100 Years Commemorative Edition

Thursday, April 14, 2016

E s t ab li she d 19 16

w w w.mu s t an gnew s .ne t

y r a s r e v i n n 100th A tive Edition Commemora

ticles • E d i t a r president I S A w e i rs • I n t e r v ff membe a t s w e n • H i r e

S R A YE

• Volunt eer • Celebra at Open Hou se te 100 Y ears • Write shoutou ts

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 2

M U S TA N G N E W S IS HOME Kayla Missman Suha Saya

It’s fair to say that we’ve spent more time in the newsroom than any other location over the past three years — in fact, we think we’ve seen these walls more than our own roommates.

Both of us joined staff at the same time; it was Kayla’s second year and Suha’s first.

And, as has happened countless times over the past century, two strangers became close friends after hundreds of hours working in close proximity.

More than once — more than a dozen times — the two of us have been in room 226 late at night, asking, “Why are we still here?”

But we can’t seem to leave.

There’s just something about the newsroom.

It’s more than four walls and fluorescent lights. It’s buzzing, it’s electric. It’s a meeting place of some of the best minds we’ve ever met, where exhausted, overworked, brilliant students come together to create something special. It’s a home to a group we lovingly call “misfits and freaks” — those passionate enough to work for beer money, just to know they’re

@kaymissman @suhasaya

doing an important job.

It’s witness to some of the greatest personal growth we’ve ever experienced, hirings, firings, promotions, grown­-up job offers, pre-­interview nerves.

This place holds decades of memories, and student media alums often come visit their old stomping grounds. It’s not just us.

For the past 100 years, students have come together to celebrate and deliver something bigger than themselves.

So we hope in the next 100 years, students of all kinds — juggling jobs, classes and college life — will return to the newsroom at the end of the day. We hope that Mustang News continues to be the room they can enter feeling their worst and their best, but is also the room they are able to leave more proud, more experienced and more inspired than ever.

So welcome to this commemorative edition of Mustang News, where we’ll show you aspects of our organization, how it functions and why we love it.

We hope you love it, too.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 3

WHERE WE’RE GOING NEXT Jacob Lauing

@JLauing

As Mustang News embarks on year 100, you’ll read a lot about years 1-99.

You’ll read a lot about changes, about where Mustang News has been and what we’ve done. I’ve been a part of the Mustang News family since the beginning of my freshman year. So as one of the longest-tenured staff members, I’m here to tell you where Mustang News is going. But yes, to do that, we have to look back.

usually (and naively) stuck to a formula when it came to features, so stepping into uncharted long-form territory was tricky. But it worked — that experimental approach I took ended up earning that story a statewide award.

I can think of so many examples like these — drone storytelling, where we provided a different perspective on the world. Interactive digital features, which engaged readers in ways To quote former ediwe hadn’t tried before. tor-in-chief J.J. JenRe-designing our kins, “I’ve never website (twice). seen a group of Emphasizing talented indesign in our dividuals so print product. willing to exVirtual real“I’ve never seen a group of talented periment — ity. Finding individuals so willing to experiment as the school new sources — as the school watched each day — watched each of revenue to get knocked down and pop right day — to get with native back up and produce engaging and knocked down advertising and pop right (my proudest informative journalism.” back up and and most recent produce engagexample of innoJ.J. JENKINS ing and informative vation). The list goes journalism.” on, and will continue to go on in future generations It’s been almost two years since he said of student journalism at Cal Poly. that, but those words still ring true. I’m not sure whether we recruit students The willingness to experiment charwith a drive to experiment, or if that acterized my time at Mustang News, spirit is the product of Mustang News’ and I have a feeling that’s not going to culture. Either way, it’s been a constant change. Whatever the next college mein Building 26, even as things change. dia trend may be, you can bet Mustang News will be riding the front wave of it, When I was still a young pup on the unless we start it ourselves. sports staff at Mustang News, Jenkins helped me find a creative angle to a Here’s to year 101, and the next 99 feature story with which I struggled. I after that.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 4

A day in the life of a Mustang News reporter Amanda Cranston @Cranlynn

For Mustang News reporter and journalism freshman Carly Quinn, the day ahead is filled with class, interviews — both in person and over the phone — and a quick trip to the gym to top it all off. But she thrives on a tight schedule.

“You’ve just got to stay motivated and think about the bigger picture,” Quinn said.

Quinn writes one article per week and makes deadlines a priority. She also maintains a high GPA, as she made the Dean’s List her first quarter at Cal Poly.

Quinn eagerly jumped into the Learn by Doing way.

“It’s definitely just a balance,” she said.

That balance is something Quinn works hard to maintain.

It takes a lot of willpower to be a reporter, so she makes sure to complete what she needs to do before what she wants to do.

“You might want to take a nap right now, but you also have an article due in a couple hours,” she said.

On this particular Wednesday morning, Quinn has a phone interview and an in-person inter-

HANNA CROWLEY | MUSTANG NE WS FOCUSED | Mustang News reporter and journalism freshman Carly Quinn spends her days studying, doing interviews and writing articles to cover the student life beat.

your toes when it comes to seeking out sources, because someone can cancel on you at anytime and that’s not a valid excuse for your editor,” Quinn said. “If someone bails on an interview, you have to be able to deal with it on your own.”

Finding sources interests Quinn because it allows her to introduce herself to new people and build relationships.

Interviewing various people around campus has given her a

broad knowledge of Cal Poly as well as of the world.

According to Quinn, being a reporter has also made her more curious about how things work and how people react to certain events. It has also made her more cautious of how she presents herself to others.

“Because you represent the news, you kind of have to watch what you do on social media and around campus,” she said.

HANNA CROWLEY | MUSTANG NE WS MEET AND GREET | Quinn likes interviewing a variety of sources because it allows her to build new relationships and learn new things.

view before she starts class for the day. She also plans to work out and catch up on homework.

Quinn tries to finish her schoolwork during the week so she can hang out with friends over the weekend.

“I would say it’s easy to have a social life. You just honestly are really busy all the time,” Quinn said. “You don’t get a lot of down time.”

The interview is at 8 a.m.

Because it’s a phone call, Quinn uses her laptop to re-

cord the interview. Afterward, she listens to the recording and transcribes, identifying information she can use for her article. Having the recording also helps in the editing process, as other sources can clarify or build on something from another interview.

Quinn met later with her other source in the library. Sources are usually very helpful; some going commend Quinn for starting right away on this path.

Others give her advice on jour-

nalism and how she can apply everything she’s learning to the real world.

Her articles are typically due on Wednesdays, so it can be down to the wire if a source is less helpful. As a journalist, Quinn is often at the mercy of her sources.

Fitting in sources can be the most difficult task. Getting an interview is her first priority, sometimes even before eating or studying.

“You have to always be on

HANNA CROWLEY | MUSTANG NE WS NOTED | Quinn takes notes during her interviews, then transcribes from a recording later.

Outside the newsroom: Mustang News reporters with other jobs Natsuki Nishikawa Special to Mustang News

Mustang News is a student-­run newsroom, and all members are Cal Poly students.

Being a part of Mustang News is equal to having any other job, requiring commitment and professionalism.

Today, it’s common for college students to have a job while attending school.

Working for Mustang News as a full-­time student at Cal Poly may sound like enough to many, but two reporters — James Hayes and Ayrton Ostly — have additional, off-campus jobs.

As a journalism freshman, Hayes is a crime reporter for Mustang News and a barista at Peet’s Coffee & Tea. He has been working at Peet’s since last October, and became a crime beat reporter in December.

“I figured the best way to really get involved and to learn is to put myself in an environment where I can practice it,” Hayes said. “The classes are great and I learn a lot from my professors, but as soon as I get in there and start actually practicing it and doing journalism, it’s a lot easier to learn and you learn a lot more ... And it’s a great opportunity to network with a lot of professionals.”

Hayes works anywhere from nine to 20 hours a week at Peet’s Coffee & Tea, and between five and 15 hours a week as a crime reporter. As a freshman who picked up two jobs shortly after starting college, Hayes said he had difficulty managing his time in the beginning.

“I definitely bit off a little more that I could chew at the start,” Hayes said. “I definitely have learned time management a lot more in this quarter than I have

anytime in my life.”

