The Daily Bruin is the student newspaper at the University of California, Los Angeles. It began publishing in 1919, the year UCLA was founded. The Daily Bruin distributes about 6,000 copies across campus three times a week. It also publishes PRIME, a quarterly arts, culture and lifestyle magazine.

Frequency and governance

The Bruin was published Monday through Friday during the school year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, twice a week during the last week of the quarter, once a week during finals week, and once a week on Mondays in the summer quarter. As of the 2022-2023 school year, the Bruin is published three times a week during the school year on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The Bruin's staff also publishes PRIME, a quarterly lifestyle magazine, and maintains Bruinwalk.com, a professor and apartment review site. The Daily Bruin produced a total of 2,419 articles in the 2021/2022 academic year. It is published by the ASUCLA Communications Board, which sets policies for the newspaper and other campus communications media. The current editor in chief is Lex Wang. The Daily Bruin has 13 editorial departments: news writing, sports writing, arts & entertainment writing, opinion writing, blogging, infographic reporting, digital development, video journalism, copy editing, photojournalism, design, PRIME, enterprise reporting and cartoons and illustrations.

Location

The Daily Bruin office and newsroom is located on the first floor of Kerckhoff Hall, Room 118.

History

Nomenclature

The Daily Bruin was preceded by the weekly Normal Outlook on the campus of UCLA's predecessor, the Los Angeles State Normal School, from 1910 through 1918 or 1919 (the records are incomplete). Upon the establishment in fall 1919 of the Southern Branch of the University of California, as UCLA was first known, the twice-weekly Cub Californian was first issued on Sept. 29, 1919. Its name was changed to the California Grizzly with the issue of March 21, 1924, and on Sept. 13, 1925 it began to publish five days a week. On October 22, 1926, the newspaper became known as the California Daily Bruin. During World War II it reduced its publication frequency to three times a week under the title California Bruin, reverting to a daily publication at war's end. On April 2, 1948, the name was changed to UCLA Daily Bruin.

Control

The newspaper has generally been under control of the student organization now known as the Associated Students UCLA, or ASUCLA, although during the summer sessions of the 1920s and 1930s the newspapers were used as laboratory papers for university journalism classes. A student body president in 1931 advocated that the Bruin be made independent from control by the ASUC, as it was known then, so it might act as a check on student government. In the 1950s, the Summer Bruin was again taken over by the Administration, and '"controversial social issues" were banned from print during the summers. Until 1955, the Associated Students was considered the publisher of the Daily Bruin, sometimes directly under the student council and sometimes with the interposition of a Publications Board. Editors were named by the student council. This system resulted in frequent political struggles between the staff (which nominated candidates for the key editorial positions) and the student council. During the height of the McCarthy era, with the newspaper staff being accused of Communist leanings, the university administration in 1955 revised the governance of the paper and instituted a system whereby the student body itself elected the editor (see below). "Editors had to run for elective office just like politicians, and the newspaper was closely controlled by the [student] Council," wrote William C. Ackerman, the ASUCLA graduate administrator. The practice of student election of editors ended in 1963 with the establishment of the ASUCLA Communications Board, a student-led organization that selects the editors of the Bruin as well as the editors for the other seven newsmagazines and UCLA Radio.

The 1920s

In 1926, editor John F. Cohee was expelled from school by Ernest Carroll Moore, the campus administrator and director, for what Moore called "certain indecent statements which affront the good name of the women of the University." These were apparently a tongue-in-cheek "report" that some sorority women had been seen cavorting nude in the Pacific Ocean surf. This article was included in a twice-yearly burlesque edition of the Daily Bruin known as "Hell's Bells." (Cohee transferred to the Berkeley campus and graduated there in 1927. He later went on to become a professional reporter.) Three years later, Director Moore suspended 14 students for publishing the January 23, 1929, issue of "Hell's Bells," "the filthiest and most indecent piece of printed matter that any of us has ever seen." Some of those students were later reinstated. That was the last issue of "Hell's Bells."

The 1930s

The 1940s

In October 1944 the student president charged that the Bruin was "unrepresentative and self-perpetuating" and that it was controlled by the liberal American Youth for Democracy. The staff threatened to strike but found that the president had already sketched out a plan for substitute staffers, so it refrained.

