The Independent Florida Alligator

The Independent Florida Alligator

Type	Weekday newspaper
Format	compact
Owner(s)	Student-owned
Publisher	Campus Communications, Inc.
Editor	Lyndsey Lewis
Founded	1906
Political alignment	Left of center
Headquarters	Gainesville, FL
ISSN	0889-2423
Website	The Independent Florida Alligator

The Independent Florida Alligator is the daily student newspaper of the University of Florida. The Alligator is the largest student-run newspaper in the United States, with a daily circulation of about 35,000.

As of 2006, the paper prints every weekday during the Spring and Fall semesters (roughly mid-August to early May) and on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the Summer semesters.

The Alligator has been financially and editorially independent from the university since 1973, and has been owned by non-profit Campus Communications Inc. since its independence. However, only undergraduate students of the university are allowed to work for the paper.

The Alligator is distributed free on campus and around the city of Gainesville, Florida, and usually contains a mix of campus and local news coverage. It also contains an award-winning sports section that begins from the back of the tabloid-format paper, and an award-winning entertainment section published every Thursday, presently named the Avenue.

History

Early history

The Alligator began as an independent student-run newspaper, called The University News, on October 19, 1906. The paper came together in time to report on the University of Florida’s opening ceremony in its new permanent home in Gainesville, and much of the first issue is devoted to reprinting word-for-word the sendoff speech given by then-Florida Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward.

The Alligator remained independent until 1912, when it became part of the university administration. It was renamed the Florida Alligator, after the university’s year-old mascot.

For the next six decades, the paper was supervised by the Office of Student Publications, which was also responsible for the university’s Seminole yearbook, Florida Magazine, the Orange Peel humor magazine and other recurring publications. Alligator staffers often worked on several of these at the same time. As of 2006, only The Alligator remains extant.

The Alligator also had a radio news show on campus station WRUF for many years.

Until the 1950s, the editor was chosen by the student body in campuswide elections. Candidates slated to political parties, ran campaign ads and debated each other not unlike student government officials today.

The editor was roughly on the same level of prestige as student body president, and various fraternities “controlled” the newspaper at one time or other. According to bylaws still in effect with the prestigious and controversial honor society Florida Blue Key, editorship remains an automatic qualification for admittance.

Growth and maturation

By the early 1960s, the rapid growth of the university – fueled in part by the decision to allow women to attend in 1947 and to admit black students in 1958 – saw a similar growth and maturation of The Alligator.

The newspaper printed in broadsheet until 1962 with the exception of World War II, when paper was in short supply. In 1962, the paper switched to a small tabloid format, which it still uses today. Around this time, The Alligator was one of the first college newspapers in the nation to switch from hot type printing to the more modern offset standard.

In 1963, the paper switched from twice weekly printing to its current daily format.

Also in 1963, Ed Barber started working at The Alligator, as a student writer. By 1972 he became general manager of the paper, a position he has held every year since except for the period 1973-75.

Originally, the Office of Student Publications was located in the basement of the old Florida Union (today’s Manning Dauer Hall) on what is now the north edge of campus. In 1968 the paper moved into a new suite of offices on the third floor of the J. Wayne Reitz Union, directly adjacent to student government administrative offices. At least one of The Alligator’s former offices is now occupied by Florida Blue Key.

Events leading to independence

The late 1960s were an era of tumult, which included the resignation of editors who disagreed with an editorial denouncing the university's public tenure hearing for Marshall Jones, a professor who was accused of being a communist by the university administration. He was forced from the university.

The university's crowded public hearing on Jones was denounced in Florida newspapers as reminiscent of communist witch-hunting in the early 1950s. The editorial, written after the first hearing by journalism student and reporter Michael Abrams, who later paid penance by becoming a journalism professor, was censored by the University's Board of Student Publications and a blank space with the word "Censored" run in its place. Several of the student editors of the newspaper resigned over what they saw as the tone of the editorial and its anti-administration bent.