Ostly is a journalism senior and a sports reporter for Mustang News with jobs at Sextant Wines and Blast 825 Taproom.

He has been working for Sextant Wines and Mustang News since last September, and began

most of room and board. It was less of an ‘I want to do this,’ more of ‘financially, I have to.’”

He began working for Mustang News to help him gain experience for his future goal of becoming a reporter.

“It’s fun because it feels like the

THERE IS THIS PERFECT BALANCE OF PROFESSIONALISM AND ALSO REALIZING THAT WE’RE ALL FRIENDS AS WELL JAMES HAYES MUSTANG NEWS REPORTER

working at Blast 825 Taproom in February.

“It wasn’t really a decision for me, I don’t really have a choice,” Ostly said. “I pay tuition, books and

real world,” Ostly said. “(It’s) something that I would do in real life, because I want to become a sports journalist. This is what I’m going to be doing, and I get to do it on

a (collegiate) level where it’s not quite so real yet, but it’s still something that I get paid to do and it’s professional. I feel like it’s practice for what I really want to do in life.”

Ostly works three to four hours a week as a reporter, and 20 to 25 hours a week at his two other jobs.

“It’s just like everything is scripted,” Ostly said. “Basically my Thursday through Sunday is completely scheduled. So there is no time really to go out and hang out (with) friends.

It’s a lot. It’s a little overwhelming sometimes.”

Having multiple jobs as a full­ time student means sacrificing several things, including a social life. Hayes said he has had to give up hanging out with friends and going on dates.

Though working for Mustang News is not a requirement for journalism majors, Hayes and Ost-

ly choose to add an extra workload to their busy schedules and sacrifice other things.

“What really drives me is that I know this isn’t forever,” Ostly said. “I know this will eventually end, I don’t have to keep doing this ... The main thing for me is that this is just a phase, just like puberty, it’s just a phase that I’m going through because it’s college. And when I graduate, hopefully I’ll have a job that will be reporting.”

Both Hayes and Ostly plan to work for Mustang News for the rest of their time in college.

“There is this perfect balance of professionalism and also realizing that we’re all friends as well,” Hayes said. “That’s so key, I think in running a student­-run organization, is that not only are you all friends and fun that way, but there’s still very clear lines of respect.”

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 5

Why I’m in Mustang News

Brendan Abrams @brenabrams

In the past 100 years, Mustang News — formerly known as Mustang Daily, El Mustang, The Polygram or Polytechnic Journal — has never been just a newspaper. It’s a living, breathing organism in a constant state of flux. Staff members come and go, mastheads and printing technologies evolve and writing techniques go in and out of style.

A few things, though, have

Jordan Dunn

Gurpreet Bhoot

stayed the same.

Mustang News has always been a proving ground of s or t s ; an u n e n d i ng learning experience.

Writers, photographers and multimedia folk all remain committed to honing their respective crafts. It is well understood that these skills are lifelong works in progress. “(Mustang News) has given me an incredible amount of experience for what I want to do as a career,” head designer and agricultural communication se-

nior Jordan Dunn said.

But there’s more to it than practicing for a future career.

Time spent in the newsroom is time taking in all kinds of useful information, whether consciously or through a sort of fluorescent osmosis. Every staffer receives a thorough, all­encompassing journalism education by simply being present.

Dunn has not been c onfined to the specifics of his job description.

“Even though my job is head designer, I feel that I have

Cara Benson learned an incredible amount about editorial by simply being in the newsroom environment,” he said.

Economics senior Keenan Donath, a sports reporter for Mustang News, has also gained a variety of experience through Mustang News.

“I have been fortunate enough to write a few arts and music pieces scattered throughout my time here at Cal Poly, a feat that wouldn’t have been accomplished were it not for some open-minded editors at Mustang News,” Donath said.

The promise of gaining skills and experience might be what initially attracts people to the

Keenan Donath newsroom like bees to a daffodil farm, but most of the busybodies at this establishment stay for the social climate. The newsroom is virtually always open, and full of friendly faces.

“The newsroom is like a safe zone for many of us, always welcoming and always an escape from whatever else in life that we are stressing about,” journalism sophomore and social media editor Cara Benson said.

“Mustang News has given me a group of people who push me to be the best I can be.”

“Mustang News has helped me make friendships within my department, something I lacked before joining staff,” journalism

junior and copy editor Gurpreet Bhoot said.

Mustang News is for people who want to be involved in all things Cal Poly. In addition, reporters are awarded with the experience of covering anything Cal Poly­-related through unique perspectives.

“As a reporter, I get the opportunity to experience the game from a unique perspective and usually from one of the best seats in the house,” Donath said.

“Getting to speak with athletes and coaches has given me a deeper understanding of college athletics, a chance to see players as fellow classmates who happen to be very good at a sport.”

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 7

100 years of advisors

ANDREW EPPERSON | MUSTANG NE WS

Carly Quinn @carlyaquinn

Mustang News would not be where it is today without the help of faculty advisors through the past 100 years.

The production of Mustang News is entirely student­-run; each department has student managers and editors to make it all happen. But the editorial faculty advisors serve an important purpose, giving a push in the right direction when needed.

“What I remember from many years ago was mostly to be a mentor at a distance,” former Mustang News faculty advisor and current director for the Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology Patrick O’Sullivan said. “But mostly to give the students a chance to explore, to try things and to have the autonomy to learn and work through the difficult decisions.”

There has always been some faculty guidance watching over the staff of student media. When asked who the most influential faculty advisors have been, three names came up repeatedly: Jim Hayes, George Ramos and

Follow @MustangNews on Snapchat for behind-thescenes coverage and special deals.

Robert E. Kennedy.

Robert E. Kennedy is a name anyone who goes to Cal Poly knows. But before he built a library on campus and was president of the school, Kennedy was a faculty advisor. Not only did Kennedy help with El Mustang, but he also advised the production of the yearbook, El Rodeo. “(He) eats, sleeps and talks journalism,” the 1942 El Rodeo yearbook described.

Kennedy’s dedication to working with journalism students and the newspaper created a legacy that lasts to this day.

In 1940, Kennedy had just been hired to the journalism department. He became faculty advisor soon after, later to become the head of the journalism department. He didn’t stop moving up from there.

During his time as a professor and faculty advisor, Kennedy gained control over the library.

With World War II underway, fewer students attended the university. Cal Poly thought the extra time Kennedy had with fewer students could be put to work cataloging books.

After becoming president, KenSimilar to Kennedy, Hayes nedy helped administration find started as a professor in the ’60s the funding for a new library to and quickly stepped in as faculreplace the Dexter Library. ty advisor to the newspaper. He “The governor did not want to eventually moved up as the chair support new facilities, and I had of the journalism department to exert pressure on powerful as well. stakeholders to get the library “He was very demanding in the approved,” Kennedy said in an craft of writing and cared tremeninterview about his role as the dously about students’ well-belibrarian. ing,” Cal Poly alumnus and His dedication to journalist Kevin the school and Riggs said. creation of During the this build23 years he “I think the best advisors carry ing led worked at that combination of caring, high the CSU Cal Poly, expectations and an amazing trustees Hayes to name m e n capacity to relate to students and the new tored to support them in embracing the librar y the jourchallenges you have, as a mentor, after Kennalism set up for them.” nedy, as it students, stands today. and worked KEVIN RIGGS While Jim for papers such Haye s d o e s n’t as the Los Angepossess as much wideles Times, the Associated spread fame as Kennedy across Press and The San Luis Obispo campus, he is a legend of the Tribune. journalism department.

Hayes was named top journal“He is my role model for what ism professor in the state by the an advisor can be at their very California Newspaper Publishbest,” O’Sullivan said. ers Association while teaching

at Cal Poly. By exhibiting proper journalism ethics and a no­-error writing policy, he was known as a tough but caring professor and advisor.

“It shows respect for the student’s capacity,” O’Sullivan said.

“I think the best advisors carry that combination of caring, high expectations and an amazing capacity to relate to students and to support them in embracing the challenges you have, as a mentor, set up for them.”

And without faculty advisor George Ramos, Mustang News may not exist today.

In 1991, Ramos fought to save the newspaper around the time of commencement.

