C E L E B R AT I N G 9 0 Y E A R S O F C O V E R A G E WEEKEND EDITION / VOLUME 90 / ISSUE 23
Student publication celebrates 90 years of news, tradition BY MICHAEL CANTU
T
Staff Writer
he Daily Toreador has been the voice of the student population at Texas Tech for 90 years, and it is student run and organized. The newspaper started out as Toreador for Texas Technical College, but was changed in 1966 to The University Daily, according to the Special Collections Library website. The name of the paper was later changed to The Daily Toreador in 2005. Throughout the 90 years there were many editors who fought to keep the paper independent and student run, Kippra Hopper, book writer and former editor-in-chief for The University Daily, said. The only faculty intervention The DT has is from advisers who critique the articles after they run in print or on the website. Because of this independence, readers can trust the information they are getting, Heidi Toth, senior editor for the Office of Marketing and Communications and The DT editorin-chief in 2005, said. “The benefit of an independent news source is you can trust that the news isn’t coming to you with a slant,” Toth said. “If the administration has a heavy hand over the newspaper, then as a reader I don’t know if this is the actual story or if this is what the person in charge wants me think about this story.” There were also times where those working for the paper had to fight hard and long battles to keep the paper independent, she said. Many times they would have to resort to finding alumni who would support the paper or stand up to administration and make it known they would
not let them run the paper, she said. “It’s important to the growth and to the campus,” Joey Kirk, former editor of The DT, said, “to have that watchdog and keep a finger on administration and what’s going on.” Through the paper’s long history as a student-run news source, The Daily Toreador, no matter what name it had at the time, has been seen by many in the community and around the country as a legitimate news source, Kirk said. Many times the young reporters are thought of as kids playing around, and many times people have been shown that is not the case. Early 80s Kippra Hopper, the editor-in-chief of The University Daily in 1983, was writing for a far more conservative Lubbock at the time, she said. This was during the Cold War, so tensions between the Soviet Union and the U.S. were very high and worth writing about. The newspaper staff would even make regular trips to the Pantex plant in Amarillo, one of the last assembly points for U.S. nuclear weapons, to get an inside scoop of what nuclear arms looked like and how it could affect West Texas. “I always say that Lubbock is about 20 years behind the times, so it was like we were living in the 60s,” Hopper said. “As far as the staff went we, were all kind of hippies, and I’m not ashamed of that.” Considered to be ahead of its time, Hopper said the staff would write about LGBT rights, the legalization of marijuana and taking a more serious glance at Title IX issues. With an allmale sports staff, it was a fight to get women’s sports covered fairly and put equality into a brighter light.
There were sports writers who quit because of Hopper’s insistence on covering women’s sports equally, she said. Once they left, she was able to hire the first woman in the sports section for the paper. “The athletic department did (take notice),” she said. “They were very appreciative of it, the women’s athletic department.” There were mixed reactions from those within and outside of the campus who read the paper, she said, and this helped the paper keep its edge.
The benefit of an independent news source is you can trust that the news isn’t coming to you with a slant. Heidi Toth 2005 DT Editor-in-chief “If you want the opposite of conservative, we were the liberal staff,” she said. “(I) caught hell for that from some of my journalism teachers, but we really believed in what we were covering — doing the right thing for the country.” The legitimacy of the paper was reaching new heights during this time, she said, by winning multiple awards, including a William Randolph Hearst award for an investigative reporting piece on then president Lauro Cavazos. Hopper’s piece investigated Cavazos’ daughter, who was suspected of getting into medical school with grades lower than what was required of other students. Cavazos was then given a vote of no confidence, in which the faculty
senate deemed him unfit for his position, she said. Even though the award was a major payoff, the experience gave Hopper a realization into targeting individuals just for the sake of a story, she said. Hopper was also fighting for equal opportunity among the physically handicapped students who worked with her, she said. It was through the work of Hopper and her fellow students that the school was forced to install an elevator in the journalism building, she said. “My heart was in that newspaper, I loved it,” she said. “That’s where my dedication was, and my commitment was.” News of the 90s Amy Cook, editor-in-chief in 1998 and current managing director of the Office of Research Services, started her time at Tech as a biology major, but realized she was in the wrong field. After submitting a piece to The University Daily in a small contest, Cook said she was asked to be a part of the paper as a news reporter, and being involved with the paper was a defining moment in her college career. Cook was writing for the newspaper in 1994 when Tech introduced the chancellor system that is still in place now, and John Montford was hired as the first chancellor. “The Oklahoma City bombing, I remember, happened when I was there,” Cook said. “And a group of people piled in a car and drove to Oklahoma City.” The 1995 downtown bombing of a federal building was a close enough attack that The University Daily staff felt it was worth the time and effort to bring something back to the university, she said. Because this was the primary news source for all
of the students of the Tech campus, the obligation to present students with information was the fuel that drove the engine, she said. Besides breaking news stories, football was the primary thing causing people to pick up a copy of the paper, she said. At the time, the amount of campus diversity was still minimal, she said, which has changed drastically in the last 20 years. “There was not as much diversity as there should’ve been, but of course you can only hire the people that come and apply for the job,” Cook said. “We had some diversity, and it was always good to see more come in.” During her time, the newspaper also started to gain a bit of an online presence, and budding technologies began to decrease some of the stresses of the job, she said. However, when it came time to cover elections it was still difficult trying to get stories in while each reporter was at the election headquarters of different candidates, and it usually resulted in a paper being printed later than usual. “The goal of this group is to find the person and the people to make it into what it should be,” she said. “I feel it should be an up-to-date news source for the students.” Reacting to Terrorism Brandon Formby said he joined The University Daily and La Ventana team in 1999 after wanting to pursue a career in journalism since high school. Formby wrote mostly as a columnist for The University Daily, he said. Taking the reigns as editor-in-chief in 2001, he said the biggest experience of his Tech career was covering the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
SEE 90 YEARS, PG. 2