Established in 1946,
Vanguard was originally the newspaper of the Vanport College Extension in
Vanport, Oregon, from which the
Vanguard name is derived. The Vanport College Extension relocated to downtown
Portland, Oregon after it was destroyed by a flood on May 30, 1948, and eventually became Portland State College before becoming
Portland State University. The newspaper's first issue was published by founding editor Don Carlo, a blind military veteran, on November 16, 1946, under the temporary nameplate ''Vet's Extended''. The first article on the front page was a story covering the student council elections. The first editorial was titled "The Spirit of a Student Body," and declared: We, as students, are helping to start a new idea for colleges. For it is true that there was no school here before, and it is also true that this organization was only started to alleviate the congestion created by the emergency....and though the only romantic thing around here is the cinder path from Portland to Oregon Halls, we do have the proper shift of....a University. But even without all of the atmospheric attributes, we have within us the insatiable search for knowledge that was born while waiting for the end of the war. Many of us waited years so that we might have an opportunity to attend such a school. After the alternative names of "Stooge" and "Aspect" were rejected, the name was changed to
"Vanguard" beginning January 14, 1947 at the counsel of the paper's first faculty adviser, Vaughn Albertson of the English Department . The
Vanguard originally published weekly on Wednesday afternoons and featured only text. In November 1953, production day was changed to Friday, and the first photograph appeared in the January 28, 1954 edition. In early 1967, the
Vanguard went on strike in objection to salary and budget cuts imposed by faculty members in the dean of students office, which maintained financial control over the paper at that time. In spring term of 1967 the editorial staff announced the paper would not publish until certain conditions were met, including an audit of the paper's finances by an accountant from the college's business office, the positioning of the paper completely under the Publications Board and a demand that the dean of students relinquish all responsibility for all publications. The strike ended after the first week of spring term, with the paper missing only one week of production, and production was then increased to twice-weekly. On May 19, 1967 The
Vanguard published a nude photograph of
beat poet Allen Ginsberg on its front page. The photo prompted college President Branford P. Millar to order that publication of the newspaper be suspended on May 24, 1967, calling the Ginsberg photo "vulgar." The
Vanguard published the following Wednesday, May 31, and Friday, June 2, as the
Independent Vanguard. The cost of publication was covered by donations from faculty members, whose support was led by Donald R. Moor of the Philosophy Department. During the 1990–91 academic year, the
Vanguard changed its publication schedule from twice-weekly to four days a week. On October 18, 2005, the
Vanguard published an opinion article titled "A city divided: Religious disputes over Jerusalem require diplomacy" by Caelan MacTavish that addressed the religious divide over
Jerusalem, the
West Bank and the Arab-Israeli conflict. The article immediately attraction the attention of the
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, and the group contacted the paper to voice its concern and request an apology. By October 27, the article was removed from the
Vanguard Web site and replaced it with an editor's note explaining that, after review, the story did not meet the paper's editorial standards. On October 28, the paper ran an editorial stating that "the column was not given as much editorial attention as it deserved, and realizes in retrospect that the column simply should not have been published....The column neither contributes to educated debate on the subject matter nor provides any insight into the issue that it ostensibly addresses." By the winter of 2008, the
Vanguard was publishing a Twitter feed and maintaining a Facebook site to participate in the expanding trend of
social media sites. ==Awards==