The Free Press looks back on 40 years
http://www.dailyfreepress.com/the-free-press-looks-back-on-40-years-1.2134407
By Annie Ropeik
January 13, 2010
The Daily Free Press celebrates its 40th anniversary this spring.
We'll be commemorating the occasion throughout the semester with
stories and features about the past, present and future of your
independent student newspaper.
--
40 years ago, in the midst of the Vietnam War, college campuses were
rife with student protests. On May 4, 1970, during one such protest
at Kent State University, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on the
unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine. Colleges and
universities across the nation shut down as students went on strike
and rioted in response.
And the next day at Boston University, The Daily Free Press printed
its first issue, a special impromptu edition, to report the
administration had called off exams and commencement and ended the
semester early.
Founding editor Charles Radin (COM '71) set out to make a daily paper
that would represent the student body. He said he never imagined his
creation might still be around 40 years later, beginning with the May
5, 1970 extra.
"We were not supposed to start until the fall of that year," Radin,
now the director of global operations and communications at Brandeis
University, said. "We had decided on the spur of the moment to do it.
We didn't have any machines or anything, and we had closed for the semester."
The original Free Press was a conglomeration of several failing
student publications, including a Hellenic newspaper called The Logos
with a national advertising contract and a College of
Communication-funded student journal. Having absorbed these
resources, the new paper spent the latter part of that spring
semester publishing trial issues.
"We had already published the last edition and said, 'We'll be back
as The Daily Free Press next year,'" he said. "And then [Kent State] happened."
Though today's Free Press often works to serve as a check to the
administration, Radin said the paper initially was not so up in arms.
"We were not very revolutionary," he said. "Because we were going to
be squatting in the COM basement, you could see that in the purest of
terms as being not fully independent."
The BU News was the existing school-sponsored paper at the time The
Free Press was starting out. Though it had been university-endorsed
and funded since the 1800s, it became radical enough during the
Vietnam War era that the school ultimately severed ties.
"All of the kids who started the FreeP were not radical like that,"
Radin said. "We were not young Republicans by any means, but we were
also way far away from [Students for a Democratic Society, a radical
60s-era activist movement]."
Former BU News editor-in-chief Murray Rosenblith, who now works for
the clean energy mutual fund New Alternatives Fund, said The News and
The Free Press differed only by degrees.
"Almost everything was left of center in those days," he said. "The
News was way out to the left and The Free Press was closer to the center."
The News, which folded in the mid-70s after struggling financially in
its independence, had existed alongside a university public affairs
newsletter, which preceded BU Today.
Today, in spite of tough times for newspapers, The Free Press has
continued to strive to maintain fiscal and editorial independence.
Former editors of The Free Press and News alike said this is the only
appropriate route to take.
In the summer of 1970, The Free Press was still received limited
university funding left over from the publications it had combined.
In preparation for the fall editions, Radin presented the COM Dean
with a write-up of what he thought the paper's relationship with the
school should be.
"He looked at it and he said, 'Don't do this. Just squat down there
and get it going and don't have anything to do with anything official
at BU, and you'll be glad in the long run,'" Radin said. "We were
actually glad much before the long run. . . . Within a few weeks of
starting up the daily it was just apparent that this would not be a
workable, viable, good situation if there was any kind of formal
attachment to the school."
Soon after, Radin and his successors would clash with former BU
President John Silber. Radin said this struggle was "all for the
good" of the paper.
"He made it easy for you to keep in mind that you should have an
adversarial relationship with the administration," he said. "There's
two perspectives. One is adversarial and one is being too palsy with
them, being in bed with them. But I don't think there's a lot of grey
area in between."
"I would think it would be hard for a paper to take a really
oppositional approach and still be under the university sponsorship,"
Rosenblith said.
2000 editor-in-chief Katie Zezima, now the New England bureau manager
for The New York Times, agreed.
"I think [independence] allows the paper to really function on its
own," she said. "Independence really allows it to cover BU in the
most unencumbered way possible."
Zezima, who was editor-in-chief for The Free Press' 30th anniversary,
said she was confident the paper would survive.
"I think it has to be around," she said. "It's vital to BU and it's
in the students' interest for it to be around. There's no doubt that
this is a very rough patch, not only for The Free Press but for
newspapers in general, but . . . we will find a way to keep it open
and to keep the presses running."
Though former BU News managing editor Eric Levin, now senior editor
at New Jersey Monthly, fondly remembered the thrill of advocacy
reporting in the 70s, he also said recent activity at BU is equally compelling.
"I think BU has gotten nothing but better in the last 40 years," he
said. "The amount of stuff going on, the intellectual ferment and the
people that are there all that makes for really exciting journalism."
Radin remembered many reporting triumphs in his day, including
managing to publish the news of a blaze that consumed the former Bay
State Road brownstone across from Hillel on the night the typesetting
machine refused to work.
"We set the type on typewriters," he said. "It was an awful-looking
paper, but . . . we got the edition out and we covered the story so
we felt great about."
But he said any specific Free Press legacy, whether from his time or
later, is hard to pin down.
"I wouldn't say a newspaper has a legacy," he said. "That it is, that
it survives is its biggest legacy. You don't win Pulitzers with a
student paper. It's enduring, and that's a great thing for a student paper."
--
Look for further 40th anniversary coverage and other features over
the course of the semester.
.
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