The 1950s

Charges of left-wing influence

In spring 1949 Jim Garst and Clancy Sigal were nominated by the Bruin staff as editor and managing editor. Some student leaders charged that the two favored leftist positions. Garst was chosen editor by the student council, but Sigal (who had been asked by a member of the council whether he was "a Communist") was rejected. The staffers refused to work over the summer, and in the fall a new council approved Sigal. The same council, however, refused to reappoint him in the spring 1950 term. A student vote rejected Sigal, 2,272 to 676. In the spring semester 1951, President Robert Gordon Sproul wrote Provost Clarence Dykstra that he had received letters "pouring in" about opinion columns written by student Art Janov (later the author of The Primal Scream), "including one from the governor's office.... I do hope that some way will be found to keep this young man from using the feature page of the Bruin as a medium for propaganda of the party line." On February 13, 1951, Dean Hahn replied in a memo to Dykstra that "we are still looking for an editor with more moderate leanings." The student council turned down the staff's nomination of Jerry Schlapik as editor for the spring 1951 term in favor of conservative Bob Strock, who was then deemed ineligible because of a low grade-point average. On February 7, 1951, the council appointed Martin Brower as editor but also chose Rex Rexrode, a non-staffer, as feature (opinion) editor. Brower immediately submitted his resignation, and the entire non-sports editorial staff resigned. Most of them returned to work in two weeks after the council agreed that, from then on, all top editors would be chosen from the newspaper's senior staff.

Student election of editors

On November 23, 1954, President Robert Gordon Sproul approved a new student-election plan for the newspaper. Dean of Students Milton E. Hahn sent a memorandum to UCLA Chancellor Raymond B. Allen on December 7. 1954. He wrote: Editor Martin McReynolds caught word of the plan and published an editorial on December 8, stating that "Someone, probably the Administration, has been planning this change for at least six weeks. The planning has all been kept secret from The Daily Bruin and the students at large." On the same day, Hahn submitted the plan to the Student Council. The plan required that: A total of 3,004 signatures, representing one-fifth of the student body, were collected for a petition to be sent to Sproul to retract the plan. The number of signatures was about a thousand more than the number of votes in the preceding student-body election. The Bruin staff nominated six candidates to become editors the following year, but all six were rejected by the selection committee appointed to decide on the new editors.

21st century

In 2013, the Daily Bruin's publisher laid off most of its full-time employees, following more than a decade of consistently declining advertising revenues that reflected the national newspaper industry. Despite layoffs, it retained UCLA Student Media Director Doria Deen, editorial advisor Abigail Goldman and Business Manager Jeremy Wildman. In spring 2016, UCLA's student body voted in favor of the "Daily Bruin and Bruinwalk.com Referendum," which guaranteed student fees to support the Bruin as its print advertising revenues continue to decline. Following COVID-19 lockdowns in March 2020, the upper management of the Bruin decided to cease all print operations for the rest of the school year after initially pausing it for the first two weeks of the spring quarter. It was the first time the paper had scaled back its daily print operations since World War II. The paper resumed printing once a week the next school year in 2020-2021 while UCLA was still holding all classes remotely, before scaling up to two days a week in 2021-2022 and the current schedule of three days of week in 2022-2023.

Stonewall

In 2013, the Daily Bruin created the "Stonewall" as an online record of sources who "stonewalled," or refused to speak, with reporters. The "Stonewall" was created in effort to maintain transparency with readers about individuals in the community who thwarted Daily Bruin reporters' attempts at providing information. The most recent stone added to the "Stonewall" was on June 5, 2019, when the UCLA media relations office for several weeks delayed an interview with administrators regarding a professor's conviction of child sexual abuse.

The Stack

Data editor Neil Bedi launched The Stack, Daily Bruin's data journalism and newsroom tech blog, in March 2015. Articles analyze public data and present them with accompanying quantitative graphics and visualizations. Previous projects include examining the data of the mandatory Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) student fees over time, funding sources behind UCLA research projects, and rate of major changes among UCLA students. The Stack makes the code on its blog available under open-source licenses on GitHub.

Editor in chief

Normal Outlook

Cub Californian

California Grizzly

Daily Bruin

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Awards and recognition

The Daily Bruin and its staffers earn honors at local, state, regional and national levels on an annual basis. Listed below are some of the prominent honors the Daily Bruin has received.

National

Associated Collegiate Press – Pacemaker Awards Society of Professional Journalists – National Mark of Excellence Awards

Regional

Society of Professional Journalists – Region 11 Mark of Excellence Awards

State

California College Media Association – Excellence in Student Media Awards California Newspaper Publishers Association – Campus Excellence in Journalism Awards

Local

Los Angeles Press Club – SoCal Journalism Awards Awards last updated in October 2019

Editorial Board

The Daily Bruin Editorial Board presents the opinions of veteran staff members of the Bruin about topics relating to UCLA. It is made up of five standing members in addition to staff representatives. The board operates separately from the newsroom, and the editorials represent the majority opinion of the board. Editorials are published once or twice a week throughout the year.

Daily Bruin Hall of Fame

Other notable alumni (chronological) If not cited here, references can be found within the articles.

Notes and references