Student Journalism
at New York
University
1894-1970
By Richard D. Carreño
I
LATE IN AUGUST 1968, The New York Times reported that John F. Hatchett, New York University’s Black student center head, had made remarks construed as antisemitic. The ensuing controversy over the interpretation of Hatchett’s views threw the University into turmoil. Many Black students, some of whom had nominated Hatchett as director of the Martin Luther King Student Center, resented "outside"—and even, it was contended—racially-motivated second-guessing of their choice. The Times, in an editorial, had furthermore suggested that Hatchett should consider resigning, or be removed.
Tempers were already emotionally charged. In Chicago, the Democratic National Convention nominated Hubert H. Humphrey, an apologist for the Vietnam War, over peace candidate Eugene McCarthy as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate. In a Los Angeles hotel kitchen a month earlier, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was murdered. A few months before, Martin Luther King had been killed in Memphis. That spring, at Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus, radical students went on strike, effectively closing the university. Police intervention assured the strike's bloody end.
With the University’s autumn semester soon underway, many students at NYU’s Washington Square campus sensed that a strike of their own was in the wind—largely powered by anger and frustration bred by the Vietnam War. A galvanizing catalyst for protest had become the swirling hostility surrounding John F. Hatchett.
***
The Washington Square Journal had reported the student strike at Columbia. Two reporters had covered, earlier in August, the Democratic National Convention—and subsequent rioting—in Chicago. For now, at NYU, the possible spill-over from the Hatchett Affair had become the story.
In mid-September 1968, as the new semester began, the Washington Square Journal went missing in an official listing of student-run publications at the Greenwich Village campus, in the then-current, new edition of "On the Square," the campus’ activities directory. "On the Square" editors knew, unlike the 17,000 returning undergraduate and graduate students that fall, that the Journal was riven by internal strife over editorial direction and management that might prevent publication for the first time in its thirteen-year history. Out of caution, “On the Square” spiked the Journal entry.
***
THE PAPER’S WOES began in the spring. Co-editors-in-chief Andrew Cagen (later, in the fall, a reporter for The Record in Hackensack, New Jersey) and Richard Prince (later a reporter for The Washington Post), had planned to upgrade the tabloid's twice-weekly publication to three times a week. This latter schedule had been the rule until 1963. Despite some misgivings by the business staff, reporters and editors largely greeted the proposed change with enthusiasm. The Managing Board agreed the increased frequency would revitalize the paper. But Cagen and Prince also argued that the revised schedule would not be financially feasible. For one thing, they said, the paper's printers, All-Set Printers in Chelsea, would not print the Journal within the paper's current, or anticipated fall budget.
Moreover, they added, the paper's editorial freedom could be compromised if the University continued to underwrite the paper's operating budget and staff stipends. Financial independence, a model at other university papers, was recommended. Some editors stressed potential Administration censorship. Others noted a growing rift between the paper’s editorial and business-advertising divisions.
"The business staff was always appointing Phi Eps to new positions on its staff," Prince remembered. "They tended to be—they were—more conservative, and they didn't go along with the paper's semi-New Left editorial policy."
Highlighting the estrangement was the prospective endorsement in the 1968 presidential contest. Editorial had supported Kennedy. Shortly before his assassination, Barry Newman, The Times' NYU correspondent reported the Journal’s endorsement of Kennedy. The business staff—despite its depiction as "conservative"—endorsed former Wisconsin Senator Eugene McCarthy, an anti-Vietnam War candidate viewed to be even to the left of Kennedy. Outraged by the published Kennedy endorsement, the business staff (including future editor-in-chief Madeline Weisberger) wrote to The Times "correcting" Newman's endorsement story.
Their letter to the editor was ignored. Friction between the two staffs heated up. Prince complained that the sports and business staffs operated like "fiefdoms." "The editor-in-chief [was] really only the editor of the news columns," he said. Joining editors Cagen and Prince in their critique were Nancy McKeon, another former editor-in-chief, and the Journal's executive editor, Robert Oppedisano, who had been elected incoming editor-in-chief.
Their solution was expanded publication frequency. The plan was risky, given the paper’s known budget constraints. Still, the editors believed that it would be almost certain that the Administration would fund any forthcoming shortfall. They also knew that their expansion plan would meet with resistance from Business Manager Louis Capozzi, a fiscal watchdog who believed that the paper should publish within budget.
As for potential censorship, that point theoretically was correct. The University, as Journal's publisher, could attempt to influence the paper. This had never been done, and there was no reason, nor, evidence, to believe that the liberal-minded Administration of President James M. Hester would so going forward. In the 1967-1968 school year, the only "intimidation" had been a few letters from Dr. Harold B. Whiteman, Jr., the mild-mannered assistant chancellor for student affairs, requesting that the paper revise its policy of freely printing vulgarities. The letters were dismissed. Moreover, the Journal's faculty advisor, M.L. “Mike” Stein, the journalism department's chairman, had little interaction with daily activities.
Finally, plans for the Journal’s expanded frequency were scrapped. Cagen, Prince, and Oppedisano had an unstated agenda in mind. "So we decided to form a new paper," Prince recalled.
We also hoped to take several reporters and associate board members with us, which we did. We wondered at first what would happen to Journal. But after a while, it didn't really matter what happened because, we felt, we would have the superior paper. We would be aggressive in getting ads, while Journal was lethargic. We had all the experienced editors, while Journal's would be new.
II
NYU’S first undergraduate newspaper, the University Item, was established on December 6, 1894, shortly after the University moved to its Bronx campus. In short order, the paper suffered a series of financial setbacks, which forced its closing a scant three years later. In 1907, uptown students revived the effort with the New Yorker, a weekly magazine. Counterparts at Washington Square also published a weekly, the Washington Square Dealer. The two papers merged in 1922, forming the New York University Daily News, the first student paper to publish on a five-day-per-week schedule. Circulation was at both uptown and downtown campuses. The Depression struck; the Daily News ceased publication in 1933.
