The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Tuesday, September 29, 2015 — 9A One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Anniversary transformational digital opportu- nities and stay financially viable? I would love to listen in on the conversations you all have about this and know how you balance Daily values worth preserving with the need to train success- ful leaders and assure a relevant future for the newsroom. CALFAS: The issue of simul- taneously adapting to a changing media landscape while maintain- ing the strong traditions and val- ues is one of the most important conversations happening every day in our newsroom. What’s difficult is striking a balance between honoring our past and thinking critically about our future. The most memorable changes in the Daily’s history are now movements that we honor — so why can’t we make some changes ourselves and join the innovators of the past? Some- thing I’ve tried to promote during my time as editor is the willing- ness to try something new. As a college newspaper, we must take advantage of our unique lens we bring to campus and Ann Arbor news as students, and we have a responsibility to explore new and innovative ways to produce and promote our content. If someone has a new idea, why not try it out? If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and that’s the worst thing that could happen. Whenever the topic of moving away from print comes up, we often look to the scores of bound volumes star- ing back at us in our newsroom. The tradition and legacy of the paper is something that carries us to where we are now, but the progress and innovation that came before us remind us that we too can leave a mark within our own newsroom. What does the value of the Daily’s print publi- cation mean for you — and, per- haps, what’s the significance of its social media presence and new website design? LIPINSKI: I’m unsentimen- tal about the print Daily. A few years ago, the bound volume I had received commemorat- ing my year as co-editor was destroyed in a house flood. I was sad at first, then calmly resigned when I conceded that I rarely looked at it and that my fierce attachment was to the idea of the Daily, the amazing people I learned from and the collective we built there. (…) But my real education on Maynard Street was so much more profound. I remember as a young reporter watching the senior editors (all of a year or two older than me) investigate an accusation of pla- giarism, a charge that ended in their painful decision to dismiss a gifted student peer. I won’t forget the seriousness of their deliberations, and years later I leaned into my memory of their ethical stewardship when as an editor I was put in judgment of a colleague similarly charged. You can’t lose that in a flood and as a student-run teaching hospital for journalists, I think the Daily is extraordinary. (…) My own bias is to be more bold, though I think a lot of college papers are surpris- ingly conservative about change. You’re right to ask, “Why not try it out?” and be grateful for the paper’s legacy but not a slave to it. May I change the subject? Here I am, a woman who was Daily co-editor, talking with the Daily’s presiding woman editor in chief. That’s already two more top women editors than most major news institutions have had, and you and I are but two of many women leaders in the Daily’s history. We recently published a lengthy story in Nieman Reports on female leadership in journal- ism and found the numbers dis- mal. I love that our college paper defies that. Although I certainly encountered my first instances of newsroom sexism at the Daily, I’m proud of the amazing history women have made there. What do you think accounts for that given the overall industry profile? CALFAS: When I was the managing news editor as a sopho- more, I faced a host of difficulties, as I felt I had to prove my worth because I was both young for the position and a woman. Certainly, the majority of my staff did not consider these two characteris- tics as weaknesses, but a few did. Growing from the subtle sexism I faced in that post, I thought of how important it would be to have another female editor in chief — since it hadn’t been done for five years at that point. I can’t count how many times male sources of mine have called me “sweetie” or “honey” during an interview, or encountered someone who was shocked to hear that I, indeed, was the editor in chief of the Daily. At a certain point, I would think that it’s not the newsrooms that are inhibiting the growth and empowerment of female lead- ers, but rather the world around us. That’s a tricky issue to solve, and affects women in all career fields outside of journalism. How do you think women can empow- er themselves to take on these challenges? LIPINSKI: In 2004, while I was editor of the Chicago Tribune, seven of the nation’s 25 largest papers were run by women. A decade later, that number was three. Moreover, most of the country’s largest news organizations have never had a woman at the helm, mak- ing the Daily, even with the challenges you and others have regrettably faced, progressive by comparison. What I find more worrisome is that media manag- ers of your generation are recre- ating the same gender and racial imbalances atop the new digital start-ups. I would have hoped for better. Given the opportunity to reinvent everything about legacy news organizations, the old man- agement rules persist. I agree with you that there are broader forces at play, but the problem is so pernicious in journalism since you’re not likely to repre- sent the community you cover if your newsroom is of a type. There’s content analysis suggest- ing an editor’s gender can have meaningful influence on what gets covered and who covers it, something I know we have both experienced. I wish we had talked more pur- posefully about this when I was at the Daily. You’ve prompted me to think back on some election assignments one year that had every significant candidate going to a male reporter, while more experienced women were rele- gated to down-ticket races. I was angry, but kept my head down and covered my stories, com- miserating only with friends. So my first advice is transparency in talking about this. Diversity discussions were less common in newsrooms then, but should be daily occurrences now on behalf of improving our cover- age and expanding our audience, a path that should naturally lead to more diverse leadership, if only as a business imperative. Women and men need to rede- fine success, which in news- rooms historically favored beats more common to men — politics, business, foreign news — while undervaluing