A national controversy ensued, which brought prominent figures of the press including columnist Drew Pearson to the campus. Pearson gave strong support to the remaining staff. Editor Steve Hull, who also remained, assembled a new set of student editors. Throughout this time, the journalism school was winning Hearst awards, and many Alligator reporters and editors ultimately became well-known in their professions.

The newspaper continued to do investigative reporting, including stories about low wages paid to maintenance employees. It was during this time the newspaper was awarded the Pacemaker award as the best college paper in the nation. It was a tribute to both the previous editors who had resigned, those who stayed, both groups fighting for what they thought were the highest ideals of journalism. Lending his wit was James Cook, later an attorney, in a column called Uncle Javerneck, and Joe Torchia, later a novelist, who intercepted humorous letters from "God" to various people. If the columns were hysterical to many, they seemed outrageous to some religiously oriented readers and students.

Many copies of the final edition of the newspaper, with its somewhat racy collage of farewell pictures including the university president in a less than auspicious pose, were apparently confiscated at the news stands by persons supporting the university's administration.

Controversy ensued with a new set of editors being selected by the board, and an off-campus newspaper, University Report, published by Hull, Abrams, and Scott DeGarmo, a master's student in history. The paper exposed spying on students by government officials and law enforcement agents and was an outspoken critic of the administration of Stephen O'Connell, the former Florida Supreme Court Justice who was president of the university. One of its stories told of a government agent "Palmer Wee" who was apparently hired to watch radical students. The headline read "Wee is watching you."

The paper printed several issues and was typeset on an old typesetting machine that was somewhat larger than a typewriter and sat on a living room floor. It was published out of town, as at least one local printer refused to print it. Like many of the radical publications of the time, it was not always in the best taste.

The university administration continued to simmer over the young radical editors who were inspired by the transformative social goals of journalism, if not the concomitant responsibilities.

The In late 1971, editor Ron Sachs approved an insert to be published in The Alligator that printed the addresses of known abortion clinics. At the time, not only was abortion illegal in Florida, but even the printing of abortion information violated state law.

The insert, a deliberate challenge by Sachs in protest of laws against abortion, threw the university into a firestorm. Both Sachs and university president Stephen C. O’Connell faced intense public pressure, which they soon took out on each other. When O’Connell discovered that Sachs was protected by federal First Amendment case law, he started working to disavow any connection between the university and The Alligator.

To calm the growing tempest, state Attorney General Robert Shevin ruled that to protect students’ First Amendment rights, the university and The Alligator should split. At the time, O’Connell declared that never again would UF sponsor a student newspaper on campus.

As a further compromise agreement between the university and the newspaper’s staff, the students were allowed to take The Alligator private and off campus.

Incidentally, Sachs’ challenge of the abortion law was successful; while he was being prosecuted for the crime, the law was declared unconstitutional. Sachs later won an Emmy as a television producer in Miami, for his documentary Cocaine: The Lady is a Killer.

History after independence

Quickly changing its name to The Independent Florida Alligator, the paper needed several years to find a permanent home. New owners Campus Communications moved in 1981 to the former Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity house two blocks east of campus on University Avenue, its current location.

Alligator writers and photographers won a dozen Hearst awards during the period 1971 to 1979, a period when the paper also won several awards from the Associated Collegiate Press and the Society of Professional Journalists. Until the mid-1990s, Alligator alumni had won more Hearst writing and photo awards than any other student newspaper. It remains second behind the Daily Northwestern of Northwestern University.

The Alligator also was one of the first college papers on the Internet, hosting a BBS as early as 1985 and a Web site beginning in 1994.

In 1990, The Alligator’s parent company bought the High Springs Herald, a weekly publication located about 30 miles from the university. As of this writing, The Alligator is the only student newspaper in the country to own a nonstudent, commercial newspaper.