Other newspapers soon formed. About the time the Daily News shuttered, students at the downtown campus of Washington Square College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Education, and the School of Commerce were developing newspapers of their own. Emerging were the WSC Bulletin, the Education Sun. and the Commerce Bulletin. In addition, the evening divisions Washington Square College and Commerce operated weekly papers, respectively the Evening News and the Night-Owl Reporter. (These latter papers folded in 1965 when WSC and Commerce student councils defunded them.)
The papers were unassuming—much like, it was said, the students who produced them. Still, counted among student journalists of this era were Henry Anatole Grunwald, a WSC Bulletin staffer and, later, Time magazine's managing editor; and New York’s WNBC-TV's Gabe Pressman, also a former WSC Bulletin editor.
The Commerce Bulletin, like the other downtown tabloids, was conservative in tone and display. Founded in 1931, a typical story for the weekly was: "Frosh Hear Deans Speak Today; 700 Students Attend Convocation.” The paper also covered 1950s big controversy, the Inter-Fraternity Council's support of Phi Epsilon Pi's refusal to induct a Black member.
The paper also produced a special edition commemorating the Journalism Department's 41st anniversary, and, according to a headline, its "Up to Date Ideas and Techniques." (At the time, the journalism department was a faculty within the School of Commerce, not within Washington Square College, as is the case today.)
The weekly Education Sun débuted in 1929. When a chairman of a Washington Square College department was convicted in the 1940s for alleged contempt of Congress, and was subsequently suspended by the University, the Sun covered the story doggedly. It carried comprehensive wrap-ups of national and local education news, and a special feature, "News of the Education World."
Like its sister publication at the School of Commerce, the Sun emphasized sports news. The WSC Bulletin, on the other hand, downplayed sports.
Founded in 1928, the WSC Bulletin appeared twice-weekly. Unlike other “Square” papers, it was funded by the University, not by Washington Square College's student council. Professor John Tebbel, a journalism historian and a former Journalism Department chairman, once took a tongue-in-cheek view of student journalism, as it was practiced in the 1950s. "The Commerce Bulletin was a newspaper which had periodic delusions that it was The Daily News," Tebbel said. He added:
The Washington Square Journal—the old Journal [the WSC Bulletin], that is—was widely regarded as the literary outlet for burgeoning talent until it was discovered that none of the editors knew how to spell any of the four-letter words, in spite of the fact that Professor Gregory Mason, a former Journalism Department chairman who died in the late 1960s] carefully printed them in block letters on the blackboard during the first session of his fiction writing class.… As for the School of Education's Sun, it presents a problem in description for the careful writer. One can only call upon that useful phrase on old-fashioned novels when things got to a climatic and rather sticky point between the hero and heroine, and the novelist ended the chapter, 'Let us draw a veil over what followed.' Nothing followed the Education Sun. Anything at all would have been an anti-climax.
Tebbel continued:
It would be erroneous to think, however, that these papers did not turn out editors and writers of extraordinary talent. Rich and successful today (at least those who are in public relations), they often take their old journalism professors to expense-account luncheons and reminisce about those happy times when the day was lost if they didn't tell one of these same professors what he could do with his advice. They were particularly talented in descriptive writing and speaking.
Some took a dimmer—and more serious—view of campus journalism during the 1950's.
Larry Lipsitz, a student editor in the late 50s, remembered that the two Bulletins and the Sun were less than impressive. In 1958-1959, Lipsitz was editor-in-chief of Square Journal, the successor to the WSC Bulletin. He later became publisher of Education Technology Magazine.
"Wealthy NYU alumni get angry at times when they hear cracks like, 'In the old days even a cigar store Indian could get into NYU,'" Lipsitz said. "One might add," he continued, "if he could pay the tuition." Lipsitz had enrolled in Washington Square College in the fall of 1955. "It isn't pleasant to reflect that one's college career was spent as a member of a mediocre student body. But despite many notable exceptions—thousands, in fact—the generalized truth is that until the 1960's, NYU had an undistinguished set of admission standards by which it judged the majority of undergraduate applicants."
In the early 50's, the dominant paper, in circulation and influence, of the three downtown papers was the WSC Bulletin. The paper was edited in a third-floor newsroom in the South Building on West Fourth Street. (The Loeb Student Center, where student activities are now concentrated, had not yet been built.) The WSC Bulletin was also in the forefront of an Administration-endorsed move to consolidate the Washington Square papers. The first merger attempt came in 1952 when the Bulletin and the Sun joined forces to create the Square Daily. The experiment failed.
Within a few weeks, the editors again divided, and revived their respective papers. By 1954, the WSC Bulletin had undergone a name change to the Square Bulletin, reflecting, one presumes, its larger editorial out-look. A year later, another merger attempt was undertaken. But this time, Square Bulletin editors sought to tie the knot with the Commerce Bulletin. As before, the idea was an all-Square daily, and, as before, Square Bulletin was the dominant partner. The combined paper—known as the NYU Daily Bulletin was redesigned to differ from the old Square Bulletin. An updated, contemporary typeface was adopted, and editors scraped the use of banner headlines to lead stories. "We were tired of shouting,” it was announced.
The new paper, another tabloid, was labeled an "experiment." Editors were uncertain about the impending merger. A 72-point headline in the "last" issue of the Square Bulletin posed the question: "Last Issue of Bulletin??"
Uncertainty was also expressed in an editorial published in Volume 1, Number 1 of the new Daily Bulletin, appearing on April 25, 1955.
"For the second time in the last three years a daily downtown NYU newspaper makes its appearance on school newsstands. DAILY BULLETIN, like its predecessor Square Daily, is an experimental venture. But unlike that short-lived journal, the BULLETIN promises to provide the basis for a permanent downtown daily newspaper."