“There was a point in our history when we were on the chopping block,” journalism advisory board vice president Tracy Campbell said.

His convincing words focused around the importance of student media.

Ramos convinced then­-Cal Poly President Warren Baker to keep the newspaper as an important part of the livelihood of the campus.

As a stable guiding hand for the newspaper, Ramos gained the respect and love of his students as a faculty advisor.

As a Pulitzer Prize winner, Ramos’ journalism skills found him writing for the Los Angeles Times, and helped him become the journalism department chair.

Being Latino, Ramos worked diligently to tell the stories of the Latino community in Southern California. His efforts here and in the Los Angeles riots in the ‘90s gave him his name in journalism and a place in the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Hall of Fame.

Now, Mustang Media Group — the umbrella over all student media — has several faculty advisors to encourage integration and forward­-thinking. For Mustang News, Patrick Howe and Brady Teufel advise for the print and digital products, and Richard Gearhart is the advisor for the broadcast content. Patti Piburn is the advisor for KCPR, and Dan Eller is the advisor for the department’s student­-run public relations firm, Central Coast PRspectives.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 9

The history of CPTV JASON HUNG | MUSTANG NE WS BROADCASTING LIVE | Cal Poly’s student-run TV station is now fully merged with Mustang News and has been rebranded as Mustang News TV. Students in a TV class host a live 30-minute broadcast each week.

Casey Pontrelli @CPMustangNews

The journalism department’s broadcast program, CPTV, is the epitome of the Learn by Doing philosophy. Since its inception in Fall 1994, the program has gone through many evolutions to get where it is today — Mustang News TV, an integrated part of the newsroom.

Prior to 1994, journalism students concentrating in broadcast journalism did all of their work in radio broadcast with KCPR, according to Cal Poly alumnus and current faculty advisor Richard Gearhart.

“We had complete broadcasts on KCPR at the time,” Gearhart said. “There was both morning news and afternoon news every hour, like a regular radio station.

That was the only outlet, so everybody got assigned a shift and

did news on the radio.”

Clay Carter started CPTV in Fall 1994. Then in 1997 came King Harris — who had a morning show with local radio station KVEC until this past January.

In 2000, Harris was followed

by Kevin Sites, who, according to Cal Poly alumni Melissa Figueroa, turned the program around.

Figueroa graduated from Cal Poly in 2002, and saw a big change in CPTV’s television broadcast that came with Sites’ teaching sabbatical.

“It really wasn’t in existence until Kevin Sites, our instructor at the time, came in,” Figueroa said.

Figueroa came to Cal Poly as a junior transfer, and saw the transition in video editing from tape to digital.

“When I came in, they were just starting to get things off the

ground,” Figueroa said.

“They had just gotten Mac computers to do editing. Prior to that, (there are) horror stories of (how we edited) tape to tape and things like that ... Way before digital editing came into existence, that’s what we were doing, until they got the funding to get Macs and start editing on DVC Pro (digital) tapes.”

Sites’ revamp of the broadcast program at Cal Poly created a lot of interest in the program because he had so much experience to share with students, Figueroa said. “It was really nice and refreshing to have someone that was so fresh out of the business that had that eye for writing for television and understanding television,” Figueroa said.

“It was really motivational — like, ‘Here’s what you need to actually succeed in this business,’ it’s not just theoretical,” she said.

John Soares, a producer of weekend newscasts for KCOY in Sant Maria, came after Sites.

A year after Soares’ arrival in 2002, CPTV received a financial boost with funding from the College of Liberal Arts and the Student Academic Fee initiative.

An article in Cal Poly’s Annual Report from 2003 claimed that “the production newsroom and studio ... underwent a major refurbishment in Spring and Summer 2003.”

With John Soares also came the live, half-­hour long broadcast students produced weekly — start to finish. This practice, which continues today, encapsulates Learn by Doing.

“I don’t think there’s any other way to learn broadcast, to tell you the truth,” Gearhart said, regarding the live broadcast packages.

In 2006, Patti Piburn — a morn-

ing host on KCBX and current journalism lecturer at Cal Poly — became the CPTV professor.

Piburn has seen the progression of CPTV, and said that she has seen students be “innovators” with the technology and equipment available. CPTV became MNTV, a part of Mustang News, in 2013.

“When we were doing CPTV in 2010, students would throw cables out the window and do live shots outside, just to be out of the building and do a live shot for the show,” Piburn said. “But it was hardwired. Then we went to doing them with Skype, so I’ve seen that progression.”

As for the future of MNTV, Gearhart sees the program trying to catch up to the technology that has come out, as he feels like it’s gotten a bit behind.

“It’s very difficult to keep up

with the technology,” Gearhart said. “I almost think that there’s a possibility that we’ll have to talk a little bit more about citizen­ type journalism, or even phone journalism, and recording information on any available piece of equipment. Because it isn’t so much that you have to have a broadcast camera anymore dedicated to that.”

Though MNTV lacks some of the bells and whistles associated with larger TV stations, Piburn said her students’ need to be creative and innovative will serve them well in the real world.

“Maybe we don’t have a live truck or LiveU or some technology like that, but the students do find ways around those things,” Piburn said.

“I think (that) makes them better when they get out into the newsroom, because newsrooms aren’t always well­-equipped.”

I don’t think there’s any other way to learn broadcast, to tell you the truth.”

FACULTY ADVISOR RICHARD GEARHART

JASON HUNG | MUSTANG NE WS PRE-SHOW | Journalism senior Daniel Park and journlaism junior Allison Royal have a focus in broadcast within the journalism department. Each week, they pitch, shoot and edit their own stories for the web and TV show.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 10

Multimedia journalists: A new generation of storytellers

Celina Oseguera

Georgie De Mattos Photo editor

Managing editor for web

Honestly, if you can think of something to add to a story, you can make it can happen.

Anything is possible with multimedia.

CELINA OSEGUERA

Celina Oseguera & Georgie De Mattos @celinaoseguera @georgiedemattos

Multimedia has changed the way journalists think about a story. It has also changed the type of journalists we’ve become. We are a different breed. However, we aren’t what you may think.

We aren’t newsroom kids who produce “fluff.”

We don’t incorporate graphics and videos to a story just to make it look pretty.

We don’t put the aesthetics before the facts.

We’re much more than that.

Georgie de Mattos (the photo editor) is in charge of everything related to photography. Celina Oseguera (the managing editor for multimedia and web) is in charge of all things web — whether that’s infographics or data visualizations.

Since our jobs are innately multimedia-related, we are part of this new species.

Multimedia journalists like

ourselves are engaging readers and challenging them to think differently.

We’d list everything a multimedia journalist can incorporate into a story to achieve that goal, but every day we’re learning that there’s always something new — 360 virtual reality videos, interactive story platforms that put the infamous Snowfall to shame and many, many others. The opportunities are endless.

We, as a Mustang News staff, have taken advantage of these opportunities. In regards to multimedia, we’ve done an entire story on virtual reality and filled it with virtual reality videos.

We’ve mentioned long-form stories on subjects like the Pasadena Rose Float Parade into interactive platforms. And we’ve composed an entire breaking news story about a bomb threat on a San Luis Obispo city bus in just under a few hours.

We’ve done stories that focus on just one medium as

well, such as our video on the Cal Poly Logging Team and an infographic showing the disparity in salary between Cal Poly’s higher-ups and the faculty and staff in the form of frappucinos and Chipotle burritos.

We’ve done a lot; video, design, infographics, coding, photography — you name it. But those components aren’t there for their own sakes. They are there to enhance the story, and to tell the news in a more clear and interesting way in order to better educate the public.

That’s our goal. It has always been and always will be — multimedia journalists aren’t straying away from the news.

Earlier this year, we were giving a tour to a group of grade-schoolers who just started their own online newspaper. After showing them one of our multimedia packages, Celina turned to the students and said, “Honestly, if you can think

of something to add to a story, you can make it can happen. Anything is possible with multimedia.”

And that is beyond true.

There has never been a time where we’ve thought of an idea that an adviser or fellow journalist told us wasn’t doable. If you can picture it, there is certainly an application, plugin or program to make it come to life.