Structure of The Alligator

The Alligator is somewhat smaller than a tabloid size, closer in size to the European "compact" format of The Times and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Current and recent editors

• Fall 2007: Lyndsey Lewis
• Summer 2007: Dominick Tao
• Spring 2007: Jessica Riffel
• Fall 2006: Stephanie Garry
• Summer 2006: Warren Kagarise
• Summer 2006: Bridget Carey
• Fall 2005: Mike Gimignani
• Spring 2005: Dwayne Robinson
• Fall 2004: Sarah Anderson
• Spring 2004: Cameron Ackroyd
• Fall 2003: Joe Black
• Spring 2003: Heather Leslie
• Fall 2002: Sarah Myrick

Alumni

Former Alligator staffers work at nearly every major newspaper and magazine in the United States. Graduates from 2005 and 2006 moved on to work for the Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times, the Florida Times-Union, the Palm Beach Post, the Associated Press and The New York Times, among others.

Of special note is longtime Alligator photographer and editor Robert Ellison (1944-1968), who died in Vietnam while covering the Battle of Khe Sanh for the newspaper. His work, later published in Newsweek as “The Agony of Khe Sanh,” won several posthumous awards.

Other famous alumni include:

• Don Addis (1935-) – Editorial cartoonist for the St. Petersburg Times who created the long-running series of “Sex Symbols” cartoons in Playboy
• Charles Bennett (1910-2003; editor 1931) – The longest serving U.S. Representative in Florida history;
• Rhea Chiles (1930-) – Former First Lady of Florida;
• Philip Graham (1915-1963) – Publisher of The Washington Post from 1946-63, during which time the paper rose to a level of prominence exceeded only by that of his widow Katherine;
• Carl Hiaasen (1953-) – Award-winning columnist for the Miami Herald and bestselling author of crime fiction novels such as Tourist Season, Strip Tease and Skinny Dip;
• Dr. Samuel Proctor (1918-2005) – Widely considered the preeminent source on Florida history during his lifetime.

Other notable journalist alumni include:

• Al Burt – Award-winning roving reporter for the Miami Herald and others;
• Horance “Buddy” Davis – Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Gainesville Sun and longtime journalism professor at UF;
• Karen DeYoung – Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and associate editor for The Washington Post;
• David Finkel – Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Washington Post;
• Ian Johnson (editor Fall 1983) – Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent and presently Berlin bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal;
• Tom Kennedy – Managing editor for multimedia at WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive and former director of photography for National Geographic;
• Mindi Kiernan (editor Fall 1976) – Former vice president of Knight-Ridder;
• David Lawrence Jr. (editor Spring 1963) – Former publisher of the Miami Herald and Detroit Free Press;
• Eddie Sears (editor Fall 1966) – Former editor of the Palm Beach Post;
• Adam Yeomans (editor Spring 1983) – Kentucky/Tennessee bureau chief for the Associated Press.
• Brian Doherty - Senior Editor of Reason Magazine, author of This is Burning Man and Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.

Controversy

Sponsored rivals

Since Stephen O’Connell stepped down as UF president in 1973, several rivals to The Alligator have set up shop. Most of these publications were started or actively encouraged by the university’s student government.

One notable contender was Campus Leader, a monthly alternative newspaper started in 1983. Campus Leader, sponsored by the student government and edited by W.H. "Butch" Oxendine, Jr., lasted somewhat less than a year as a direct competitor. Losing his sponsorship, Oxendine changed the magazine’s focus, limiting it to students and education, and renamed it Florida Leader. In its new format, the magazine printed until 2006.

Another rival was The Orange and Blue, a twice-weekly newspaper in operation from August 1999 to July 2002. The newspaper was similar in format to, and in fact started by the publishers of, the FSView newspaper that won a successful battle against Florida State University’s long-running newspaper, the Florida Flambeau.

In 2000, confusion with a university publication also called The Orange and Blue led the newspaper to change its name to The Gator Times. Although student government leaders quickly supported the new paper, the Times could not survive the economic downturn caused by the September 11, 2001 attacks. Today, UF uses the term “Gator Times” in several of its promotional materials and on a student-information Web site.

