The front-page editorial, published May 11, 1971, encouraged readers to “Take Back (People’s) Park” and tear down the fence that the UC Board of Regents had put up around it. The piece divided the Daily Cal’s staff and readers while sparking criticism from then-chancellor Roger Heyns, the UC Board of Regents and then-governor Ronald Reagan.

“This (editorial) was following years of bickering and fighting with administration about what we wrote and how we wrote it,” said then-editor in chief John Emshwiller. “It was the last straw towards independence.”

Emshwiller said the Daily Cal wanted to commemorate the riot that ensued after the fence’s installation in May 1969.

“The question arose of what we should do,” Emshwiller said. “We thought about it with half a mind and our managing editor, James Blodgett, sat down and knocked off this editorial.”

The Senior Editorial Board voted to run the editorial 3-2, with Emshwiller as one of the dissenters.

According to Emshwiller, the board was not expecting the editorial to be as controversial as it would become in the days and weeks following May 11.

“We had gotten used to the notion that people didn’t read the Daily Cal,” Emshwiller said. “But they read this one, and then the day comes and turns into a riot.”

The Daily Californian changes to keep up with media shift

In the 40 years since The Daily Californian first declared its independence, the paper has worked to remain an autonomous and financially stable news source for the Berkeley community, despite falling advertising income and increasing costs.

Developing a strong online presence, utilizing social media and fundraising have become greater priorities for the paper as it works to keep up with a changing media industry.

The paper launched a student life blog in November 2006, and the publication’s online presence has continued to increase. Most recently, the Daily Cal Twitter account reached over 4,000 followers on Sept. 15, 2011.

However, the shifting emphasis from print to online news has challenged the newspaper, mirroring the current obstacles the industry faces.

Toni Martin, the first Editor-in-Chief of the independent Daily Californian, stands with her staff in the Daily Californian newsroom. This photo was taken in 1971, the first year of the Daily Cal's independence. - Toni Martin/Courtesy

The following is a reprint of The Daily Californian’s editorial, published 40 years ago tomorrow, declaring independence from the university after months of conflict surrounding a controversial editorial the paper published about People’s Park.

Tuesday, September 28,1971

The Daily Californian is now an independent newspaper.

We are operating as a non-profit staff-controlled corporation. For funding, we will depend on our advertising and subscription revenue–without any subsidy from student fee money. We have left our campus offices and will operate out of new headquarters at 2490 Channing (corner of Telegraph), third floor.

Our independence means that we are free from control by the Board of Regents or the Chancellor’s handpicked Publishers’ Board.

Independence, of course, places greatly heightened responsibility on our shoulders, since we will no longer be under the protective apron of the University. But it also affords us an exciting opportunity to create a newspaper worthy of the campus.

The post The Daily Californian: 40 years of independence appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Tuesday, September 28,1971

It’s Your Newspaper Now

The Daily Californian is now an independent newspaper.

We are operating as a non-profit staff-controlled corporation. For funding, we will depend on our advertising and subscription revenue–without any subsidy from student fee money. We have left our campus offices and will operate out of new headquarters at 2490 Channing (corner of Telegraph), third floor.

Our independence means that we are free from control by the Board of Regents or the Chancellor’s handpicked Publishers’ Board.

Independence, of course, places greatly heightened responsibility on our shoulders, since we will no longer be under the protective apron of the University. But it also affords us an exciting opportunity to create a newspaper worthy of the campus.

In general, the best campus newspapers in the nation–the Harvard Crimson, Yale Daily News, Wisconsin Daily Cardinal–are those which function independently of the university framework.

We believe that in a community as vital and exciting as Berkeley, it is possible to create such a newspaper.

To do this, however, we will need your help.

We need your ideas to tell us what we can do to serve the campus community better. We need reporters to help us cover the area. We need your talents as columnists and letter writers to make our editorial page a true forum for the ideas of the campus community.

You can help us in other ways too, by encouraging out-of-town friends and parents to subscribe– or by the small act of taking only one paper so that there will be enough for the campus community.

We hope to hear from you. After all, the meaning of independence is that it’s your newspaper now.

The post Reprint: It’s your newspaper now appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The possibility of the students’ voice being silenced was real, and the editor in chief asserted at the time that it “seriously threaten(ed) the future of any student newspaper on this campus.”

In an editorial published 40 years ago tomorrow titled “It’s Your Newspaper Now,” the staff announced its independence and noted that while it would “no longer be under the protective apron of the University,” independence would afford “us an exciting opportunity to create a newspaper worthy of the campus.”

Forty years later, we once again face one of the most significant challenges in our 140-year history. While independence has allowed us to truly pave our own path, it has exposed us over the past several years to shifts in the journalism industry, as newspapers everywhere suffer from plummeting revenue and race to embracing new mediums of communication.

But it also provides UC Berkeley students an exciting opportunity to set a new course and reinvent journalism. Who better to tackle these challenges than a passionate and intelligent student body with a diverse set of abilities, set in a vibrant community bustling with activity?

For students interested in making a difference, we invite you to join us. Our paper rises and falls with our successes and shortcomings. For our readers who seek more engaging content, just as in 1971, “we need your ideas to tell us what we can do to serve the campus community better.”

The Daily Cal is still your newspaper. We wake up each and every morning asking ourselves how we can better serve you. Countless students have worked tirelessly to deliver quality, independent information to you over the last four decades. With your help, we can continue to do so for many decades to come.

Tomer Ovadia is the editor in chief and president.

The post It’s still your newspaper appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Developing a strong online presence, utilizing social media and fundraising have become greater priorities for the paper as it works to keep up with a changing media industry.