Journalists are at an interesting point in time, when virtually anything is possible. But that doesn’t mean we’ll throw out what we learned as greenhorn journalists — using the inverted pyramid, writing without bias, serving as the voice of the people. It simply means we can show our stories in more interesting and informative ways.

These lessons we’ve learned will not be forgotten as we move into this exciting time.

Never have, never will.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 11

University Graphic Systems evolves with optimism

SO WE ARE EVOLVING JUST LIKE THE INDUSTRY IS EVOLVING, MOVING AWAY FROM THE TRADITIONAL OFFSET PRINTING, MOVING MORE INTO DIGITAL STUFF AND SPECIAL PRODUCTS AND SERVICES. -VINCE UHLER

Madi Salvati @MadiSalvati

file preparation for printing. That whole process of making plates takes about an hour and a half.”

Both Day and Fiske have a group of inThe low hum of different machines buzzing terns who help with both processes. with ink and life made it hard to hear Vince “We have a class, Applied Graphic ComUhler — Print Technician for University munication practices, GRC 472), which is Graphic Systems (UGS) — explain how basically teaching freshmen what we do,” each printing machine operates.

Day said. “That’s the only class part of it.

“UGS tries very hard to emulate an actual I have interns that also come in when I printing business,” Uhler said. “So we are am doing the prepress process of it and evolving just like the industry is evolving, I teach them about the software I’m usmoving away from the traditional offset ing. I use Kodak Printer G and Preps — printing, moving more into digital stuff which is the same software they use in and special products and services.” the industry.”

UGS is the reason copies of Mustang Fiske also has a set of interns that go News make it to the stands every Monday through the same program. and Thursday.

The student interns and managers are Graphic communication senior Turi Fiske a huge part of UGS. They put out quality said there’s more to the printing process work that keeps UGS evolving. than flipping a switch and watching copies “It’s evolved in a way that makes it easiof Mustang News fly out. er to pass down knowledge,” Day said. “It “It’s not like you can press a button and used to be that we passed down knowlhave newspaper come out — there’s so edge like word of mouth. Now we use much work that goes into it,” Fiske said. booklets and everything. It’s more of a “And I’m sure it’s the same for Mustang concrete process.”

News: They spend so much time writing As UGS keeps growing and evolving it and doing the layout, and we spend just around students and the graphic commuas much time making sure it looks good.” nication department, it also is accepting the Fiske is the web offset manager at UGS digital turn of the industry. and is in charge of the actual printing of UGS is used for packaging and the paper. publications.

“We print Mustang News, Cuesta ColRather than becoming obsolete, lege’s newspaper, The Cuestonian, and Uhler sees the printing industry adjustthe Morro Bay Sierra Club’s newsletter,” ing to the digital age where so much is Fiske said. available online.

UGS has the only student-­run colored “I see the market shrinking and getting newspaper printing press in the United more into specialty printing,” Uhler said.

States that’s produced on a biweekly basis, “Things are always going to need printing: Fiske said. bills are printed by the millions, labels for If a student walks through UGS, they’ll packaging, envelopes.” witness the many computers and larger-­ Optimism about the evolving age of printthan-­life machines printing everything ing seems to have taken hold of the heart from envelopes to packaging labels. of UGS. But before anything can be transferred Like Uhler said, things are always going to to the printing stage, a prepress process need printing and with that, Mustang News is essential. continues to be UGS’ largest customer, acGraphic communication senior Rachel cording to Day. Day is the prepress manager at UGS and is “Mustang News is one of our biggest jobs, in charge of everything that happens before so it’s really important to UGS as a whole,” the paper goes to print.

Day said.

“Once Mustang News has finished up “They provide a lot of business.” the files on the shared drive, we take those UGS has constantly played a huge role files in PDF form,” Day said. “And basi- in the production of Mustang News, cally what I do is run it through a pre- Uhler said. press process and it separates the colors “We’ve been printing the Mustang News onto plates.” well before I got here, and I’ve been here Those plates go to Fiske and her interns for 10 years,” he said. to hang and add into the printing press, And hopefully, both the newspaper and Day explained. printing industries continue to evolve to“There are these cylinders and I make gether at Cal Poly for years to come. the plates that go around them,” she said.

“Congrats on 100 years,” Fiske said.

“My role in it is checking for errors and “That’s amazing.”

Madi Salvati @madisalvati

CHRISTA L AM | MUSTANG NE WS DROP IT | Once Mustang News finishes the newspaper, UGS students perfect the printed product.

BUSINESS FOR SALE OWNER WANTED

Broker: info@garybayus.com, 805.471.7256

30 Year Old Electronic Manufacturer in SLO

Key employees, Inventory and Equipment in place Owner retiring and will finance and train

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 12

The building blocks of Mustang News Michelle Zaludek The creation of Mustang News starts, quite literally, from the bottom up.

The business team is at the forefront, collecting and creating ads at the request of clients in order to pay for the production of the paper. For the most part, the ads are pitched by the client while the Mustang News Business production team creates the ad, graphic communication junior and production manager Erica Patstone said.

“Sometimes we have to go back and forth a little bit, just to make sure the designs are what the clients want, but usually we design them,” she said.

From there, page layout takes its first steps.

Ads are arranged on the bottom of a page and are stacked up. Usually, the ad stack doesn’t reach higher than about halfway. And there isn’t usually any predetermined destination for the ad. It’s negotiable within the eightpage spread, as long as color ads end up on color pages.

More often, the ads are pushed around and eventually end up wherever they fit and take up less space.

The pages — called dummies at this stage — are sent next door to Mustang News, where they’re divided amongst the design team, beginning production night — a process that can take about seven hours.

“We collaborate,” Patstone said.

“And there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.”

Filling in the rest of the page can be a challenge. The mixture of stories being filtered in from online, photos and infographics don’t often fit into the leftover space on the first try.

Ideally, the stories going into the print edition of Mustang News are the most compelling, and universally interesting pieces, according to journalism senior Kayla Missman, the editor­in­chief of Mustang News.

@michelleinistic

But when content is scant, the production team will incorporate whatever stories they can.

“I call it the Tetris of designing,” said graphic communication senior and assistant designer Sabrina Smith. “When you look at the newspaper, every single article, the text all aligns on one single line. So we have to change a lot.

Like the tracking and the size of a photo, or the title, just to make everything fit.”

Designing a page can take about one­-and-­a-­half to two hours for two pages, according to Smith.

But certain items in the paper —

lot of important things we have to rely on to get the paper dropped on time.”

Further, a great deal of Mustang News content that ends up online isn’t in the print edition — it can’t always be transferred over.

“It’s kind of two different worlds sometimes, even though the same objective is to make news,” said journalism junior and Mustang News multimedia and web managing editor Celina Osegura.

The two different forms of storytelling serve different purposes — both working across different platforms to make news more accessible.

While the online medium can harness video and infographics to break down compelling stories and breaking news, traditional print for Mustang News tends to publish wider­-reaching stories that focus on quality writing and expressive photo.

“I think a lot of people think that newspapers are old hat, or they’re dead or they’re not relevant anymore,” Missman said. “But I like it a lot. Like, the smell of newspapers is one of my favorite things. I like the inky fingers, I just enjoy it ... And it’s just a different form of storytelling.”

On top of that, Missman added that just having a print edition of the paper on campus can serve the public as a visual reminder that there is significant news going on within the school community.

Even if students aren’t reading the paper, the hard work that goes into it can act as a sort of news bulletin — giving the campus community flash updates on relevant news, she said.

“I know I did that, admittedly, my freshman year before I was on Mustang News,” Missman said.

“I’d be on campus and I would just see the newspaper in the stands and go, ‘Oh, this fraternity got suspended’ or ‘the chancellor is coming’ or ‘we’re fighting over semesters.’”

The smell of newspapers is one of my favorite things.

I like the inky fingers.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF KAYLA MISSMAN

such as infographics or calendars — can take extra time.

“One time I was put in charge of making a calendar,” Smith said. “It took me a long time, but I was able to prove to myself that I could do it ... I had spent hours trying to get it to work, though.”

After, the finished pages are sent off to a team of copy editors. The stories had already been through at least three rounds of online copy editing, but the final check is still vital to make sure that no last­minute mistakes go in.

