Jan 17, 2023 130 years of Utah College Newspapers

They were young then. Through wars, economic depression, social unrest, shifting demographics, and rapid technological change, Utah’s college students documented their lives and interests in the pages of the newspapers they produced. The library’s digital newspaper repository, Utah Digital Newspapers, includes more than 21,000 issues of student newspapers published from 1892 to 2019. For specific titles and date ranges, see the table below.

The papers boasted a range of fun and creative titles, with some interesting stories behind the nameplates. Carbon College, in Price, Utah, (now Utah State University Eastern) played on the institution’s name with its first paper, called The Carbonicle. Salt Lake Community College was once Salt Lake Area Vocational School, and later, Utah Technical College; hence, the titles The Tradesman and Tech Topics. Here is a peek into these fascinating publications.

Focus on football: Intra-school and interstate sports contests appear in virtually every issue. This is a Utah State University front page from 1916.

 
The newspapers documented student government (as in this Carbon College paper) and recreation (photo from Weber College’s The Signpost, 1964).

Cartoons by student artists are a common feature in the college newspapers. This illustration is from Utah State University in 1904.

Five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Air Force was recruiting on campus, as shown by this 1942 ad in the Utah State University newspaper.

Weber State’s student newspaper has kept the same name since 1917.

When it was time for a new title, Dixie State and Westminster published nameless issues, using question marks in place of a nameplate. Dixie State eventually went with The Dixie Sun and Westminster chose The Parson (now The Forum).

Student journalists have always engaged with the wider world of politics, but the 1960s brought a hightened awareness of the world beyond Utah, as shown by this piece in The Daily Chronicle.

Latter-day Saints University (today Ensign College) published in magazine style until the mid-1920s. This 1921 cover features its basketball stars.

Westminster’s longtime nameplate, The Parson, ostensibly originates with a local sportswriter, who disparaged the school’s football team as being as intimidating as a parson. As the legend goes, the school went on to embrace the epithet with pride. A search of Utah’s digitized newspapers does not uncover any such insult. In the first use of the term we found, the team is complimented.

College and university newspapers today can be sophisticated, professionalized operations, with full color printing and online editions. This 2002 newspaper is from Southern Utah University in Cedar City.

Links to Student Newspapers Available On Utah Digital Newspapers

* Brigham Young University’s student newspapers, 1897 to 2011, are available here. Click here for Utah Valley University’s papers from 1966 to 2012, and here for the post-2012 issues.