on the proof pages. These page negatives were then burned in pairs onto hand sensitized aluminum plates with an arc exposure unit and hand developed and mounted on the offset press units. A typical press run for the 14,000 or so copies printed was 40 minutes. For many years it continued in this hybrid mode using a backshop staffed by trained journalism students working as paid student labor under the direction of a professional backshop supervisor and offset pressmen. As a tabloid the six units could print 48 tabloid pages which was almost more than its quarter folder could handle. Typically this press ran 12 to 32 tabloid pages daily, 16 pages or 24 pages being favored sizes, a much more comfortable size for the folder. It could register and print full page process color with high quality and did on occasion, using the two stacked units. The backshop and offset press occupied a large area on the north side of the first floor of Copeland Hall.
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