Students reacted favorably to the new daily Still, editors of the Education Sun refused to join the new all-Square paper.
After eight issues and two weeks of publication (the Daily Bulletin did not appear on Fridays), the fledgling paper folded. Not all hopes were dashed, however. Editors of the again-revived Square Bulletin realized that the success of any new venture would require the cooperation of the Sun. A month later, in May, Laurence Barrett wrote in the Square Bulletin: "Despite the early death of the experimental 'NYU Daily Bulletin, prospects for an all-Square paper in the foreseeable future have improved, in the opinion of most of the editors who participated."
It did. During the summer of 1955 the managing boards of the three downtown papers agreed to joint publication. Efficiency—elimination of competition for writers, funding, and the duplication of news coverage—was the main selling point.
As important, editors were also feeling heat for consolidation from the Administration. Henry Heald, NYU's chancellor, the equivalent of president today, was plugging for an all-Square paper, consistent with his desire for the centralization and consolidation of Square and other University activities. Barrett, later a reporter for the former New York Herald Tribune and, subsequently, a contributing editor to Time, remembered the period as one of in-fighting among the editors for the top spot on the new paper. Still, according to Barrett, the editors knew that "amalgamation seemed the only way to amass the financial and human resources necessary to publish a daily, and big-time college journalism was, by definition daily."
Most of the undergraduates who had devoted enough time to their papers to become executives wanted status for personal reasons, as professional experience or, at very least, as a qualification for graduate school. The bigger the paper, the greater the benefit under any heading. For its part, the University Administration.... was all-University happy. It seemed logical that if one daily [the Heights Daily News] could efficiently serve the arts-men and engineers at the Heights [NYU's Bronx campus], another could do triple service at the Square.
In addition, Barrett said, editors and Vanderbilt Hall (the seat of Administration power) agreed that a professional-looking paper was another aim.
Meantime, editors also saw a chance for independence from funding by Commerce and Education student councils. The Heald Administration also favored the merger because it met another of its administrative objectives, inter-college unity and spirit.
Did everyone favor the consolidation? Clearly no, according to Barrett.
Neither the editors nor the central Administration paid much attention to the grumbling of individual student councils and the more tactful — but no less sour — negative expressions from interested faculty members. To them, a unified paper meant another lost round with the Heald powerhouse.
Further, Barrett added, everyone wondered how "an organizational compromise that would appease the many editors' thirst for power.”
“It came to a head in the late spring and summer of 1955," Barrett noted. "The Administration was pushing hard, and enough student editors could picture themselves as the [supreme] editor that there was a vague agreement in principle on a merger."
Barrett, a WSC junior, was confident that he would become one of the new paper's co-editors-in-chief. But the Square Bulletin's managing board, in an unexpected move, selected Michael Rathet to be its representative on the new managing board. Barrett got what he called an editorial position designed only to soothe his bruised ego. If the pending were to fail, Barrett and Rathet were slated to be the Bulletin’s co-editors-in-chief.
During the summer, student and Administration negotiations got underway. Fifteen student editors and Administration officials discussed details of the paper’s creation at Gould House, a University-owned estate in Ardsley-on-Hudson, New York. Representing the Administration was Vice President Harold Voorhis and Chancellor Heald's personal assistant, James Armsey. "No Cosa Nostra council could have been more arbitrary," Barrett said.
As agreed at Ardsley-on-Hudson, the new paper's seven-member managing board would consist of four editors from Washington Square College, two from Commerce and, to its chagrin, one from Education. The top slot, a troika of co-editors-in-chief, would include two Washington Square editors and one from Commerce.
"The distribution of power being what it was, we got away lucky," Barrett said. "Voorhis, urbane and gently humorous, was determined to come away with a functioning all-Square newspaper. The students won a number of points spelled out in detail in a memorandum of understanding which was to become the Ardsley Agreement."
III
A dozen years later [1970], the Ardsley Agreement still guides Washington Square's downtown paper. Over the years, the Agreement has been equally attacked by students, Administration and editors for being antiquated. Still, the Agreement's importance—establishing editorial freedom and the precedent for managing board salaries, among other things—are still seen as milestones not to be ignored. Equally significant, the Agreement defined the relationship between the paper and the student body:
That individual schools and student councils have no jurisdictional rights in the policy and management of an all-Square paper. All student councils, as representatives of the student bodies of their schools, have the right to discuss and comment upon the policies of the paper at any time, and that their comments will be welcomed and given consideration.
By summer’s end, Barrett emerged as co-editor, along with Rathet, from Washington Square College. Irwin Auerbach, a senior and later a reporter with The Associated Press in New York, was named from Commerce.
As determined at the Gould House meeting, the School of Education's only executive representative would be a single member on the new managing board. According to Barrett, this arrangement was not the slight that it might seem.
Ed's Sun had been a much smaller and weaker paper in terms of staff, pages, and so on. Also, its editor was always a junior, because Ed seniors spent much of their time as student teachers. To have a junior as one of the co-editors seemed unwise. Ed students were not as interested in or active in bringing about the merger. They went along reluctantly. Thus there was no serious consideration to having an Ed co-editor.
The Ardsley Agreement did not create the all-Square paper's name. There was little controversy, anyway, in the selection: Square Journal.
"I recall that we wanted a name different from those of the three separate newspapers," Auerbach said.
Barrett added, "'Square' was a natural because it was the only geography that bound the three schools together. 'Journal' was acceptable because none of the three previous papers had been called that."
The new editors had hoped that the new tabloid would be a daily, along the lines of the experimental Daily Bulletin. But financial and staffing shortages prevented daily publication, and a three-day-weekly publication schedule was instead adopted. The first issue of Square Journal (its name was revised to Washington Square Journal) appeared on September 27, 1955.
