About Us

The Daily Gazette is Swarthmore’s only daily newspaper. The Gazette is sent out every work-day to more than 2,500 people, and has thousands of readers from across the world. This broad readership makes the Gazette the most widely read student publication at the College.

Current Editorial Board

• Dougal Sutherland ’11 – Editor-in-Chief
• Ramya Gopal ’10 – Managing Editor
• Jack Keefe ’10 – Executive Editor
• Urooj Khan ’10 – Features Editor
• Angela Meng ’12 – News Editor
• Jon Emont ’12 – Opinions Editor
• Allie Lee ’12 – Arts & Sports Editor

Awards

In March 2008, The Daily Gazette was named one of the top five online college news sites by the Associated Collegiate Press.

At the Associated Collegiate Press’ College Media Conference in November 2008, the Gazette was award fifth-place Best in Show in the online category, beating out other papers including the University of North Carolina’s The Daily Tar Heel, the University of Pennsylvania’s The Daily Pennsylvanian and the University of Texas-Austin’s The Daily Texan.

SITE INFORMATION

This site is built on using Django, an open-source Python web framework designed for newspapers. The site was developed by Dougal Sutherland ’11 with layout by Miles Skorpen ’09 in 2008.

HISTORY

The Daily Gazette was organized during fall semester 1996 by Sam Schulhofer-Wohl ’98. The goal: to provide timely coverage of campus news and Garnet sports while maintaining complete independence from the administration and student government. Printing the Gazette every day would have been prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, so the board of editors elected to distribute the Gazette via e-mail. At first, there was no World Wide Web edition; however, back issues were available through the web.

The first Board of Editors consisted of Fred Bush ’98, Kate Doty ’00, Jennifer Klein ’98, David Lischer ’97, Eric Pakurar ’97, Sylvia Weedman ’97 and Sam Schulhofer-Wohl. Publication began during the first week of spring semester 1997. Midway through that semester, Rafi Dowty ’98 joined the staff as weatherman after successfully lobbying for the addition of weather reports. At the end of the semester the Gazette had 512 subscribers.

The milestones have flown by. In February 1998, the number of subscribers surpassed 1000 for the first time. By the beginning of Fall ’00 the number had risen to nearly 1500. In 2002-2003, the Gazette undertook such projects as installing Reading Racks in campus bathrooms and chalking the entire April Fool’s issue on the college sidewalks on a bitterly cold March 31st night. In 2003, Jeremy Schifeling ’03 became the first Gazette Editor to receive the Drew Pearson Prize for Journalism. The following year, Pei Pei Liu ’04 won the Pearson Prize.

As the Gazette began its tenth year of publication in August of 2005, the subscriber list topped 1900 for the first time. The content of the Gazette became more serious in nature—Arts Editor Micaela Baranello ’07 created a new fine-arts section, and Andrew Quinton ’08 worked alongside Managing Editor Alex Glick ’06 to cover every single home game.

In 2006, Alex Glick was awarded Swarthmore’s Pearson Prize. By 2007, subscriptions broke 2,300 and the Daily Gazette became the most circulated student publication at Swarthmore. Micaela Baranello was awarded the Pearson Prize, the fourth Gazette staffer so honored.

In Fall, 2007, Lauren Stokes ’09 and Miles Skorpen ’09 oversaw the Gazette’s transition to its first content management system, WordPress, adding comments and columns to the website. Nearly 6,000 unique visitors come the Gazette site every week. Miles Skorpen ’09 was awarded the Pearson Prize, and the Gazette was named one of the five top news sites in the nation by the Associated Collegiate Press.

Throughout the Fall of 2008, Technology Director Dougal Sutherland ’11 spearheaded a development team to create a custom site for the Gazette using Django. The current site is the fruit of his labors.