The paper launched a student life blog in November 2006, and the publication’s online presence has continued to increase. Most recently, the Daily Cal Twitter account reached over 4,000 followers on Sept. 15, 2011.

However, the shifting emphasis from print to online news has challenged the newspaper, mirroring the current obstacles the industry faces.

Other independent college newspapers are also experiencing ongoing financial difficulties. The Independent Florida Alligator at the University of Florida — which declared its independence in 1973 after the administration disapproved of publishing a listing of abortion clinics in the area, since abortion was illegal at the time — has cut back paid positions and is working to improve its website, according to Editor in Chief Elizabeth Behrman.

“It’s a struggle,” she said. “We’re feeling the pitfalls of the industry just like the other papers and want to able to continue providing for the students.”

Despite challenges, the Daily Cal remains strong, earning 23 first place awards from the California College Media Association from 2007 to 2011.

According to current Editor in Chief Tomer Ovadia, the paper will be “increasingly reliant” on alumni donations and is also considering a student fee referendum for stable revenue.

“This fee would keep us accountable to the people we seek to serve — the students,” he said. “The student fee can act as a cushion to ensure not only the success of the Daily Cal but buttress communication between students.”

In the past, the Daily Cal has sacrificed print publication days in order to mitigate tight finances.

On Aug. 26, 2008, Editor in Chief Bryan Thomas announced that the paper would cut print publication on Wednesdays. During the same period, other local newspapers experienced even more drastic cuts — the East Bay Daily News closed earlier that March, and the Berkeley Daily Planet reduced its publication to one day per week in April 2008.

“The Daily Cal is certainly unique in Berkeley, functioning as an entirely student-produced publication which is financially and editorially independent,” Thomas wrote in his announcement. “But it is not immune to the tides of change.”

On Sept. 17, 1993, Editor in Chief Nick Perlmuter announced that publication would move to a thrice-weekly schedule. The paper did not resume five days of publication until 1995.

“As a business, we must make hard decisions,” Perlmuter wrote. “To be blunt, if the economy suffers, we suffer.”

The Daily Californian senior editorial board’s writings have continued to elicit debate, with some backlash leading to newspaper theft.

On Nov. 5, 1996, nearly 23,000 papers were stolen after the board endorsed Proposition 209. The contentious proposition prohibits California public institutions from considering race, sex or ethnicity in the admissions process.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates stole roughly 1,000 copies of the Nov. 4, 2002 edition endorsing his opponent, then-mayor Shirley Dean.

According to Interim Dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Tom Goldstein, the paper’s independence lends it strength in a “precarious market.”

“Being independent is so important and part of the DNA of the newspaper,” he said. “The independence of the paper gives it its credibility.”

Alisha Azevedo is the lead academics and administration reporter.

The post Paper changes to keep up with media shift appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The front-page editorial, published May 11, 1971, encouraged readers to “Take Back (People’s) Park” and tear down the fence that the UC Board of Regents had put up around it. The piece divided the Daily Cal’s staff and readers while sparking criticism from then-chancellor Roger Heyns, the UC Board of Regents and then-governor Ronald Reagan.

“This (editorial) was following years of bickering and fighting with administration about what we wrote and how we wrote it,” said then-editor in chief John Emshwiller. “It was the last straw towards independence.”

Emshwiller said the Daily Cal wanted to commemorate the riot that ensued after the fence’s installation in May 1969.

“The question arose of what we should do,” Emshwiller said. “We thought about it with half a mind and our managing editor, James Blodgett, sat down and knocked off this editorial.”

The Senior Editorial Board voted to run the editorial 3-2, with Emshwiller as one of the dissenters.

According to Emshwiller, the board was not expecting the editorial to be as controversial as it would become in the days and weeks following May 11.

“We had gotten used to the notion that people didn’t read the Daily Cal,” Emshwiller said. “But they read this one, and then the day comes and turns into a riot.”

In the days preceding the “party at People’s Park,” as the editorial characterized it, the Daily Cal published other articles, editorials and letters to the editor about the community’s reaction to the original editorial. A minority editorial, signed by Emshwiller and then-city editor Trish Hall, apologized to readers about the controversy the original editorial had caused.

Yet, after the May 15 riot resulted in 43 arrests, the Daily Californian Publisher’s Board voted to fire Blodgett, lower staff representative Fran Hawthorne and editorial page editor David Dozier — the three editors who voted in favor of the editorial. Emshwiller and Hall resigned in protest of the firings.

Richard Hafner, the chancellor’s representative on the Daily Californian Publisher’s Board, called the Senior Editorial Board’s decision to run the editorial “insensitive.”

On May 19, 1971, the Daily Californian staff published an editorial in which they refused to accept the firings and moved forth to elect a new editor in chief, Toni Martin, and appoint a new Senior Editorial Board.

After the publisher’s board suspended all future publications, independence  was “the only way to keep the paper running,” said Craig Oren, the first editorial page editor of the independent Daily Cal. “The campus was under pressure from the Board of Regents to wane the influence of student publications, so both sides needed a compromise.”

In an agreement with the campus, the Daily Cal’s new editorial board agreed to move the paper off-campus and become editorially and financially independent.

Martin said that moving off campus gave a different perspective to the paper’s reporting of UC Berkeley.

“When we were in Eshleman, the student president would be constantly be howling at us for what we wrote and what we didn’t,” Martin said. “That didn’t happen after we moved off.”

Yet Martin said that the biggest change to editorial content came not in the words that were published but in the way the paper approached reporting.

“Now we took responsibility for what we saw and what we wrote,” Martin said. “It made us more careful about the truth.”

Amruta Trivedi covers academics and administration.

The post Former editors remember a history marked by controversy appeared first on The Daily Californian.