The first edition of the newspaper was published September 16, 1912, after W.R. “Ralph” La Porte, the first student editor of the paper, persuaded university President
George Finley Bovard to give USC a student newspaper. Subscriptions to the paper, then called
The Daily Southern Californian, originally cost $1.75. The newspaper was called
The Southern Californian in 1915, after it began publishing only four days a week, but returned to five-day-a-week production in 1925 and was renamed
The Daily Trojan, as USC had informally adopted the Trojan as a mascot by then. The newspaper moved from the now-defunct Moneta Print Shop on Jefferson and University Avenues to its current location in the Student Union in 1928. Production was held off-campus until the 1980s in USC's Graphic Services Department, which was located west of the [Harbor Freeway] on Exposition Boulevard. The
Daily Trojan increasingly began using computers in the '90s, moving to all-digital production in 2005. Editors create the paper using Adobe InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator. The Daily Trojan's first website was created in 1996, and has gone through several iterations. In December 2024, the paper's funding was severely cut. Student workers will no longer be paid and the paper will go from five print edition days a week to three. ==Organization==