Line by line, column by column, The Daily Reveille has recorded the history of the University and the experiences of its students, faculty and staff for the past 110 years.
This old friend of the University observed its 110th anniversary Jan. 14, the publication date of the newspaper’s first issue.
Over the years The Daily Reveille has acted as the voice of the students and a portal of information affecting the University and residents of the Baton Rouge area.
The Daily Reveille published issues weekly until the 1920s when the staff decided to push the newspaper’s publication to semi-weekly. Ten years later, issues of the newspaper rolled off the press five days a week, Monday through Friday.
The newspaper continued its daily publication until the Korean War, which began in 1950. It cut back to four days each week for the next 50 years.
The Daily Reveille returned to daily coverage again in 2002 under editor-in-chief Kristen Meyer Sunde, who is now the public relations manager for the Center for Computation and Technology.
The Daily Reveille has resided in several buildings over its 110-year history. Ron Garay, mass communication professor who is writing a historical account of the Manship School, said the newspaper staff shared Thomas Boyd Hall with the Journalism School during the 1940s. He said the staff also occupied Tiger Stadium for a short period as well as Coates Hall. The newspaper moved to its current location in the basement of Hodges Hall during the mid-1980s.
For 63 years the staff used its own typesetting equipment and presses to produce the newspaper on campus. The staff switched to a commercial printer in northern Baton Rouge in 1999. The newspaper currently relies on a printing plant in Hattiesburg, Miss., where the 14,000 editions of the newspaper are produced and delivered to the University five days a week.
Garay said The Daily Reveille acted as an alumni magazine and asked residents of the Baton Rouge area to subscribe to the newspaper in the 1800s. He said it had difficulty getting people to pay their subscription fees.
“The Reveille was always running a piece that was asking subscribers to pay up,” he said.
Garay said the newspaper sold advertising space to other universities and other institutional entities. He said the newspaper changed to more business-oriented advertisements in the early 1900s.
In 1982, The Daily Reveille’s first adviser, Jay Perkins, got involved with the newspaper.
“When I first came, everybody wondered what was going to happen because they never had an adviser before,” said Perkins, mass communication professor.
Perkins said a train derailed in Livingston Parish during the second semester he served as the newspaper’s adviser. He encouraged the staff to venture off campus to cover the story.
“The Reveille covered nothing but campus news and a lot of fraternities and sororities,” he said. “They really got into the fact that they could cover anything, not just stories on campus.”
Jay Shelledy, director of Student Media, said The Daily Reveille has served the campus well for many years.
“It seems to have a little more passion, commitment, freedom and concern for journalistic values,” he said.
Over the years The Daily Reveille covered subjects ranging from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to athletic department scandals to student disability access and Student Government’s role on campus.
“[Sept. 11, 2001,] was the big thing that really marked our fall semester,” said Nancy Malone, 2001 and 2002 editor-in-chief who is the upcoming Assistant City Editor at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington. “It created some issues on campus. We ended up creating a public forum to address concerns.”
Robert Pierre, the newspaper’s first black editor-in-chief, said The Daily Reveille covered several stories about the legislature and pollution of the Mississippi River with Perkins as the newspaper’s adviser.
According to a 1971 graduate student thesis written by Elmer Tompkins, The Daily Reveille has a history of conflict with other student organizations on campus like Student Government and the Interfraternity Council.
“Significantly, in the spring of 1972, a former executive assistant to two SGA presidents, Sam Breen, was named fall 1972 Reveille editor,” Tompkins wrote. “Breen had been critical of The Reveille’s past performance. He had no journalism experience or training, save a single course in media law.”
Several former editors, including Sunde, have carried their memories about working at The Daily Reveille to their professional careers after graduating.
“The Reveille in a lot of ways is my college experience,” said Sunde, who met her husband while working at the newspaper.
Meyer said at least 80 percent of her job at the CCT depends on her ability to write well and stick to deadlines.
“My adviser used to always tell us that credibility is the hardest thing to earn and the easiest thing to lose,” she said.
One hundred and ten years later, a newspaper staff of more than 80 students continues the tradition of The Daily Reveille in the basement of Hodges Hall, covering stories both on and off campus.
—–Contact Angelle Barbazon at [email protected]