The Michigan Daily
The Michigan Daily is the daily student newspaper of the University of Michigan. Its first edition was published on September 29, 1890. It was founded to establish a counterweight to the university's fraternity culture. The newspaper is financially and editorially independent of the school's administration and other student groups, but shares a university building with other student publications on 420 Maynard Street, north of the Michigan Union and Huetwell Student Activities Center. In 2007, renovations to the historic building at 420 Maynard were completed. To dedicate the renovated building, a reunion of the staffs of the Michigan Daily, the Michiganensian yearbook, and the Gargoyle humor magazine is scheduled for Oct. 26-28, 2007.
The Michigan Daily is published in broadsheet form five days a week, Monday through Friday, during the Fall and Winter semesters. It is published weekly in tabloid form from May to August. Mondays contain a lengthy SportsMonday Sports section (reminiscent of, and probably derived from, The New York Times). On Thursdays, the paper publishes an arts section called "The B-side." Wednesdays include a magazine, originally titled Weekend Magazine. In the fall of 2005, the magazine was renamed The Statement, -- a reference to former Daily Editor in Chief Tom Hayden's Port Huron Statement. Daily print circulation is currently over 18,000 copies, with over 230,000 unique visitors per month to its website.
In 1952, the Soviet delegate to the United Nations, F.A. Novikov, singled out the newspaper as emblematic of American warmongering. On April 12, 1955, when the success of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was announced at the University of Michigan the Daily was the first newspaper to report it. In 1957, the Daily sent a staff member to Little Rock, Arkansas who, pretending to be a student, attended classes on the first day of integration.
Activist and politician Tom Hayden, a former Daily editor-in-chief who helped found Students for a Democratic Society while editing the Daily, came to personify the publication's editorial philosophy during the 1960s. The paper was the subject of national press coverage when, in 1967, it urged the legalization of marijuana.
In addition to Hayden, other notable alumni of The Michigan Daily include two-time Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey, Pulitzer prize winning playwright Arthur Miller, the New York Times' first public editor Daniel Okrent (famous for being the inventor of Rotisserie League Baseball), Rich Eisen, and investment banker Bruce Wasserstein.
The first woman editor-in-chief of the Daily was Harriett Woods, who later served in Missouri State government, ran for the Senate twice in the 1980s nearly beating John Danforth the first time, and led the National Women's Political Caucus through its Year of the Woman in 1992.
Alumni of the publication include editors and reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Associated Press, Roll Call and Detroit Free Press.
Awards
The cartoon Jaded Joy, which ran from 2004 to 2006, earned its author the Charles M. Schulz Award for College Cartooning.
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