The Square Journal that was dropped at distribution points in the main lobbies of the schools of Education and Commerce and of Washington Square College could have been mistaken, in appearance and make-up, for the old Square Bulletin. A news story in the first issue heralded the paper's début. Top stories were: "All-U Self Study Report/Set For Release This Week" and, "NYU Buys Tri-Block Area; Student Union Nears Reality."
As was foreseen by Washington Square College editors, participation by Commerce and Education waned. Their editors became silent partners. The tradition of Washington Square College dominance in campus journalism continued.
"I can only guess that students interested in journalism began gravitating toward WSC," Auerbach said.
"An Ed representative was made executive editor, but he was inactive from the beginning, and was soon asked to resign," Barrett remembered. "In general, [the old] Square Bulletin and WSC dominated the new paper, with WSC students becoming predominant as the year went along."
Instability in staffing and editorial control drifted into Journal's second year. Paulette Singer (who later married Laurence Barrett in the first of several "Journal marriages") and Dan Rustin became co-editors-in-chief in the spring for the 1956-1957 school year. From the start, editors were plagued with staffing problems, including a shrinking source of recruits. Journal's reporters and editors were drawn almost exclusively from Washington Square College. Early in the merger, according Barrett, feuds broke out among staffers.
As Commerce and Education undergraduates trickled away from the paper, the new paper's reoriented its reporting to the interests of the liberal arts students of Washington Square College. As the news hole for Education and Commerce news diminished, a rivalry, even an antagonism, again divided inter-college relations at the Square.
The Singer-Rustin in team introduced the first regular cartoon strip. Called "Arnold," the syndicated strip related the adventures of a doltish college student. As was the case with later attempts with cartoon humor, the venture failed, and was discontinued.
***
In the fall of 1957, Fred Corey and Jane Burman, as new editors, continued to press for all-Square consolidation and coordination, an editorial theme that Journal maintained through the next decade. The editors favored what they called the "integration" of the Washington Square campus, and forecast that the Loeb Student Center, when opened, would act as this catalyst for cohesion. The all-Square spirit also moved Corey and Burman to urge the consolidation of student governments and extracurricular groups. Subsequent editorials hammered this "timely and important" theme
***
Journal editors were still flirting with creation of a daily. The New York City newspaper strike of 1958 presented the student paper with the opportunity, if only temporarily, to produce the first daily Journal in its new reincarnation. Hal Bock, a reporter and later a Journal editor-in-chief, remembered this first.
"I've been through a few newspaper strikes in my time," said Bock, who later joined The AP as a sports writer. "But the strike that sticks most vividly in my mind was the one in 1958 that catapulted Journal from the NYU campus to the pages of Time magazine and on television, as well. I recall vividly the bombshell the newspaper deliverymen dropped on the city when they struck. I also remember the first cautious steps taken by Journal's editors when someone laughingly suggested that ours might be the only paper in town still publishing."
Co-editors-in-chief Larry Lipsitz, Marvin Oppenberg, and Joel Caesar were editing the newspaper in the journalism department's "newsroom" in the South Building.
Journal didn't move to its ninth floor office in the Loeb Student Center until later that year, when the building was completed. The journalism department had by then moved from the School of Commerce to Washington Square College.
The South 3uilding newsroom was equipped with a bank of AP and United Press International teletypes. The wire copy was provided at discount by the news services because of its non-commercial use in course work.
Lipsitz thought of another use for the wires—copy for a daily Journal. Some skeptics argued against move. The wires would refuse permission. Journal's staff wasn't up to the task. In the event, Lipsitz won permission to print the wire copy. But that agreement was far from formal, according to Hillier Krieghbaum, the journalism department's chairman at the time. The services, Krieghbaum remembered, said, "Go ahead, but don't tell anyone, and, above all, don't get caught."
The student editors felt the need to move quickly. The first edition of the daily, featuring local, national, and foreign news, was wrapped up within ten hours.
"In sports, we had to improvise," Bock recalled. "NYU didn't subscribe to AP and UPI sports services, so Journal's sports staffers just re-wrote out-of-town newspapers. Arrangements were made to distribute at Times Square and at some other busy spots in the city. CBS [WCBS-TV] got wind of the project, and shot some news film of us working on the editions. Time included it in its press section. It was, I believe, one of Journal's finest moments."
Later in the year, Journal won an All-American Honor Rating from the Associated Collegiate Press at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism. It was the third consecutive year that Journal — also in its third year — was awarded one of the highest collegiate prizes in journalism. Almost without exception, Journal would receive this honor year after year.
***
Revisions—"making a page over"—after Journal had been "put to bed," or, "locked up," became increasingly frequent as editors, in lieu of a daily, sought timeliness by including late-breaking news. But re-making a page wasn’t always easily done, remembered Allan M. Siegal, a copy editor during the 1959-1960 editorship of Tony Pinto. (Honey-Joan Alpert had resigned as co-editor-chief earlier in the year, and had not been replaced). Siegal, who later became a New York Times copy editor, recalled how Journal staffers relied on pay telephones to update the printer for any necessary revisions. (Office telephones in the Loeb Student Center were switched off at night).
Hal Bock, who had now been promoted to managing editor, remembered a "make-over" in February 1960. At the time, Journal was publishing three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The mid-week Wednesday edition was usually a four-page issue, a filler between the Monday and Thursday eight-pagers. Shop work was rotated among managing board members. It had been Bock’s turn.
"I showed up at school the next day to be greeted by a front page totally different from the one I had OK-ed the night before. When I saw a banner headline, reading 'NIT, NCAA Beckon Cagers' that [Wednesday] morning in 1960, I must admit I didn't know quite to make of it. NYU's basketball team had been enjoying a very successful season, and there was considerable talk about tournament bids. But nothing had been announced."
