The Daily Universe celebrates 50 years

For more than 50 years, The Daily Universe has been a source of information to the BYU community. But one of the principal differences between today’s paper and the edi-tions in the past are the ways the paper covered news.

When The Daily Universe began, it was largely an event-driven news-paper. The majority of stories talked about campus events — guest speak-ers, upcoming dances, weekend sports and other campus activities that stu-dents and faculty would be interested in.

“The paper in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s was very event driven,” said Ed Adams, chair of the Department of Communications. “You would see announcements for almost everything happening on campus — clubs, per-formances, visits and sports — be-cause campus life was their life.”

Adams said that because sports were a large part of campus life, the paper would print the time and place the team was to leave. The students would then gather at the spot and have a pep rally to send them off. “Student life centered on campus,” Adams said.

Because the paper covered only school news and very little else, rarely would students be able to read about current events outside the boundaries of campus. Though the paper did not cover national or world events, students would be able to read short, front-page bulletins on events important enough to attract national attention such as politics and war.

In the Sept. 22, 1955 edition, an announcement read: “The reason for the inclusion of the bulletin service is to keep students aware of the world situation as well as local happenings.”

The Associated Press and other national newspaper organizations provided these stories, but several years later student reporters became more actively involved in reporting events outside BYU life.

Today, campus activities don’t dominate the paper because the focus is on journalism instead of student life, Adams said.
Copyright Brigham Young University 9 Nov 2005