Howard’s Hilltop Plans to Go Daily in February

Howard University’s newspaper, The Hilltop, will make headlines Feb. 28 when, if all goes according to plan, it begins publishing five days a week instead of two. The Hilltop, which was co-founded and named by novelist Zora Neale Hurston in 1924, will become the first and only daily newspaper at a historically black college or university.

File photo: Tia Goodson/The Hilltop Hilltop Editor-in-Chief Ruth L. Tisdale, second from left, and Hilltop deputy managing editor Arion Jamerson share a laugh with Franklin Chambers, Howard's vice provost for student affairs, left, and President H. Patrick Swygert in The Hilltop office.

“It’s time for us to make the jump,” said Ruth Tisdale, Hilltop editor-in-chief, who began working on the idea after attending the College Media Advisers convention in November.

“I spoke with a student from Wayne State University, who was also editor of the campus newspaper, and he was able to publish a daily with only eight people on staff,” said Tisdale, a junior political science major from Pensacola, Fla. His newspaper, The South End, has eight key editors. “I thought that might affect the paper’s quality, but when he showed me a copy, I was like ‘wow, this is a good paper.’”

After carefully researching the issue and submitting a 30-page report to The Hilltop’s advisory board, Tisdale said she felt that The Hilltop had not only the staff, but the support to publish Monday through Friday. Since 2001, it has been publishing twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays; before that, The Hilltop was a weekly.

“We have over 50 writers and editors. We have the resources. And we have the support of the university, especially our adviser,” Tisdale said. “We can do this.”

The paper’s adviser, Yanick Rice Lamb, said she was pleased with the move and believed it will make Hilltop staffers better journalists.

“I think it’s crucial in a 24-7 news environment to have a paper that publishes daily,” said Lamb. She said she appreciated how “invaluable such a learning experience is,” having worked at a daily college paper while studying journalism at Ohio State University.

There are 102 daily college papers, defined as publishing four days or more per week, according to Ronald Spielberger, executive director of College Media Advisers.

“It will help staffers deal with deadlines and sharpen their news judgment because they’ll be covering a lot of things in real time,” said Lamb, who worked as an editor at the New York Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution before writing books and editing magazines. The former editor in chief of Heart & Soul magazine and former editor at large for Essence believes the move to publishing daily will have even greater implications for its student staff.

“Most importantly, I think it makes them more marketable to recruiters,” she said.

Randy Hagihara, editorial internship director for the Los Angeles Times, agreed that going to press five times a week will give Hilltop staff members a distinct edge in the job market.

“When recruiting potential reporters or editors, the main things I look for are experience and clips,” said Hagihara. Experience at a college daily does not guarantee a job at a major newspaper upon graduation, but it does have its benefits, he said.

“Someone with experience on a collegiate daily can use it as leverage in looking for an internship, and then use that internship experience to secure a job after graduation.”

And while going daily has had its share of supporters, Tisdale said it also has its share of critics.

“I’ve heard that we’re doing this to outdo newspapers at other HBCUs; however, we did this solely on the basis that it’s time for us to make the jump,” Tisdale said. “This is not about competing with other HBCUs because we love our sister schools and we hope this will serve as a guide for them.”

Janene Tate, editor in chief of the Southern Digest, which prints twice a week, said she views the Hilltop going daily as a necessity.

“This isn’t about bragging rights among HBCUs, but rather about improving journalism programs at HBCUs,” said Tate, a mass communications graduate student.

“If we want to close the gap between us and our counterparts at predominately white universities with daily newspapers, we’re going to have to do something, and what Howard is doing is a step in that direction,” Tate said.

Rhasheema Sweeting, managing editor of The Hilltop, said she and the rest of the staff will be ready for the many changes coming when daily publication begins next semester.

“We usually have an A and B section, which total anywhere from 16 to 20 pages, but now we’ll only do one section between six and eight pages,” said Sweeting, a senior print journalism major from Fremont, Calif.

“We’re not just concerned with publishing more often, but also improving the quality of the writing,” Sweeting said.

Hilltop staffers conducted a campus-wide survey to find what students wanted to read about, she said. They also have planned a number of workshops and seminars over the holiday break.

Tisdale said she knows the transition to publishing daily will “have her up and working many a night,” but she’s not worried. “My staff and I know this will be a challenge, but we also understand that with anything good, of course, there comes a sacrifice.”

Herbert Lowe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists and a courts reporter at Newsday, said he believes that ultimately the students’ sacrifices will benefit not only Howard, but journalism programs at other historically black colleges and universities.

“We’re all hopeful that Howard is successful because their success will help breed other successes,” Lowe said, noting that the newspapers at some historically black colleges are woefully behind their counterparts across the country.

The Famuan of Florida A&M University has been the most frequently published black college paper, printing three times a week since fall 2002. And while The Hilltop and The Southern Digest of Southern University have been publishing twice weekly, many others have resources or support enough only to publish weekly, twice monthly, monthly or only occasionally. At least 18 of the black college newspapers have added online editions in recent years; a few of these give students a way to publish and update articles daily.

“I think the most important thing we can do as journalists is to offer our students the best possible education,” Lowe said. “And the more opportunities to practice the craft at which they aspire, the better the students will become.”

However, many students aren’t getting those opportunities.

"The move should send a signal to other HBCUs to step up their frequency of publication," said Pearl Stewart, 1970-71 Hilltop editor and founder of the Black College Wire.

"But students should understand it is a move that requires research and planning. Many HBCU newspapers publish less than a dozen issues a year, which means they are not publishing news," added Stewart, internship director at FAMU’s School of Journalism and Graphic Communication.

Stewart chronicled the plight of journalism at HBCUs in an article for Black Issues in Higher Education, “ All news doesn’t make it to print.”

Written in 2000, the piece listed several reasons for the state of affairs at HBCU newspapers. Perhaps foremost was the lack of funding and equipment on the part of “administrators (who) don't want them to exist.”

One of those who provided the research for Stewart's story, Reginald Owens, said that problems persist because "some black administrators are suspicious of the news media.

"And they're afraid of media coverage of campus problems. So they believe that if the campus newspaper reports those problems, the other media will follow."

Owens is a former Grambling State University professor and newspaper adviser who now holds the F. Jay Taylor Endowed Chair of Journalism at Louisiana Tech University. The survey, financed by the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, was conducted in 1998, but Owens said not much has changed.

“At the time -- and it still is true -- major newspapers and newspaper organizations were on the hunt for that small pool of black newspaper employees and interns,” said Owens, who is on the board of the Dow Jones fund. “Too few journalists of color were being produced, especially at black schools. It was my contention and still is, that more attention needs to be placed on improving the instruction and equipment at the schools that train future journalists of color.”

"For those black schools that don’t have a newspaper or don’t publish regularly, the black community eventually suffers," Owens said. "As a result, future citizens, our children in school now, don’t have the proper communication skills to be most effective in a society where media help shape laws and policies."

Shawn Chollette is a student at Louisiana Tech University.

Posted Dec. 13, 2004