April 24, 2008
‘The Daily’ earns national honors
While many newspapers are worrying about the future, the UW’s student paper, The Daily, remains healthy and independent, and has two big recent awards to prove it.
The Daily, published regularly since 1891, has been named the best overall four-year college newspaper by both the Northwest region of the Society of Professional Journalists and a national group of college media advisers who recently met in New York.
Kristin Millis, director of the Office of Student Publications and adviser to The Daily, discussed the paper and its accomplishments in a recent interview. It seems quickly clear that she’s a good match for her job. “I can’t express how much I love newspapers,” she said, “how much I love journalism.”
Millis knows newspapers from many years of work in the industry. “I’ve done every possible job that could be related to a newspaper,” she said. “I’ve delivered newspapers, I’ve flown papers off the press [a printer’s term for grabbing papers off a quickly moving press], I’ve inserted the B section into the A section. I’ve done layout and reporting. I started at a weekly and sold advertising — you name it.”
She likens her job overseeing The Daily to that of a mother — in a good way — saying “It exhausts you, but you still believe in it.” And as a mother of five, she would know.
Millis believes most of all in the “incredibly talented” students who put out The Daily every school day, and she’s quick to credit their integrity and curiosity for the recent awards.
The Daily is self-supporting through its advertising, all of which is sold by students. Ad revenue runs about $900,000 a year, and circulation varies between about 14,000 and 18,000.
The paper involves the talents of between 150 and 180 students a quarter, Millis said, with the newsroom staff at between 80 and 100, including writers who may only contribute a column a month. There are also six nonstudent positions, including hers.
Student journalists helped her pick a single paper to submit to the College Media Advisers’ Spring Conference, in New York, out of about 20 that were nominated. The Apple Award, as it’s called, was based, Millis said, on “the best overall newspaper, from beginning to end” — including layout and design as well as content.
Three papers from assigned dates were submitted to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Region 10, which covers Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. Millis said the award has often been won by The Daily Emerald, the newspaper of the University of Oregon, “so for us to take it, that was nice.”
Millis also had high praise for The Daily’s Web site, created by student David Estes. “Eighty to 90 percent of all college newspapers’ Web sites are managed by College Publishers, which is owned by MTV.” She said over the last Christmas break, Estes, who is 19, took it upon himself to create a complete content management system for the student newspaper, giving The Daily a measure of independence.
The Daily currently sells ads to run online as well as in the paper, a revenue-generating necessity if the publication is to survive in the long term. The revenue is starting slow, but growing. “I believe college newspapers need to find a way to make money online,” she said.
Millis acknowledges that journalism is experiencing troubled times. “We’re at a terrible time. People don’t trust the media, and the media have been irresponsible,” hyper-focused on scandal and nonsense.
But she also believes firmly that “we’re at a whole new frontier,” not unlike the late 19th century, she said, “when all these small-town newspapers popped up — a wonderful day for democracy.”
In addition to the two recent awards, she said, the advertising staff of The Daily earned two awards over spring break at an advertising conference in San Antonio, Texas — for the third-best back-to-school edition and second-best online advertisement nationally. “We just received our latest ‘report card’ from Alloy Media & Marketing, to see where our national standing is.” When she came to the UW in 2005 the newspaper’s rank was 39; by last year it had risen to 13.
But don’t look for Millis to take much credit for these honors; it’s the students who make it all happen, she said.
“The strength of the staff we have now is more than just talent. They are earnest, they work hard and they check their egos at the door — they have a true desire to serve this campus,” she said.