others. The path to leadership needs to be wider and account for the fact that the bruising demands of so-called “hard news” can be incompatible with family life during stretches of a woman’s career. We, all of us, need to stop self-replicating — favoring and promoting those who remind us of ourselves, a long game that has never favored any minority journalist. And we need to find and create role models at the earliest points in women’s careers. I feel fortunate that early in my Daily career we had an extraordinary co-editor in Cheryl Pilate, someone who took an interest in my work and modeled for all of us what strong leadership looked like. You have one semester left to your editorship, Jen, and the time will go so quickly. When others are recalling the Daily under your leadership, just as I’m recalling Cheryl, what do you hope they remember? CALFAS: When I think back to when I joined, I can’t help but remember how much I’ve changed and progressed as a journalist and as a person. With such little time left, there’s so much left I hope to accomplish — but so much of it is within the ideology of the newsroom as a whole. With a new web- site developed under my term, I hope this inspires future Daily editors and staffers to think creatively about how our con- tent can be presented, with a digital-first goal in mind. But, more than anything, I hope I’ve served as an example or inspiration for aspiring col- lege journalists to pursue their passions and think beyond just themselves and their individu- al accomplishments. Over any other goal, I’ve always viewed the Daily as a place where a bunch of young journalists come together and produce an informative, quality product for our audience. Working with collaborative rather than indi- vidual goals in mind is some- thing I hope I instill in this staff and future ones as well. College journalists — including myself — can often get caught up in their own aspirations, internships and positions on the paper rather than the col- lective goal of the publication. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but something that may inhibit the teamwork within our organization. For all the work and passion I’ve put into this place, I hope others continue to sacrifice for the sake of strong, balanced and award-winning journalism. For you, Ann Marie, your impact as an editor left a contin- uous mark on every staffer who has entered the newsroom since your term. What did you imagine your legacy would be while you were the editor, and what advice do you have for us at the Daily now as we move forward in this publication and beyond? LIPINSKI: You’re kind to say so, but I got so much more from the Daily than I could ever give. We’ve stood on the shoulders of generations of editors who cared deeply about the institution and did their best to leave it in bet- ter shape than they found it. But there’s no denying that the Daily’s greatest contribution has been as a classroom. I made a lot of mistakes there and learned from them. The Daily’s culture of criticism could be harsh, as you know, and perhaps less forgiv- ing than in a journalism school classroom since we were acutely aware that our efforts were made public. It was both thrilling and humbling to think of the history that was edited in that news- room — coverage of Franklin Roosevelt’s funeral, the Freedom Riders, the Alger Hiss trial, news of the polio vaccine. The Daily made possible a deeper engage- ment with the campus and the larger world, and provided the place and the people who would challenge us to do our best work. We were the lucky ones who got to do more than read the his- tory being made around us, and that made the paper an unusual campus classroom. When Henry Butzel and Harry Jewell founded the paper they called the U. of M. Daily, they had no capital, no publisher and virtually no adver- tising, but they did have the com- mitment to more fully represent the University community than did the fraternity groups pub- lishing the two existing journals. “We built better than we knew,” they wrote of their creation some 50 years later. It’s not for me to tell future classes of journal- ists what building better might look like, but I hope the paper remains a classroom, a safe place for our successors to make the mistakes and discoveries that will define them. Happy anniversary, Jen. Take care of our Daily. the 2012 Iowa Caucuses. Like Huthwaite, Goldsmith wanted to make the political figures she was covering relatable to University students. Not only that, Goldsmith also said covering a story of that size while still a student provided an incredibly unique experience. “I felt like we got a real experi- ence as journalists in determin- ing what was worth putting in the paper,” she said. “That was definitely one of the highlights not just of my experience at The Michigan Daily, but at Michi- gan.” Andrew Schulman was a gov- ernment beat reporter when he was tapped to cover Barack Obama’s election night watch party in 2012. The party was in Chicago at McCormick Place, a large convention center along Lake Michigan. Schulman said he could feel the excitement in the room as election results were reported. At the same time, Schulman remembers, he had no idea what he was going to write before the event started, which was over- whelming. Still, Schulman said the experience helped him moving forward when he became a pro- fessional writer. He’s now a free- lance reporter. “It helped me, I guess, in the future kind of find a little bit more focus,” he said. “It was something that I think I learned a lot from.” Even for Biron, who is now working in public relations, get- ting to cover a speech delivered by Obama in Detroit and cover government for the Daily helped her realize her interest in pub- lic policy and shaped her career goals after school, she said. “I think I started as an Eng- lish and Comm double major. Then I joined the gov beat and fell in love with it,” she said. “If I hadn’t, you know, done so many of those things on gov beat, I wouldn’t have been exposed to it — I wouldn’t have realized I’m passionate about it.” which detailed these shifts and suggested new initiatives like adding a position in charge of developing more special issues (with a revenue-generating focus in mind) and putting together a team to post more news content during the day. Kraus, now an English pro- fessor at the University of Scranton, voted against the free-drop proposal. He said it was probably the wrong vote in hindsight. But at the time, he felt compelled to vote in oppo- sition to take a symbolic stand against what he felt the change represented. But Chase says that kind of traditionalist mindset is