“It’s a lot of coordination to make sure that the dummies come over at the right time, and that ads were sold ... And we’ve already been planning for a week or two to get the photos in on the right day, and that the reporters aren’t having any issues,” Missman said. “There are a

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 13

ANDREW EPPERSON | MUSTANG NE WS KEEP IT TO THE LEFT

| Under current manager Steven Pardo, a business administration junior, the KCPR website has received a complete makeover, and now includes new editorial, marketing and art teams.

KCPR ‘makes waves’ in college radio Regine Smith @regine321

“Is this the damn switch?”

These are believed to be the first words broadcasted live on­-air at KCPR, Cal Poly’s student­-led radio station. Though no recorded account exists on the history of KCPR, KCPR alumni concur that the station had its start in 1968, when two students built a radio transmitter in their residence hall and gained sponsorship through the journalism department.

The way in which college students consume music has drastically changed since KCPR took roots in the late 1960s. As former KCPR general manager Stacey Anderson put it, “Now we’re so connected and there (are) so many sources ... If I were to join KCPR nowadays I think I would much more quickly have an international scope ... Of course, with the Internet now, radio is just one of countless sources from which to glean music.”

But before the age of Spotify, iPods and the Internet, and even further back before CD players, tape cassettes and walkmans, ra-

dio was the primary source of listening to music. This mindset can help to better understand the impact KCPR originally had on campus.

The music broadcasting station got its start at the time that rock ‘n’ roll music was taking the world by storm. Blogging on his time at KCPR in the ‘70s, former DJ James “Jim Zim” Zimmerlin stated that “This was the ‘70s! The hottest American pop music at that time were acts like the Bee Gees, Gloria Gaynor, KC & The Sunshine Band, and also the mellow side of the ‘70s like Barry Manilow, John Denver and Olivia Newton John.”

Aside from these ‘70s pop artists, college radio was known for playing music outside of the mainstream hits. One of Cal Poly’s most notable alums, “Weird Al” Yankovic, exemplified this.

The comical music artist most known for his pop­-hit parodies

and accordion polka medleys began his music career at KCPR while attending Cal Poly. In lieu of the rock­‘n’ roll hits played by other DJs, his segment, “The Weird Al Show,” was host to crazy

history of playing eclectic and indie music. In the ‘80s and early ‘90s, the station reached its heyday in college radio publicity. KCPR was one of the most popular college radio stations in the country.

“You could say those were the glory days,” said Bruce Flohr, who is currently the executive vice president/chief strategy officer of Red Light Management and was the 1988 general manager of KCPR. With access to resources like Boo Boo Records, KC P R pl aye d many indie artists before anyone else did. It was the first station ever to broadcast Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” KCPR was the only radio station of its kind along the Central Coast at the time, which is why it gleaned so much publicity. Location also played a significant role in the station’s success. Flohr shared that because KCPR was the only

This year, KCPR was nominated for “most improved radio station in the country” by College Music Journal

characters, comic readings and more eclectic artists like Barnes & Barnes and the Talking Heads.

Following suit of innovative Yankovic, KCPR continued its

major indie station of its kind between San Francisco and LA, he would convince indie artists on the road to stop between shows and perform at KCPR. As a DJ from 2002­06, Anderson will attest to the diverse music exposure KCPR provides.

“When I applied ... my taste was very unformed,” Anderson said.

“Walking in and seeing endless stacks of music to explore really opened an exploratory side of me; everyone around me was so curious and so passionate that I couldn’t help but learn very quickly. I learned about music that I had never even comprehended before entering that room. And a lot of that music went on to be what I talked about in my career ... Right now I’m the pop listings critic of The New York Times; before that I was an editor for a couple years at Rolling Stone. The names that I’m now discussing and the people I’m meeting, many of them I first learned about in jewel cases at KCPR. It was incalculably helpful.”

Nowadays, overseers hope that KCPR will expand beyond a platform for DJing. Flohr hopes to transform KCPR into a branded

content company.

In the past year, KCPR has seen a significant amount of growth. Under current manager Steven Pardo, a business administration junior, the KCPR website has received a complete makeover, along with the implementation of new editorial, marketing and art teams. Three years prior, KCPR consolidated with Mustang News and CPTV to form Mustang Media Group, under which the three subgroups share and divide content.

This year, KCPR was nominated for “most improved radio station in the country” by College Music Journal, the equivalent of Billboard in the college radio scene.

In fact, Pardo was invited by the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) to share Cal Poly’s groundbreaking work at a recent conference in New York.

From forerunning the discovery of up­-and-­coming indie bands to pumping out innovators in the domain of broadcast radio and creating cutting edge strategies on college media and marketing, KCPR has a history of “making waves” in the field of college radio.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 14

The entire Mustang News Business team operates out of one office.

JASON HUNG | MUSTANG NE WS DOWN TO BUSINESS | Advertising manager Maddie Spivek leads a team meeting in Mustang News Business. In total, the team consists of 14 students — sales representatives and two assistant managers, plus Spivek.

Keeping ad space filled one client at a time Will Peischel @CPMustangNews

The journalist trudges through back alleys, hounds public officials for answers and keeps eyes wide open — in the name of finding a story worth telling — with byline and contribution to public good as incentive. A glamorous life. However, running a newspaper isn’t free. For a journalist to maintain the platform from which to tell the good word, a team of business­-minded individuals work to keep the paper afloat financially.

Mustang News Business is no exception to that condition. Some three dozen students work in the office labelled “Mustang News Business” down the hall from the Mustang News newsroom.

They ensure ad space is filled and exceptional by print date, and that lasting relationships are maintained with local businesses to ensure the paper’s longevity.

The students won’t be around long enough to see the long­term effect of their efforts, but they are motivated by the knowledge that they’re contributing to something bigger than themselves. They’ll leave next year’s ad representa-

tives and liaisons in an advantageous place.

Mustang News Business divides into several slices: ad design, ad sales, marketing and distribution.

Ad salespeople oversee the relationship between local businesses — also known as clients — and Mustang News. Ad designers work with ideas presented by clients to create content that is satisfactory for all parties. Marketers work to facilitate the relationship between client, paper and audience. Business managers keep track of bookkeeping and ensure everything runs smoothly on a broader scale. Of course, that’s just the short of it.

The ad sales team builds relationships with local businesses that prove essential for keeping the paper afloat. Eleven sales representatives, all students, are each responsible for a sector of San Luis Obispo; on an individual basis, their job description is to maintain open lines of communication and healthy relationships with all of the businesses in their sector. That’s 14 students, the sales representatives, two assistants and the advertising manager — psychology junior Maddie Spivek — who oversee the entire town.

According to Spivek, that means that each sales representative is responsible for approximately 20 to 30 businesses.

“Sales representatives usually will go in every week or so, updating on what we’re advertising — fitting the needs of their target audience that they want to reach. We want to bring businesses in San Luis Obispo the opportunity to be heard in the student community,” Spivek said.

The job is certainly stressful, but Spivek said it teaches business-­minded students great skills for the professional world.

Sales representatives have to maintain a professional, friendly attitude which communicates that the Mustang News brand desires an outcome in which everyone wins.

“We really try to push that we’re not here to take your money,” she said. “We’re here to help your business. We’re going to spend it on some huge advertisement.

We’ll take your budget and try to help you as far as we can. That’s something we try to instill in our

sales representatives. We show that really well.”

When the time comes, a business will want to take out an advertisement in the paper or on the website. That’s where the advertis-

complicated process. Maintenance of old relationships with the same ads is only a fraction of the job description. The day’s work for an advertising designer is usually less direct and more proactive. Sometimes the ad designer needs to alter their work until the client is satisfied. In other cases, Mustang News Business preemptively sends a set of suggested advertisements to new businesses to show interest.

Art and design senior Jordan Triplett is the advertising design team manager.

According to her, the advertising designers work through meticulous alterations and changes until all parties are satisfied.

“Once the ad is designed, we try to do it within a day so the reps can send it to their client immediately,” said Triplett. “Once it’s sent to their client, they usually have requests to change a couple things or some new ideas. Once the client is happy with the ad we’ve created for them, they’ll approve it and we’ll add it to our finalized folder. Then it’ll go into the paper.”

We want to bring businesses in San Luis Obispo the opportunity to be heard in the student community.