In recent years, the UF student government has preferred starting readership programs with larger commercial newspapers such as The New York Times and USA Today. The Gainesville Sun, the local New York Times-owned newspaper, also made an agreement with the university for a similar program in June 2005. To seal the agreement, the Sun started its own campus edition called the Campus Sun, ostensibly to compete with The Alligator. In October 2006, a new student newspaper called The Florida Frontier, with aims to produce a more conservative publication, began producing a monthly on-campus newspaper.

Andy Marlette

Andy Marlette joined the staff of The Alligator in 2003, as an editorial cartoonist. Marlette, the nephew of Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette, won several awards in three years working for the paper, but his sarcastic brand of wit and (often feigned) disregard for social and ethnic taboos led to several boycotts and protests against The Alligator.

Marlette was at first tightly controlled by his editors, but as he grew more well-known and as more brazen editors took office, Marlette took greater risks. He graduated from UF in 2006 and has become a syndicated cartoonist like his uncle. After a two-month hiatus, The Alligator has become one of the newspapers running his professional cartoons.

Israel-Palestine cartoon

In October 2003, Marlette inked a cartoon for The Alligator depicting caricatured members of campus organizations Gators for Israel and Nakba ‘48 (he calls it “Gators for Palestine”) yelling “We hate you!” at each other, commenting on that month’s escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza Strip. The character's insults also made reference to Hitler and Jesus.

The cartoon drew ire nationwide from Jewish students, alumni and advocacy groups, who claimed Marlette was stirring anti-semitic sentiment on the UF campus. Editor Joe Black and Opinions Editor Laura Merritt later printed an apology for upsetting readers, but not for the intent of the cartoon.

In personal response to the outcry, Marlette drew a self-portrait with his mouth bolted shut. This form of commenting on the commentators became one of Marlette’s signatures.

Matt Walsh “crying” cartoon

During the Florida Gators’ season-ending loss to 5th-seeded Villanova in the second round of the 2005 NCAA Basketball Tournament in Nashville, junior guard Matt Walsh grew visibly more and more frustrated during the 76-65 loss.

With CBS Sports television cameras rolling, a national audience saw tears streak down Walsh’s face. The next day, The Alligator featured a cartoon of Walsh crying, drawn by Marlette, in which the tears formed the word “choke”.

Walsh scored 12 points in the game, a low total by his standards, and given his crying and the Gators’ recent early-round NCAA tournament losses to low-seeded Manhattan, Creighton and Temple, Walsh was seen by many as an iconic scapegoat for the team’s failure.

However, a great deal of local criticism found its way to the newspaper. Marlette received multiple death threats and skipped town, while Alligator editors received thousands of letters from Gators fans criticizing the cartoon. Marlette, a rabid Gators basketball fan, later apologized for any offense caused.

Condoleezza Rice cartoon

In response to Kanye West’s statement “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”, during A Concert for Hurricane Relief in September 2005, Marlette drew a cartoon published in The Alligator that depicted West holding up a life-sized Joker card in front of Condoleezza Rice. The card says "The Race Card" and the cartoon Rice has her arms crossed in disgust, telling West, “Nigga please!”

The use of the term nigga, a direct comment on Rice being criticized as a “house nigga” by the black press, drew immediate criticism from black student organizations on campus.

African-American students as well professors held rallies and protest in response to the cartoon, which came the same week West was due to perform on campus.

Marlette responded a few days later with the same cartoon, however this time Rice's phrase "Nigga please!" was replaced with "As per the cultural standard of African American entertainers deriding each other using a racial and/or ethnic context, I would like to address you in the same way. You are a rapper who constantly uses terminology denigrating to the African-American community. I am an African American and close friends with President Bush; hence, Bush does not hate black people. Please."

The student government withdrew funding in response to the cartoon after the opinions editor refused to apologize. Eventually, the editor published an apology.

See also

• List of college newspapers

References

• Our history. Retrieved 20 April 2005.
• McKeen, William. Carl Hiaasen: Trustworthy as Captain Kangaroo. Retrieved 20 April 2005.

External links

• The Independent Florida Alligator
• alligatorSports.org, covering all of the University of Florida sports