Story of The Auburn Plainsman
By Ed Williams
Faculty adviser
Professor, Department of Communication and Journalism
willik5@auburn.edu
http://www.auburn.edu/~willik5/
“We greet you under the title of The Orange and Blue, wrote J.A. Duncan in 1894, thus beginning a long-standing tradition now known as The Auburn Plainsman. “With this issue of The Orange and Blue, we launch forth on the uncertain and often perilous sea of college journalism, to cruise in those waters where our presence will be most beneficial to all that pertains to the interest of our grand old institution, Duncan wrote.
From its offices in the basement of Foy Union Building, students create a newspaper from scratch each week. Students conduct interviews and write the stories, design the pages, sell the ads, and shoot the photographs that appear in the newspaper each week.
Staff meetings are held weekly on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. in Foy basement. Students of all majors are invited to attend and volunteer. No previous experience is necessary. Plainsman editor Niki Doyle may be e-mailed at doylean@auburn.edu for more information.
The Plainsman's Web site is http://www.theplainsman.com/
The Plainsman is entirely student produced, from writing the articles to selling the advertising to distributing the newspapers. The Plainsman is published on Thursdays and distributed free of charge at locations all over campus.
The Auburn Plainsman has approximately 50 regular staff members, and many more students volunteer to write stories or help with production. The sale of advertising has made The Plainsman, with a circulation of 19,000, financially self-sufficient since 1985.
Since its inception in 1894, The Auburn Plainsman has continued to be an award-winning campus newspaper. The Plainsman has received the Pacemaker, an award given annually to the top college newspapers in the nation, 23 times. The Daily Texan at the University of Texas is the only college newspaper to win more Pacemakers than The Auburn Plainsman.
The Pacemaker, awarded by American Collegiate Press, is considered the Pulitzer Prize in college journalism.
Pacemaker awards have made The Plainsman a standard by which all college newspapers are judged. The Plainsman has achieved a national reputation as one of the best college newspapers in the United States and Canada.