Bock had gone home the night before after his rotating stint at Journal's printer in Brooklyn. The make-over that Bock encountered was Siegal's doing.
Siegal had been at Washington Square when he heard a radio newscast noting that NIT and NCAA bids had been tendered to the basketball team. Alert to the story’s significance, Siegal telephoned the shop to stop production. The proverbial: “Stop the presses!”
"The printers complied with Al's frantic call, but refused to set any more type without an OK from the shop owner. So, Siegal woke him up, and got him to call the shop," Bock said.
Siegal then enlisted the help of sports editor Jeff Gralnick and some additional staffers. The story and headline were written, the page re-designed, and the result was the new Page 1 that Bock encountered later that Wednesday morning. Not all copies carried the breaking news, however.
"About half our press run had been completed before Siegal's call. So depending on where you picked up Journal, you saw a somewhat blah first page, or the newsiest one of the year. I picked up the newsy one, and I haven't been so shocked since," Bock said.
***
On May 5, 1960, in one of the last issues of the school year, Journal announced its managing board for 1960-1961. For the most part, the line-up included old hands. Hal Bock, managing editor, was the obvious choice as a co-editor-in-chief. A 21-year-old senior, Bock was a journalism major and president of the NYU chapter of Sigma Delta Chi (SDX), the professional journalism society. Named Bock's co-editor was former sports editor Jeff Gralnick. But Gralnick never assumed the post. In August, he unexpectedly resigned, citing a time conflict with a part-time position he held at WCBS-TV.
Many Journal editors had part-time journalism jobs, largely to create a professional stepping-stone after graduation. Few, like Gralnick, however, felt the need to resign. Bock himself was a part-time high school sports writer for the former World-Telegram and the Sun. Al Siegal, a 20-year-old journalism major and newly appointed as executive editor, worked at The Times. Siegal was also SDX vice president and a member of Kappa Tau Alpha, the honorary journalism fraternity.
The co-editorship went to the paper's newly appointed sports editor, Kenneth Brief. (The 21-year-old Brief was a journalism major, a SDX chapter secretary and the campus correspondent for the former New York Herald Tribune. Nine years later, Brief was a Newsday copy editor and a NYU journalism instructor. Bock and Brief wished to make the paper less parochial. Their editorials, from time to time, discussed, non-University-related and events of the day. "We represented as minority view on the managing board," Bock conceded. "But since we were the bosses, we won out."
Bock graduated after the first semester, and Michael B. Wall, 19, another journalism major, joined Brief during the spring term as co-editor. Brief and Wall, SDX’s treasurer, campaigned editorially for a new Washington Square library. Students were dissatisfied with the inadequacies of the Main Building library. (In 1968, the first stones of the Elmer Bobst Library were laid, ending an eight-year editorial campaign.)
***
The world-view that Bock and Brief initiated got an additional boost when 1961-1962 editor-in-chief Jerry Israel (named to the post after Marty Gerber resigned in the first semester) edged Journal into the 1960s, a period of Camelot-like idealism and improved race relations. Some years later, he became a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh. He recalled:
"Although we never understood enough to articulate it, the editors of 1961-1962 faced the fact that what happened in, around. and beyond our little, if cosmopolitan, world might concern us. While we didn't know it at the time, the managing board was a strange lot. Our identity crisis, or 'strangeness,' came from being 'of’ the 1950's, but 'in' the 1960's. We had our share of good stories, to be sure. But the real news was all around us, and we couldn't, or wouldn't see it."
***
When New York's seven metro dailies struck again in the winter of 1962-1963, co-editors Dave Hubler and Anthony Tedeschi, as their peers before them, saw the opportunity for Journal to grasp some glory as ad hoc daily. Unlike the strike in 1958, this new shutdown would not be brief. (It lasted 110 days). And, for two weeks, Journal joined the fray. The strike began on December 11, 1962, and almost immediately strike papers emerged. Filling the void were short-lived efforts like the New York Standard, the Metropolitan Daily, and the New York Daily Report. And Journal.
Tedeschi remembered writing, editing national and foreign news wires, and "peddling papers on street corners." "Turning a college newspaper into a daily, cranking out the earthshaking stories of the day, is not the easiest thing to do. The inevitable result of the added work-load was errors, mistakes, typos and misspellings in stories, headlines and captions. We made them. We cringed. But we had our triumphs too. On December 17, the Herald Tribune called us, and said we could have Art Buchwald's syndicated column. On December 18, we ran it. Through goofs and glories, we plodded for two weeks. Our swan song was the issue of December 20, the traditional holiday issue."
***
Staffing problems continued to plague Journal in its it eighth year, 1963-1964. Washington Square College students still made up the majority of the paper's staff. But editors, at times, even had difficulty recruiting these students. And retaining them. Linda Pivar, the paper’s first female editor-in-chief, left the post early in the school year. Steve Rubin, later a UPI reporter, succeeded her. Because of an inadequate number of staffers, Rubin and the managing board concluded that major changes were required, including eliminating the Wednesday edition. The withdrawal of cigarette advertising from college periodicals, including Journal, during this period, resulting in a loss of significant advertising revenue also contributed to the change in the publication schedule. Thereafter, Journal now appeared on Mondays and Thursdays only.
For the 15th time in nine consecutive years, Journal received an Ail-American Honor Rating from the Associated Collegiate Press. (The award was issued on a semester-by-semester basis). "This rating is awarded to college newspapers that measure up to the very high standards of campus journalism set up by this national rating service," a NYU news bureau publication noted.
***
In the following year, Journal's staff was reinvigorated, bolstered to about thirty. Co-editors Dave Schulz and Robert Berzok realized that the paper's name, Square Journal—the butt of ongoing jokes—had to go. The new name, Washington Square Journal, anchored the paper to its geographic location. Otherwise, "When [campus issues] became polarized, Journal was the last, or, one of the last, to take a pro or con position," Schulz said. "During my editorship, Journal was sort of the middle ground, in the best sense of the word, not in a cop-out sense."
