Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
Today, we announce that The Daily Gazette will merge with The Phoenix. The resulting publication will continue as The Phoenix, and the staff and web databases will merge. In some ways, this decision has been coming since The Phoenix started publishing online, back in the early 2000’s. In making this decision, we consulted Gazette editors from up to 13 years ago, and it seems that the question of merging has been posed nearly every year since 2005, if not earlier. It’s clear from looking at the past generations of editorial boards, as well as our current one, that the model of having an online daily newspaper at Swarthmore is not sustainable. The model made sense in 1996, when the Internet was still relatively new, and social media platforms and cell phones weren’t around or common place. Now, however, breaking news on campus travels fast through Facebook, and the daily aspect of the DG is less important. We hope that with the group of students interested in journalism more consolidated, we will be able to provide more support and training for students, thereby increasing the overall quality of campus journalism.
We have been in touch with Information Technology Services (ITS), the Swarthmore College Computer Society (SCCS), and the McCabe and Friends Historical Libraries’, about a plan for website integration and archiving. We plan to ensure that all active DG links will still work and will resolve to swarthmorephoenix.com, and that a static, archived copy of the current Gazette will exist in the College archives. The current website will not go down until the merging and archiving is complete.
We are incredibly proud of this paper and of our staff, past and present. In 2008, The Gazette was rated as one of the top 5 online college news sites by the Associated Collegiate Press (ACP). In 2010 we were granted “collegiate journalism’s preeminent award” by ACP, and the following year we were a finalist for the same award.
In recent years we’ve worked hard to host events that promote and educate about journalism. Last year, we brought New Yorker foreign correspondent Ben Taub to campus to talk to students about breaking into professional journalism. In the fall of of this year, we brought author and freelance journalist Adam Valen Levinson to discuss his new book and the topic of stories that aren’t reported. This semester, at an invitation from The Gazette, former long-term New York Times editor David Corcoran drove down from Boston through a nor’easter and spoke to over 60 students about science journalism and his career at the Times.
We’re proud, too, of the depth and breadth of writing we published this year. The Gazette, to most of us, has been a wonderful forum for quirky student interests, providing a space for students to explore their curiosity and share their resultant thoughts with the rest of the community. We hope this spirit, the spirit of ‘features’ writing, as we label it, will continue in next year’s Phoenix, perhaps through their “Campus Journal” section. For a taste of this year’s depth and breadth, and for the types of features published in The Gazette, read this round-up of the last year.
A year or two ago, members of the upper editorial board reached out to old editors and asked for their favorite articles in DG history. What follows below is a curated version of that list, though note it doesn’t include the last two years of publication.
- The “Brought to Light” Series on Survivors by Max Nesterak [2013]
- “My Journey into the World of Sugardaddies, Sugarbabies, and Dating in the Age of Uber” by Natalie Flores [2016]
- “The End of Free Alcohol and the Legacy of Spring 2013” by Matt Chaffinch [2016]
- A Really Good Interview with Eugene Lang by Dougal Sutherland [2008]
- “Does Swarthmore Bait and Switch Financial Aid?” by Isabel Knight [2015]
- A Phenomenal Series on Swarthmore History by Will Treece [2009]
- A Queer History of Swarthmore [2007] and A History of Queer Chalkings on Campus [2006], both by Lauren Stokes
- A Review of a David Foster Wallace Biography, by Izzy Kornblatt [2012]
- “Football Players Forgive, But Don’t Forget”, by Andrew Karas [2012]
- “Student Protestors Take Over Open Board Meeting…” by Andrew Karas [2013]
Here’s a thank you to DG staff and the Editorial Board, past and present, for your time and love and labor. Thank you, too, to the Swarthmore community and anyone who has read or supported this publication. We appreciate you.
The Editorial Board of The Daily Gazette, Spring 2018