The Stanford Daily
Originally founded in 1892, The Stanford Daily is the independent, student-run newspaper of Stanford University.
The Corporation
The Stanford Daily newspaper is the primary holding of The Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation. Founded in 1973, The Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation operates as a California non-profit corporation headed by the paper’s editor-in-chief and business manager.
Publishing
The Stanford Daily publishes Monday through Friday during the academic year and maintains a circulation of 4,000 to more than 200 locations on and around the main Stanford main campus. The Daily publishes several special issues every year, including a New Student Orientation issue, a Big Game issue and a Commencement issue.
History of The Daily
The Stanford Daily is the independent, student-run newspaper of Stanford University. The Daily was originally founded as a small pamphlet known as The Daily Palo Alto in 1892 and has been a campus fixture ever since. The Daily strives to serve the Stanford community with relevant, unbiased journalism and provides its editorial, tech and business staffs with unparalleled educational opportunities.
The Daily became independent of Stanford University in 1973 after a years-long clash with the administration spurred in part by disagreements over The Daily’s coverage of anti-Vietnam War protests. In particular, a strongly worded 1970 op-ed in the newspaper entitled “Snitches and Oppression,” penned by Diarmuid McGuire M.A. ’73, drew concerns from University administrators that the school might be held liable for any violence incited by the article. Independence for The Daily was thus a logical conclusion for both sides: The Daily’s disentanglement from the University would make it impossible for the University to attempt to influence reporting through financial withholding or other means, and the University’s disentanglement from The Daily would release it of any potential liability for content published in the newspaper. Thus, in 1973, The Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation was incorporated in Santa Clara County as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Independence wasn’t the only consequence of The Daily’s coverage of campus antiwar protests; the publication also drew national attention when it sued James Zurcher, the chief of the Palo Alto Police Department, following a surprise search of The Daily’s offices for photographic evidence of protestors that the student-journalists and legal counsel deemed to be in violation of the First and Fourth Amendments. After a district court and court of appeals ruled in favor of The Daily, the case, Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, was brought to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1978, with the nation’s highest court ruling 5-3 in favor of Zurcher. The ensuing outcry among journalists and the public led to Congress’s passage of the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which established the requirement of a subpoena to search newsrooms for unpublished materials.
With the launch of its website in 1995, The Daily became one of the first college newspapers publishing on the Internet. The site is live and continuously updated throughout the year. It features content from the print edition, along with special Web-only content often including live blogs of sporting events and major campus events.
The Daily moved out of its old offices in the Storke Publications Building to its new home at the Lorry I. Lokey Stanford Daily Building in 2007, thanks to the generosity of Lorry I. Lokey ’49 and hundreds of other benefactors, which would not have been possible without the titanic effort of Arthur Charles Hoffman ’73 MBA ’76.