There was no change in the Monday-Thursday publication schedule. Like editors before, Schulz attributed the abbreviated schedule to staffing limitations. But he also blamed inadequate funding, both from advertising and from administration aid. The result, Schulz said, was a more realistic effort to increase pages, not editions. A popular feature of these bigger papers was a column on life in Greenwich Village entitled "Copy Boy," written by Joe Margolis. Journal won awards from the New York Newspaper Guild and from Sigma Delta Chi.
Although it was several months premature, Journal celebrated its 10th anniversary at an annual May banquet. Attending were 150 party-goers, including many former staffers. At the time, Berzok was the paper's sole editor. Schulz had graduated in the fall. (After a stint with The Associated Press, he became The Villager's managing editor).
***
Dorothy Moses, the Herald Tribune's college correspondent, took over in 1965. Moses maintained Journal's focus—in the face of increasingly criticism as the Vietnam War escalated—as a NYU-oriented paper. "We weren't going to make the attempt to compete with The Village Voice, or any of the city newspapers. We certainly never went outside the university. We were concerned with issues as the affected students as students,” she said. Moses became Dave Schulz' wife.
On November 9, 1965, Journal's ninth-floor office in the Loeb Student Center (WNYU occupied another section of the floor) was illuminated by candles. New York City had been hit by the largest power outage in history. The city was blacked out. By flickering candles, Journal was written and edited. On November 11, the black-out story and reaction appeared. The stories were written by Barry Cunningham, a journalism major who moved to the New York Post.
In January, Moses stepped down as editor. Appointed co-editors-in-chief were Jonathan Williams and Joe Margolis. Later in the school year, the School of Commerce's evening paper, Night Owl, ceased publication. Its staff said that they had also hoped to transform the Night Owl to an all-Square publication. (Commerce students several years later created the NYU Ticker, an all-Square weekly.) Attempting to fill the void left by the Night Owl, Journal began publishing a series of business-oriented columns. Soon, these were abandoned.
***
Joe Margolis, the popular columnist and appointed co-editor in the new 1966-67 school year, resigned early in the first semester of 1966. Jonathan Williams, 22, a government major, president of the NYU chapter of SDX, and The New York Times' college correspondent, continued as the sole editor-in-chief. Williams introduced national issues to content.
Williams, later a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, believed non-campus events could be relevant to NYU students. He supplemented staff reports with syndicated copy from the College Press Service and encouraged editorial writers to deal with off-campus issues and endorse candidates and policies that were consistent with the paper's political view. A “guest column” feature was also his idea.
The paper’s first "extra" edition appeared, as well. Journal reporters had learned that a controversial tuition hike was about to be announced.
"Sometime around 3 or 4 a.m. on a cold Tuesday morning in December of 1966, a group of tired, but proud, student journalists got out of a taxi-cab in front of Weinstein Hall. In the trunk of the cab, the staff had brought back from J&W Newsprinters in Williamsburgh four bundles of the first 'extra' edition of the Washington Square Journal," Williams said. In 72-point type, a size that was atypical, the banner headline said, "Tuition Increase Expected." The story itself began: "NYU President James M. Hester is expected to announce today a raise in tuition, fees and dormitory rates for next year, Journal has learned exclusively."
Student demonstrations followed, forming the kind of campus activism that was to become commonplace in the tumultuous latter half of the decade. Williams relinquished the editorship at semester’s end. Nancy McKeon assumed the post during the second semester.
***
McKeon who continued as editor-in-chief during the first semester of the 1967- 1968 academic year. Early in the year, for convenience and efficiency, McKeon changed printers. From Brooklyn, the paper moved to All-set Printers in Chelsea, on the lower West Side. On September 21, 1967, she also introduced Journal's new logo. The Washington Square Journal banner in stylized Gothic type made way for a modernized type with the paper's name in lower case letters. The change was an attempt "to create a brighter look and make the newspaper more attractive to more people at the University," she said.
McKeon also jettisoned honorifics, such as "Mr.," "Dr.," "Prof.," and the like, for faculty and Administration figures. After the professional title was introduced in the first mention, it was henceforth dispensed with. An editorial on September 25 said:
"We try to take an impartial, objective stance in our news columns and we feel at least some slanting, if only psychological, takes place when professors are given appellations and students are not. "No disrespect should be inferred from this decision. Originally, we intended to give everyone appellations as does The New York Times. Then it was decided to conform to the style of almost every other newspaper in the country."
On October 30, McKeon introduced the "Miss Peach" cartoon strip to the editorial page. But this venture, like the previous attempt at cartoon humor, failed to inspire much positive reader response, and it was soon abandoned.
In what seemed to become a precedent established by previous editors, McKeon resigned her editorship in the first semester of the academic year, though she was not scheduled to graduate until the end of the year. Named co-editors were Andrew Cagen (later a reporter at the Bergen Record) and Richard Prince, the paper's first black editor-in-chief.
Cagen and Prince had been long-time staffers, and they, too, were scheduled to graduate in June.
Early in the school year, the paper won first place for Class One in the Empire State District Council contest, sponsored by the American Newspaper Guild. The gold-plated trophy represented one of the highest awards a college newspaper could receive. In early January 1968, as students returned to classes after the Christmas vacation, Cagen and Prince took their places as co-editors.
In that one semester—January through June, 1968—Journal skirted internal rebellion.
IV
A new editor-in-chief Bob Oppedisano and former editors Richard Prince and Andrew Cagen had decided to form a new paper published three times a week, independent of the university, and with the "editorial freedom" they desired. Like Journal, it would be circulated to students free of charge.
