The Daily Californian

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The Daily Californian
One of the boxes through which The Daily Californian is distributed on campus
Type	Student newspaper
Format	Broadsheet

Owner	Independent Berkeley Students Publishing Company, Inc.
Founded	1871
Headquarters	Eshleman Hall UC Berkeley Berkeley, CA United States

Website: dailycal.org

The Daily Californian (or Daily Cal) is an independent, student-run newspaper that serves the University of California, Berkeley campus and its surrounding community. It is published Monday through Friday during the academic year, and twice a week during the summer. Established in 1871, The Daily Californian is one of the oldest newspapers on the West Coast, and one of the oldest college newspapers in the United States. Current circulation is about 10000.[1]

The Daily Californian became independent from UC Berkeley in 1971 after the campus administration fired three senior editors over an editorial that encouraged readers to "take back" People's Park. Both sides came to an agreement, and The Daily Californian gained financial and editorial independence from the university and is now published by an independent corporation called the Independent Berkeley Students Publishing Company, Inc. The paper licenses its name from the Regents of the University of California.

In the fall of 1971, The Daily Californian moved to a second floor office on the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Channing Way in Berkeley. The Daily Californian moved to two other offices, one on Shattuck Square and on Dwight Way. These moves, while necessary for the financial success of the newspaper, began to erode the student foundation that ran the newspaper. The newspaper currently resides in the 6th floor of Eshleman Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.

On November 24, 1982, three days after the November 20th Big Game (now known for The Play), early morning readers of the Daily Cal were chagrined to find in the headline of the front page: "NCAA Awards Big Game to Stanford."[2] Hundreds of copies of the Daily Cal with this fake headline had been strewn about campus in the wee hours. This was in fact a hoax perpetrated by aggrieved Stanford fans.

A newspaper run completely by students worked very well, but financial and management problems dampened the first decade of The Daily Californian's independence. In the early 1980s, The Daily Californian was forced to take on loans, including one from UC Berkeley's student government, the Associated Students of the University of California, or ASUC.

In the early 1990s, hard times and a series of financial mismanagements forced the newspaper to only publish three days a week, which made national news. With the great support of then Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien, The Daily Californian secured a new office in the 6th floor of Eshleman Hall on the south side of campus. This office space had also housed the newspaper from 1963 to 1971. It was during the early 1990s that The Daily Californian also began to tap its growing group of proud and successful alumni. The Daily Californian Alumni Association was founded.

The Daily Californian has a history of publishing spirited editorials, and in some cases editions containing controversial editorials have been trashed. In 2002, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates agreed to pay restitution after admitting to having thrown away a hundred copies of The Daily Californian after it endorsed his opponent, then-Mayor Shirley Dean.[3] In May 2003, nearly 5,000 papers were stolen by students protesting coverage of the arrest of a Cal football player. The largest act of theft took place in November 1996 when the paper's senior editorial board endorsed Proposition 209. Nearly 23,000 papers were stolen and tossed off the balcony of the newspaper's office.

The Daily Californian also published the first sex column in a U.S. college newspaper. Laura Lambert, a senior studying to be a sex therapist, was the first writer of the 'Sex on Tuesday' column.^[1] The column has remained controversial since its inception.^[2]