Advertising Manager MADDIE SPIVEK

ing design team enters the picture.

The job form of the advertising design team varies on a caseby-case basis. In some of those cases, Mustang News Business has a long standing relationship with a business, and creating an advertisement to fit the needs of that business isn’t a particularly

A newspaper full of advertisements from local businesses has been created. Now what?

Another slice of Mustang News Business is the marketing team.

If nobody on campus reads the paper, none of the sweat, blood or ink would matter. Business administration junior Ross Pfeifer and his team of nine, including distribution and social media managers, are in charge of keeping visibility high and the Mustang News brand well­-known.

This comes in the form of showing a presence at major on­campus events like housing fairs or Open House, or simply distributing papers through the University Union during the week. In addition, the distribution team ensures newsstands are filled and students receive the paper.

The entire Mustang News Business team operates out of one office. No team operates independently of each other, and responsibilities overlap from wall to wall. Pfeifer calls the environment cooperative and essential.

“We’re always bouncing ideas off of each other. People are collaborating. We’re all friends, but also getting work done all of the time,” Pfeifer said.

Student media stays visual and important on campus Wren Fox @CPMustangNews

Whether it’s through radio, TV or artwork, student media at Cal Poly plays a huge role in the community both on and off campus.

The Learn by Doing mantra that Cal Poly upholds is especially relevant when it comes to student-­produced media.

Patti Piburn, an assistant professor in the journalism department, teaches multiple classes in which students produce audio or video projects, and even appear live on KCPR, Cal Poly’s radio station.

“You cannot really ‘learn’ journalism or ‘learn’ anything else without getting some hands-­on experience,” Piburn said. “That’s where the actual Learn by Doing aspect of this all comes in; students here are producing things that they would in the professional world, it really gives journalism here and other media departments something unique to be proud of.”

As Piburn alluded to, there is a multitude of media-producing parts of the campus community that students can use to foster their recreational or professional creative outlets.

Though the journalism department produces a large amount of media every year, the graphic communication (GrC) department produces a large amount of both tactile and digital media that differs yet coincides with departments campus­wide. Nearly every bulletin board on campus has an array of student printed and designed posters that originated from the student run GrC print shop in building 26.

Graphic communication sophomore Nina Heintz has created a variety of products such as online artwork, CD album covers, calendars and even Mother’s Day cards since she started attending Cal Poly.

“Since I was in middle school, I fell in love with graphic design,” Heintz said. “I fell in love with Cal Poly when I toured it during my freshman year and I knew long before I came here that the graphic communication major would be perfect and applicable to me.”

Heintz went on to describe how she feels that it is an advantage to be able to work with technology that is similar to the equipment used in a professional setting. Additionally, students are able to add

their creations and work to their portfolios so they have an established base before graduating.

“It’s fantastic that we get to take home and really utilize what we produce at Cal Poly,” Heintz said. “Without the media that we create as students during our time here, I doubt we would be as well- prepared for a professional setting. All of the creative software used by my major is always up to date so I really feel like we’re on the cutting edge of design experimentation when it comes to honing our skills, which is really important.”

According to Piburn, in order for products and media to stay relevant that students like Heintz produce, student creators must “continually engage with the student body and campus community.” The lifeline of student media thrives on whether or not that media is being consumed by the surrounding community. It is in this way that student produced media faces its biggest advantage and weakness simultaneously.

Through interaction with their peers and the community, students learn which media is best

WREN FOX | MUSTANG NE WS HANDS-ON

| According to assistant professor Patti Piburn, students need real experience to learn journalism.

received, and how to better improve the projects that they will produce in the future. Yet this also inevitably means that student error is oftentimes made live for all of campus to see.

“Some students find it challenging when their failures are made public,” Piburn said. “In other classes it is only the instructor who sees their students’ mistakes. Whereas journalism is public, all of the flaws in student production and media are broadcast to the public instead of just the instructor. It’s really up to the audience to decide the feedback and quality of their work sometimes.”

While Cal Poly students pro-

duce a majority of their media on campus, a fair amount is being produced and judged by off­campus communities as well.

Both KCPR and CPTV are regularly available for the public in multiple cities to listen to or watch, and students hold positions at off­campus media companies as well.

Journalism senior Amanda Fridley is currently employed at KSBY, a local NBC affiliate station.

“Student media is so important because it’s all learned and produced through hands-­on work,” Fridley said. “You need to mirror how an actual newsroom or media environment operates, and that’s what Cal Poly does. I

had little newsroom experience when I got hired at KSBY, so all the work I did simultaneously in the CPTV studio during classes really helped me out.”

Fridley went on to explain that many students are unaware about how to successfully navigate and produce media, as well as to “find your own voice.”

“Learning how to create student media has taught me and a lot of others how to form our own opinions and how to find the full truth behind a story or media piece. By creating media we learn how to interpret the media of others around us and how to better produce our message,” she said.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 15

MUSTANG NEWS DESIGNS THROUGH THE DECADES Timeline by Avrah Baum

1916

Mustang News, then and now

The Polygram was the first student newspaper, and it ran bi-weekly. This very simple and staightforward design didn’t last long.

CHRISTA L AM | MUSTANG NE WS

Annie Vainshtein @annievain

Mustang News wasn’t always Mustang News, nor was it always Mustang Daily. At the start of the 20th century, the Polytechnic Journal — Cal Poly’s first monthly student publication — emerged as the first stomping ground of news and literary publications on campus.

The reign of the monthly slowly dissolved, though the concept did not. It split into two publications, following the Polytechnic Journal’s dissolution into the campus yearbook and the introduction of Cal Poly’s first biweekly newspaper, The Polygram. The Polygram was the main source of news until 1932 — around the time the school was experiencing a multitude of changes in the structure of its education, as well as a dry period for advertising. Strapped for cash, the typewriting first round of staff utilized the school director’s mimeograph machine to generate copies of the newspapers in production.

By 1924, however, The Polygram joined with a student organization — cheekily referred to as the Galley Slaves — who would be responsible for printing The Polygram.

At this point, Cal Poly was home not only to vocational learning, but also to an academic high school and junior college. However, during the years of 1932­33, due to reshifting, the high school and junior college closed. As a byproduct, The Polygram shut down for six years, paving the way for the next publication, El Mustang, which was eventually replaced by a monthly news magazine,

Mustang Roundup.

By 1939 — also known as the era of El Mustang — printing had replaced mimeographing.

Change in the early 2000s Paul Bittick joined then-­Mustang Daily in 2002, when the paper was tabloid size.

At that time, Mustang Daily published Monday through Friday, all school year — except for finals weeks.

“It was beginning to be a tough sale,” Bittick said. “Cal Poly was basically a four­-day campus — it was a ghost town on Fridays.”

Without as many students on campus on Fridays, the daily model proved less lucrative than imagined. Around 2009, the Daily switched to four days a week.

Bittick said it was a “major load” on student editors to put out five­day papers, especially considering the small size of the department.

The focus on advertising also shifted greatly during those years. In 2002, Mustang Daily focused primarily on national advertising from massive corporations — VISA, cell phone companies, recruitment for businesses, etc. The Daily only had a few students working as ad representatives, and most of them had no proper training.

A ‘digital-­first’ transformation The Fall 2013 transition from Mustang Daily to Mustang News wasn’t just one of semantics — it signified the shift from a weekly to a biweekly newspaper, and marked the start of a great, digital revitalization. Now, the once strictly print media converged under one umbrella

with other forms of media, including broadcast and photo.

The environment continues to change — local advertising has almost completely overtaken sales from national advertising, Bittick said, and the advertising team is larger than ever before.

And while this certainly is something to laud, the pressing expectations of the digital sphere still present problems.

“We know businesses will always need to advertise, that’s a guarantee,” Bittick said. “But on what platform and how they do it — that’s the challenge.”

Profitability in innovation is the challenge; within the rapid expectations of the fast­-changing digital age, specialization is becoming more and more archaic. Students in media are expected to be multi­faceted in their skill sets and comfortable in the fusing across disciplines.

But this shift toward being a jack-of-­ all-­t rades is a positive thing as well, associate journalism professor and assistant chair Brady Teufel said.