In the late spring 1968, shortly before summer vacation, the three editors had resigned. Several reporters followed their example. Journal was gutted of its leadership, and it appeared unlikely that the paper could bridge the summer months to mount an effective new "season" in the the fall.
The former editors had in mind a “radical” newspaper, already titled Cerberus after the mythological Greek guardian of the gates of hell. During the summer, Cerberus' editors raised money and contracted with a printer in Connecticut, where printing costs were less expensive than in New York City. The paper moved into a loft office in a West Fourth Street building, on the east side of Washington Square. (Its editorial office was a floor below the NYU chapter headquarters of Students for a Democratic Society.) Journal languished.
In this void, Madeline Weisberger, an associate board member serving on the paper’s business staff, unilaterally declared herself editor-in-chief. This claim, with no opposition, saved what was left of Journal.
With referrals from the journalism department, Weisberger recruited new editorial and business staffs. Many of the new Journal staffers had little or no previous contact with the newspaper. Weisberger had assembled a nucleus of three editors. Like herself, the editors were journalism majors in Washington Square College. The new team included, as the paper entered the 1968 fall term, John A. Belmonte as managing editor, Roberta Levine as copy editor and Richard D. Carreño as city editor. (Carreño, later a reporter and editor for several New England papers, including The Boston Globe, and Belmonte, later a reporter for the New York Daily News, both followed Weisberger as editor-in-chief.)
Meeting that summer before the fall semester, the editors decided to “dis-enfranchise” the business staff from editorial decision-making. This power grab—ironically, it was among the objectives of the former Oppedisano regime—was met with no opposition.
The new editors also committed to coverage of the year's potentially top student story, the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The threat of violence between young people and police, the hopes of the anti-war movement, and the likely nomination of a pro-war candidate, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, made the Chicago story irresistible. The editors knew their story would scoop Cerberus when both papers appeared in September.
Meantime, the Commission on Student Life was looking unfavorably on the university policy that permitted annual stipends to be paid to some Journal editors. At the time, the editor-in-chief and business manager received $400 per semester. Other managing board members received $325 per semester.
In the fall, Cerberus débuted. Oppedisano described the paper as "the first real attempt at involvement in community concerns at NYU." Weisberger called Cerberus "excellent competition." Cerberus' editors were convinced that competition, in fact, would defeat the reincarnated Journal. They reasoned that Journal would fold when its inexperienced editors learned that they could not recruit an adequate staff. Moreover, they reckoned it would be only a matter of time before the University would withdraw its funding from the paper.
Once that happened, Oppedisano, Prince and Cagen figured the Administration would have no alternative but to allocate Journal's budget to Cerberus. (Journal was funded by the General Student Services Account. For 1969-1970, total funding was $59,010. The 1969 printing budget totaled $50,750. The remainder funded salaries, travel expenses, office equipment, postage, telephone bills, and the like. The University's actual expense was about $32,000 in that the total budget was offset by $27,000 in advertising revenue.).
With no early death of Journal, Cerberus faced financial and editorial trouble of its own. The paper folded in late fall. About the same time, Weisberger resigned. Belmonte succeeded her. Levine became managing editor, and newcomer Ralph Watt was appointed copy editor. Carreño remained city editor.
Early in his term, Belmonte renewed Journal's sporadic campaign to win distribution rights at NYU's Bronx campus. Journal editors had undertaken this effort before, but had backed off when the Administration and the Heights Daily News joined in thwarting the distribution. This time, Journal won. And, for the first time, Journal had established its right—in fact, the right of any NYU periodical—to claim all-University distribution.
The renewed debate over distribution rights awakened smoldering bitter rivalries between the two campuses. At first, actual victory was not assured. Daniel Werner, the News' editor, and other editors (with backing of uptown administrators) confiscated copies of Journal that had been distributed on a test basis. Journal editors protested, and matter—now designated as as free speech issie—was assigned to Dr. Harold B. Whiteman, Jr., the student affairs administrator in charge of publications. Like other Administration figures, Whiteman was reluctant to handle he perceived as a no-win hot potato.
Many University Heights students already believed that they were being short-changed by the Washington Square Administration. New buildings, like the Bobst Library, they noted, seemed always slated for Washington Square. Belmonte refused to retreat. Editors had contacted a lawyer to explore legal action to enjoin the University from prohibiting circulation.
The threat of a possible suit was sufficient to force a retreat by the News' editors. The move to widen Journal's distribution (the press run at the time was 15,000 copies) was one of several efforts that year to break from what editors criticized as the paper's parochial orientation. With the precedent now established at the Bronx campus, Journal quickly set about distributing—and covering news—at the University's other three centers. Journal also created a Heights bureau, staffed by then-freshman Froma Joselow. (Joselow later transferred to Washington Square, and became Journal's city editor).
V
On March 10, 1969, Journal began four-day weekly “daily” publication. This, for the first time in its fourteen history. The daily appeared without fanfare. The announcement was carried in a skyline headline (above the masthead) in the last issue of the "old" Journal. "Starting Monday, This Newspaper Will Be A Daily, Four Editions A Week." The new schedule called for publication Monday through Thursday. Friday was excluded, it was said, because of poor student attendance preceding the weekend. According to editors, the daily's low-key début was important because they could more easily call the "new" newspaper an "experiment" if the venture failed.
The quiet transition was uneventful. The staff reorganized for a new production schedule. (Joining the managing board, staffed by Belmonte, Carreño, and Watt, was second-semester newcomer, Peter Frishauf, as assistant managing editor.) Budgetary adjustments were made. The daily would have to be limited to four pages.
