In 1897, five years after the University of Oklahoma opened its doors, the first student-run newspaper,
The Umpire, made its debut. In 1903, it became a semi-weekly news publication called the
University Oklahoman. By 1916, the paper had taken on the name that it still carries today,
The Oklahoma Daily. In the fall of 1921, the circulation for
The Daily was 700, plus 200 mail subscribers. By 1926, circulation had reached 6,000. Also that year,
The Daily became a member of the Associated Press — the only college paper at that time with full voting and membership rights. A poll in December 1946 showed that 72 percent of the student body read
The Daily. In May 1956, a libel suit was filed against editor George Gravely and faculty supervisor Louise B. Moore. The suit was dismissed as groundless, but it marked the first time
The Daily had been sued for libel.
The Daily moved into Copeland Hall – its current location – in the fall of 1958 (although the building didn't get that name for three more years). The paper was printed using hot metal, or lead type, set on Linotypes for body type, and a Ludlow for headlines. The shop also had an Elrod machine for lead spacing and a gas-fired cauldron for remelting the lead and water-cooled molds for pouring lead pigs for recycle. The lead had to be remelted from the "Hell box" about once a week. The flatbed E model bidirectional web-fed press which used the type directly was replaced about a decade later by a Goss Suburban web-fed offset press of six units, two stacked (total of four) and two additional inline. The page makeup was still hot metal as before. But each page was now pulled on a hand-operated proof press. The photo areas were masked out with black paper and this was photographed on a large Litho camera to produce a tabloid size page negative for each page. The photos were processed separately and pasted into the "windows" produced by the black rectangles on the proof pages. These page negatives were then burned in pairs onto hand-sensitized aluminum plates with an arc
exposure unit and hand-developed and mounted on the offset press units. A typical press run for the 14,000 or so copies printed was 40 minutes. For many years it continued in this hybrid mode using a
backshop staffed by trained journalism students working as paid student labor under the direction of a professional backshop supervisor and offset pressmen. As a tabloid the six units could print 48 tabloid pages, which was almost more than its quarter folder could handle. Typically this press ran 12 to 32 tabloid pages daily, 16 pages or 24 pages being favored sizes, a much more comfortable size for the folder. It could register and print full-page process color with high quality and did on occasion, using the two stacked units. The backshop and offset press occupied a large area on the north side of the first floor of Copeland Hall. In 1976,
The Daily entered the computer age with a system that used video display terminals and a scanner to read typed copy. The paper was switched to
broadsheet format in 1977.
The Daily's coverage of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was recognized nationally, as media from all over the world contacted its reporters for information. The paper's staff put on a disaster-coverage workshop at the CMA/ACP convention in Washington, D.C. The newspaper's website was launched on the same day as the bombing. A
Daily columnist and four friends of Middle Eastern descent put up the site so people in the Middle East could find out about the bombing. Their relatives wanted information because popular thought in the U.S. was that the bomber(s) were from the Middle East. In 1997, the newsroom was moved into its current location inside Copeland Hall where the backshop used to be.
The Daily's former newsroom, although once occupied by
Sooner Yearbook, remains empty today. Also in 1997, the paper switched to a yearlong editor-in-chief.
The Daily dropped the Associated Press wire service for a year in 2002 after a contract dispute. Service resumed in 2003 after the AP began charging an educational rate to all colleges and universities. In 2006,
The Daily's website merged with the Sooner Information Network (SIN) and formed a student portal, the HUB. The thought behind that move was to make a hub of all campus information for students. In the summer of 2008, the HUB was redesigned as OUDaily.com. Distribution is free at more than 40 locations on or near campus for eight themed issues produced throughout the year.
The Daily is overseen by the OU Publications Board, composed of 12 voting members, representing each of the following areas: president's office staff, president's student appointee, the journalism college, the faculty senate, the staff senate, the student government,
The Daily staff, Student Media and the Oklahoma Press Association and an alumni representative. The board elects the editor-in-chief for the fall-spring term and the summer term. == Achievements and critical reception ==