“The purpose of a newspaper is to serve the democracy by informing people,” he said. “And if journalists have more varied skill sets to do so, it can only enhance that.”

Student media at Cal Poly is very unique because it’s the ultimate Learn

by Doing, he said.

“Students here are real­-life journalists,” Teufel said. “You’re serving democracy and acting out the same practices that professional journalists do — you can even get sued if you mess up.”

Nothing at Cal Poly, he said, has the same impact on education and society as student media does.

What happened to Mustang Daily?

Tommy Tran @CPMustangNews

Cal Poly’s student media has been around for 100 years, but what is now known as Mustang News has only been on campus for three years.

During Fall 2013, the journalism department made a switch from what was known as Mustang Daily to what we have today — Mustang News.

There were eight different name changes for the news publication throughout the past 100 years, but this shift was more than just a renaming.

When it became Mustang News, the program evolved to match the shifting journalism industry.

Rather than focusing on just producing a daily print newspaper, the publication became a convergent newsroom — producing content across all platforms.

“It was developed by the faculty in recognition that the world of journalism was changing drastically, and that to prepare students to be competitive in the job world,” journalism department chair and associate professor Mary Glick said. “To give them a more thorough understanding of how storytelling is done today, they would need to be able to work across multiple storytelling forms and platforms.”

Before 2013, there were two campus publications — Mustang Daily, a print and online newspaper, and the CPTV broadcast. Both were entirely separate from each other, despite reporting on many of the same stories.

“The decision was made to integrate the student media so that we had one student news organization that students worked cooperatively to produce news in print, online, for broadcast,” Glick said.

The idea behind converging was to break down the walls between print, TV, radio and web, and to instead work as one large staff, a trend that national news organizations are also following.

Students worked alongside journalism faculty to execute the shift to

1918 This new design was run from 1918 through 1926 and demonstrated the architecture of the buildings at that time.

1926 The Polygram abandons the artistic logo and opts for a new, polished design.

1938 The Polygram ceased publication sometime during 1932-33, when Cal Poly cut many programs. The student paper came back in 1938, with the name El Mustang.

1947 El Mustang continues with a newer version of their logo by having a leaping mustang facing the other way and replacing the serif font with a sans serif font.

1967 Mustang Daily is born in 1967, and the name stuck until 2014.

1969 Mustang Daily takes on this groovy new font through the early ‘70s.

1999

HANNA CROWLEY | MUSTANG NE WS THROWBACK | After decades of “Mustang Daily,” the organization changed in 2013.

Mustang News.

J.J. Jenkins, the 2013-­14 editor-in­-chief, and other Mustang News leaders at that time — Carly Rickards, Sean McMinn, Jenna Watson and Olivia DeGennaro — also saw the opportunity for the journalism programs to collaborate rather than to compete. These students took various roles to fit different needs in the newsroom, developing positions like an “integrated content editor.” As the name changed, the editorial leaders led the way to the develop a convergered newsroom.

“During that time, there was a big shift in focusing online and producing more dynamic content like more video or photos. More and more things were focused on an online environment, not print,” Jenkins said.

To follow this shift, The Mustang Media Group was also developed, a larger departmental umbrella that manages Mustang News editorial, KCPR, Central Coast PRspectives (CCPR) and Mustang News Business. This group allows for greater collaboration toward producing content for Mustang News.

The students used ideas from professional news organizations as inspiration.

“We had seen all of these things in our lives while reading other papers and websites online and we often thought ‘Well, if they can do it, let us try and figure out a way that we can do it,’” Jenkins said. “‘New York Times did it? OK, cool. Let’s figure out how we can do it on our budget and our skillset.’”

Current editor-­in-­chief Kayla Missman has been on staff since the inaugural year of Mustang News’ convergence and considers the shift to be beneficial.

“Having integrated teams between the people who do broadcast and the people who do words is super incredible,” Missman said. “It’s no longer a competition between the two groups, it’s now a collaborative environment where we try to tell stories the best way we can.”

Converging the newsroom also led to the focus of online production with the posting of content immediately to the web, rather than waiting to break the news the next day through print. This allows the Mustang News staff to cover stories immediately.

Cal Poly’s convergent newsroom was the first of its kind among the California State Universities, and it’s here to stay.

Mustang Daily carried this straightforward design through the 90s.

2011 In 2010-2011, Mustang Daily took on a bit of a techy style.

2013

In Fall 2013, after 46 years of the Mustang Daily, the paper went through a rebranding to become Mustang News.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 16

Benjy Egel

Jen Silva

Managing editor for news and sports

News editor

How do we define news?

Benjy Egel & Jen Silva @benjyegel @jesilva345

What is news?

News can be entertaining, challenging and often bizarre. Who could have predicted a death threat being made from a fake Facebook account using Chad

Michael Murray’s photo as a profile picture?

News can be positive or negative. It can be an innovative engineering project or an administrative budgetary discrepancy — or a bomb threat made on a bus.

When we consider what counts as “news,” the most important

quality is whether or not it affects Cal Poly.

We define “news” as any new, current or relevant happenings connected to Cal Poly.

For example, if a sorority holds its 25th annual philanthropy event, that would not be considered news because it is a routine, yearly occur-

ance. But if a fraternity dedicates an entire week to suicide prevention, like Sigma Pi did in February, we would likely consider that news — especially the first time it is held.

These lines can get confusing, but at Mustang News, we do our best to remain focused and unbiased throughout all coverage. Here’s how.

How do we stay unbiased?

At the end of the day, we’re students — we all have interests and activities outside the newsroom. Jen danced in Orchesis’ winter performance, “Transcend,” Benjy was on the executive board of his fraternity and other members on staff

are involved with the Cal Poly Corporation, Cal Poly Athletics and various clubs on campus.

Having staff members affiliated with different campus groups is valuable for newsgathering purposes, but that’s as far as it goes.

Continued on page 23

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 17

100 years of sleepy inaction Emilio Horner @CPMustangNews

Emilio Horner is the Mustang News liberal columnist.

I’m a firm believer that if an individual simply cannot strive for or imagine a better life, then one has either reached Buddha­esque enlightenment or is essentially a dead man walking. The first step toward making the world a better place is being able to conceive of the world as such.

Unfortunately, dominant ideas within contemporary society reinforce realist knee­-jerk politics that “at the end of the day” the dreamers are just that, dreamers. Fight back.

No one would ever mistake Cal Poly for a liberal institution. In fact, Cal Poly is somewhere in­between a centrist school and a white man’s

privilege bear den. That does not mean the school has been without its political activism, it just means that protests are often small in scale and end up largely farcical in the long run.

The good includes Associated Students, Inc. hosting Black Panther Party co-­founder Bobby Seale in 1972.

Additionally, the school featured protests in 1968 against the Dow Chemical Company’s student recruitment, due to the fact that Dow was responsible for the napalm used to murder the citizens of Vietnam by the federal government. In the end, Robert E. Kennedy, learning from more aggressive protests at Los Angeles State University, decided to inter-mix faculty members with the student protests to eliminate feelings of student solidarity.

Later on, Cal Poly held a rally of 1,200 students at the College Union Plaza to protest Nixon’s mining of North Vietnam harbors. Still, despite some protests, Cal Poly never saw the ‘60s New Left protests that other universities witnessed.

Part of this is due to the fact that the school does not emphasize the liberal arts. Another reason is the lack of diversity in the surrounding area. Of course only time will tell, but Cal Poly’s participation in the wave of school protests over institutional racism, sexism and classism with SLO Solidarity proved to this writer, if only for a brief time, that radicalism was possible in sleepy San Luis Obispo.

Still, I fear that leftist identity politics radicalism within the contemporary United States simply uses the commodified signifiers of leftist politics while reproducing

problematic norms. Additionally, the country appears so polarized with the rise of presidential candidate Donald Trump’s unique spectacle of fascism on the right and increased mainstream acceptance of nonheteronormativity in the left wing that it’s hard to see if the nation is entering into a more liberal future or a period of conservative backlash.