impor- tant, too. “It’s that conscience that makes the thing keep surviv- ing no matter what happens to the market,” he said. “There are smart people who will figure out what to do and how to take this very rare thing and make sure it survives.” Josh White, a current editor at The Washington Post, edited the paper in 1997 — a time when Daily staffers first started to see the website as something more than another platform to plop the day’s print content. In Dec. 1997, the Michigan men’s basketball team had beaten Duke with a game-win- ning dunk three seconds before the buzzer, and, in that same day, Charles Woodson won the Heisman Trophy. Class had concluded for the semes- ter, and print production had wrapped up, too. The Daily’s website — then fairly primitive — hosted original, breaking news coverage for perhaps the first time. “A really good story about something really important can touch millions of people, can get a conversation going globally, and there’s a lot of power in that. I think once peo- ple started to recognize that, the game changed,” White said. “We looked at The Michigan Daily as a way to try things, and to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes,” he said. “We cared intensely about it, we tried to do it very carefully and ethically, but it was a lab, it was a place where you could make a mistake and learn from it and recover from it and build from it.” So often, buzzwords like “tradition” and “innovation” are brushed in opposition. But maybe the Daily’s history tells us that’s simply not true. “The Daily has done a spec- tacular job of changing in the way that it needs to change,” Kraus said. “And that is precisely its tradition.” LIPINSKI From Page 3 SCENE From Page 3 INNOVATION From Page 3 “We’ve stood on the shoulders of generations of editors who cared deeply about the institution and did their best to leave it in better shape than they found it.” “My own bias is to be more bold, though I think a lot of college papers are surprisngly conservative about change.” Student reporters compete with the professionals By EMILIE PLESSET Daily News Editor When a group of University students published the first issue of The Michigan Daily in Sep- tember 1890, it was one of seven newspapers servicing the city of Ann Arbor. As the Daily enters its 125th year, it now stands as the city’s only daily print paper. Throughout its long history, the Daily has not only covered Ann Arbor and University news, but also generated national attention with its reporting. When The Ann Arbor News ended its 174-year daily print run in July 2009, the Daily became the only paper in the city printing five days a week. The Ann Arbor News is now run by the digital media platform MLive. MLive reporter Jeremy Allen, who predominantly covers the University, said there is some competition over who publishes a story first, but MLive and the Daily serve readers differently. The Ann Arbor News is charged primarily with serving the people of Ann Arbor, whereas the Daily largely caters to the University community. “We kind of work together to provide coverage across the entire spectrum of anyone who has an interest in the University of Mich- igan,” Allen said. University alum Gary Graca, who served as the Daily’s editor in chief when The Ann Arbor News announced the end of its daily print production, said though the Daily had always covered issues influencing the Ann Arbor com- munity, the announcement incit- ed the Daily’s staff to expand its coverage of the city. “It’s a stretch to say the issues of the campus and the city are not intertwined, and the Daily clearly has a strong edge and clearly has the ability to cover high-level city issues,” Graca said. “That was kind of the thinking. How can we do the city council issues, how can we do the interaction between the city and campus better, and the city ordinance issues that affect student lives better?” Throughout its long history as the University’s most prominent student publication, the Daily has found itself repeatedly making national headlines and, at times, breaking stories before its profes- sional counterparts. In April 1955, Daily reporter Hanley McGurwin packed into a Rackham Building auditorium to hear Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. — the University’s head epide- miologist at the time and leader of the field trial testing the polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk — describe the vaccine as “safe, effective and potent.” The news, which the Daily reported first, was celebrated across the country, as parents finally had a scientifically-proven means of protecting their children from polio, a major cause of death for children in the first half of the 20th century. The Daily achieved national prominence again in September 1957, when it sent a staff report- er to Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas to pose as a student and cover the school’s integration. James Elsman Jr., then the Daily’s editorial direc- tor, wrote an eyewitness-account of the Little Rock Nine’s first day of class, reporting that only a little more than half the school’s stu- dents attended class that day. The Daily has also garnered national attention as other news- papers have looked to the Daily for its noteworthy journalism. In 1967, The Washington Post published an article about the Daily after the student-run paper printed an editorial calling for the legalization of marijuana. The Post, quoting the article by Har- vey Wasserman, then-University student, noted that the editorial described marijuana as having no worse effects than alcohol. More recently, The New York Times published a lengthy article about the Daily and its coverage of a University scandal involving a member of the foot- ball team. As the Times noted, the Daily was the first to report that Brendan Gibbons, former football starting kicker, had per- manently “separated” from the University for violating the Stu- dent Sexual Misconduct Policy five years prior. The Times wrote that while the news of the scandal was shocking for the Ann Arbor community, the origin of the news was almost as shocking. “The story was not broken by the local, professional news orga- nization, The Ann Arbor News,” the Times wrote. “Instead, it was uncovered by The Michigan Daily, the university’s indepen- dently-run student newspaper.” Daily draws national attention for coverage ALLISON FARRAND/Daily In July 2014, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” sent correspondent Jordan Klepper to the Daily’s newroom to film a segment in which the newspaper was satirically mocked for not practicing clickbait journalism. THE DAILY ON THE DAILY SHOW