Should the paper's name be changed? Belmonte favored the inclusion of "daily" in the title. Other editors argued against the switch. For the sake of tradition, reader recognition and continuity, the name should not be tampered with. Finally, it was not. Journal's layout as a daily changed significantly, however. The first issue instituted the one-line banner head. (Originally, the headline was set in 96-point type, but was later reduced to 72-point.) The new design reflected Belmonte's affection for tabloid design.
The New York Times reported:
The Washington Square Journal, the undergraduate student newspaper at New York University's downtown campus, has expanded its publication yesterday from twice-weekly to four times a week in a move, according to the tabloid's editors, to make Journal the first newspaper to cover all the university. Journal, NYU's largest student newspaper with a circulation of 15,000, also distributed its four-page newspaper to the university's campus in the Bronx. In previous years Journal has not distributed at the University Heights campus, which is served by The Heights Daily News.
The Heights News has a circulation of 3,700. According to John A. Belmonte, Journal's editor-in-chief, the newspaper intends 'covering the news at the Heights and at Washington Square now so that next year Journal can be the all-university paper.
Other changes were instituted. The paper's culture section was expanded, and Journal's first entertainment editor, Eric King recruited a culture staff that included film critic Leonard Maltin, drama critic Jeff Sweet and music critic Dennis Fine. During the Christmas, 1968, holiday season, Journal had also produced its first supplement, a literary venture titled the Washington Square Journal Review edited by Watt, a transfer student from Nebraska.
The Review published book criticism, poetry, photography and art work that normally would not be assigned space in the daily Journal. Later, the editors experimented with a short-lived travel supplement, the Mercury. In keeping with this serious tone, the traditional April Fool's issue that spring 1969 was abandoned.
The editors had other ideas for change. Like some other campus critics, the editors believed that the Ardsley Agreement could be revised. They contended—as had former Journal editors and, later, as had Cerberus editors Oppedisano, Prince and Cagen—that the paper's financial independence from the University would be an important step forward.
Still, the editors were sensitive to growing criticisms. Frishauf wrote: "It is alarming that so many persons will criticize Journal who have no idea how a newspaper is run, how much work is involved in putting it out, or its vital contribution to campus life.... The time has come for people to stop using the Washington Square Journal as a scapegoat."
***
Journal continued daily publication when classes began in late September 1969. The previous semester, Carreño had been elected editor-in-chief for the coming 1969-1970 academic year. Early in the fall semester, he resigned, and resumed a managing board post as executive editor. Carreño had been The New York Times' correspondent, and was currently the correspondent for The New York Daily News.
Frishauf, who had become The Times' correspondent, was named chief editor. Among his first acts, Frishauf increased the paper's print run by 5,000 copies to a total circulation of 20,000. Journal had become one of the largest daily specialty newspapers in New York City. Growing advertising revenue also permitted an increase in daily pages, from four to eight. About this same time, Carreño also compiled Journal's first stylebook. For the most part, Journal style conformed to that of The Associated Press.
New editorial and production changes were instituted. Each individual departmental editor, news, culture, sports and the like, was responsible for making up the section’s daily page. Four news editors individually rotated at the print shop. Frishauf said he was determined "to give the various campuses the best newspaper possible." Despite this commitment, Journal attracted harsh criticism. Several student government bodies, including the Commission on Student Life, attacked the paper's news judgment, charging that coverage was biased and incomplete.
The editors' stipends also rankled many student government leaders. Some critics—prominent among them was Professor Sidney Hook, who took his quarrel to executive editor Carreño from time to time—believed Journal was too "radical," especially in its opposition to the Vietnam War. Others—prominently, the radicals themselves—thought Journal too "conservative." On one occasion, a radical group confiscated copies.
The radicals threatened to invade Journal's office if the paper did not present their case more "favorably." To the bemused chagrin of editors who understood a good news story, the office invasion never took place. Meantime, President James M. Hester, displeased with Journal's 1968 coverage of the strike that followed the dismissal of John F. Hatchett, ordered a study of Journal's "fairness."
That report concluded that Journal was the only campus publication that did not slant the news. The study said that paper had struck a fair balance between Administration and student views during the strike and in its aftermath. Editors criticized the Administration for what they claimed was "indirect" censorship. From time to time, Administration figures would be "gagged," prohibited from speaking to Journal reporters. Also, editors consistently attacked policies that prevented coverage of the University Senate and faculty meetings.
For its part, the Administration, through spokesman Whiteman, declared any censorship would be "absolutely wrong." But Whiteman added that a case for Administration influence in Journal's operation could be made because the University was the paper's legal publisher. Following Whiteman’s statement and continuing hostility in student quarters, editors were even more convinced that financial independence was imperative.
Further, the managing board had decided that rather than eliminating stipends, as some student leaders had suggested, the stipends should be actually increased. Alternatively, the editors proposed that reporters be salaried, as was the case at several other major student dailies. Advertising rates were increased. The editors concluded that Journal's financial "freedom" could be achieved by the academic year 1970-1971.
The editors were not completely unresponsive to the charges leveled against them. In early 1970, the 72-point banner headline format was abandoned. Instead, as in previous years, headline sizes varied, depending on the importance of a given story. Page 1 was also redesigned to include a daily news summary. The editors conceded that the former layout was not not popular, and tended to lend credence—however, unfounded—to charges of sensationalism.
The editors also conceded that there was too little analysis. Former editor Bob Oppedisano, late of Cerberus, argued the "new" Journal covered "events," rather than "issues." "Now this not to suggest that Journal become a SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] or Administration leaflet," Oppedisano said. “This is only to say that along with sometimes very professional reportage of events, Journal could get behind, under and through the 'why' of things."
Professor John Tebbel, the journalism historian, interpreted the by-play among the Administration, student government, and Journal as part of the natural order of things. Said Tebbel: "Universities need a journalistic voice, even though administration and students fret about campus papers in much the same way people carp about their home-town dailies or weeklies. Often they use the same words and phrases.”
Text: 1970
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