The future is unclear, but whatever happens, I hope the students of Cal Poly develop an ability to pierce the ideological veil, fight state violence, question assumed and naturalized norms, protect the environment and become more empathetic to difference. I pray that the next 100 years will see a more politically active school. We’ll have plenty of time to be sell­outs when we turn 30; for now, embrace radicalism and dream of a better future.

the new left

Why I prefer the left Brandon Bartlett @CPMustangNews

Brandon Bartlett is the Mustang News conservative columnist.

return to rationality

As a conservative, I sometimes ask myself why almost every one of my friends is a liberal. Do I attract them, or am I attracted to them?

Am I the clear voice of reason they need, or are they the breath that gives life to my world of stale politics? I have come to find that the latter is true.

Say what you will about liberals being foolish, immature, utopian, deluded or your other favorite ad hominem; we need to face the fact that the left is far more interesting than the right.

And this may not be a bad thing.

Is not the rich and vivid color of

a painting more enrapturing than a mere photograph? Does not the poetry and symbolically layered meaning of a myth outshine a mere history? In most cases, it does.

And please do not accuse me of argument by analogy; I simply want to establish that fiction, regardless of its truth or falsity, has the capacity — or even the propensity — to grip the imagination with far more vigor than mere fact.

And from my experience, this is because fiction tells a truth far deeper and more profound than can be discovered in any textbook.

And may this not also be true about liberalism?

May we not grant that the Marxist myth, regardless of its potential issues in application, is one of the most beautiful yet conceived? The

idea that humanity, a mere biological accident within a greater cosmic accident, might rise against all odds and throw off their bestial chains. That we may soar above the realm of animal and take our place among the gods.

But let us not forget the lesson learned by poor Icarus.

And yet, we should not ignore that inner voice that calls out its assent. That soft cry of “Yes! Yes! That is how the world ought to be. Where all may give that which they can and take that which they need.”

But even if we were to grant that the left is a mere Utopian imagining, which I certainly do not believe, let us remember that we need dreamers as well as builders; painters as well as engineers.

ILLUSTR ATION BY ROSTON JOHNSON

And as much as I would love to believe that we could all be architects, that unique synthesis of art and practicality, the truth is that few of us are equipped well enough.

And this is why we so desperately need the viewpoints of others, for they expose holes in our own thoughts that we have long forgotten.

This is why I am so thankful to my liberal friends, for they have taught me far more than I have to offer them, and I am better because of it.

So, in honor of 100 years of Mustang News, let’s take a moment to be thankful for every time that political iron has sharpened political irony. And let’s be okay with the fact that, sometimes, it is okay to prefer it.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 18

100 YEARS of

editors-in-chief COURTESY PHOTO | ROBERT E. KENNEDY LIBR ARY ARCHIVES Gina Randazzo

Raymond E. Herr, The Polygram Editor-in-chief 1916-17.

This letter from the editor was written for the first-ever Cal Poly student publication, The Polygram.

For a small price of 5 cents, Cal Poly students, faculty and community members could pick up a copy of the four-page pamphlet. The

Sally Boss, El Mustang editor-in-chief 1966-67, and Joe Hannifin, El Mustang editor-in-chief 1967-68.

This excerpt is taken from the March 31, 1967 of Poly Viewpoint — a quarterly newspaper mainly filled with editorials from El Mustang staff and Cal Poly journalism students. The piece that Boss and Hannifin wrote explains the completely student-run nature of the publications, as it still is today. El Mustang covered local, national

Jason Plemons, Mustang Daily editor-in-chief 1995-96.

Jason Plemons started working in production for Mustang Daily, then quickly made his way to the editorial side, as editor-in-chief.

He oversaw major stories such as the Oklahoma City bombings, the disappearance of Kristin Smart and a KKK rally in

JJ Jenkins, Mustang News editor-in-chief 2013-14 JJ Jenkins began his career at Mustang News as a sports columnist during his freshman year, then moved up to being the sports editor during his sophomore and junior years and finally graduated to being editor-in-chief his senior year.

One of the most significant changes in Mustang News history happened during Jenkins’ term as editor-in-chief. The Mustang Daily, which published its print editions four times a week with little online presence, switched over to Mustang News, publishing print editions twice a week with much more

Kayla Missman, Mustang News editor-in-chief 2015-16 Kayla Missman started her Mustang News experience as a news reporter and copy editor during her sophomore year, the managing editor for multimedia and web the year after that and finally became Mustang News’ current editor-in-chief.

Missman described the editor-in-chief job duties as, for the most part, intangible. Though she is heavily involved in the production of the newspaper, Missman said much of the job is making sure everything is running smoothly, managing people and making ex-

@CPMustangNews

Polygram covered athletics, on-campus events and small news stories. It also published an array of jokes, poems and short, lighthearted stories. The following paragraph is the first letter from the first editor-in-chief, in the first edition of The Polygram.

“Well, here it is. The first issue of The Polygram. We know it is far

from perfect and we expect to be criticized, in fact we want to be criticized, that we may improve your paper. In order to make this paper grow and become a success, we must have the loyalty and cooperation of every student in the school.

Why shouldn’t we? The Polygram is the official organ of the Student Body and every member should

help to boost it. To be sure The Polygram is not as big as a newspaper and has no correspondents in the big cities or in Europe, but show us the paper or magazine that didn’t start out on a small scale, or a man that was not at one time a child. It is up to the students to make this paper a thing to be proud of, something that will win recognition in

town, and something we can send to the big high school of the state.

This means you. Kindly turn in all stories, jokes, etc. to the editor of his assistant. We must have them and it is up to you to see that we get them. Anybody can start something, but it takes brains, support and ambition to keep it going and improve it.”

and international news as well as newsworthy projects, clubs, activities and programs. In 1967, El Mustang even had a student cartoonist who had worked as an animator for Walt Disney Studios.

“The lights burned … It was 2 a.m. The college newspaper El Mustang was finally put to bed. It was ready for the morning press run, and over cigarettes and coffee, the editors discussed the next edition.

Editors aren’t the only ones who put in long hours for the

publication (40 hours a week) of the newspaper — the whole staff joins the ranks. Being a journalist and a student is a different way of life. Because of constant deadlines, there is always an air of pressure and excitement surrounding the journalism department for those working on the newspaper. It is an active way of life.

El Mustang has the distinction of being operated completely by students, from the news staff through the production staff. Full-time students enrolled in journalism

classes research and write stories, edit copy and write headlines, lay out the pages, take and develop pictures and sell and design advertising that supports the life of the newspaper.

The Business Manager of Publications and his assistants take care of all the records for the newspaper. They keep the advertising accounts, do all of the billing at the end of the month, do all of the business corresponding and collect on delinquent accounts.

Students in the printing depart-

ment set the stories and headlines in type, make up the advertisements, put the pages together and run the press. In addition, the circulation manager distributes the printed paper. From pencil to print, it is truly a student organized affair.

Putting out El Mustang certainly exemplifies the Learn by Doing philosophy of the college. Most of the classes in the journalism and printing departments are built around practical instruction in the art of putting out a newspaper.”

Modesto, Calif. Plemons ran the KKK article under the headline “Ignorant, racist assholes in white sheets dance around like morons, protest Black History Month.” He received quite a bit of backlash from this decision, with several Cal Poly students calling for his resignation.

Plemons said the most rewarding thing about working for Mus-

tang Daily was the team aspect of the newsroom and publishing the paper.

“It was a cool feeling,” Plemons said. “I learned a lot there. The newsroom was also a really cool place to hang out. What I learned there was really applicable to so many different careers.”

He also said that Mustang Daily exemplified everything Learn by

Doing was about, teaching him things that he not only used when he moved on to report for the Fresno Bee, but now in his high school teaching career.

“How much better are you going to learn copy editing than when you have a guy yelling over your shoulder to get stuff in by a deadline? I learned to write and write fast, and that’s helped me every-

where,” Plemons said.

The biggest piece of advice that Plemons said he could give to student journalists and Cal Poly students in general was to have fun, make connections and to not be afraid to fail.

“This is a perfect time in your life and in your career to take a chance and fail,” Plemons said.

“Everything is just a draft.”

online content and multimedia elements than ever before — plus the integration of then-CPTV, which is now the Mustang News broadcast team.

“More of the stuff we wrote, photographed and took video of was designed with a web audience in mind,” Jenkins said. “It made a lot more sense given the demographics of college students reading news stories online and increasingly on their phones.”

Jenkins said this meant that reporters had to make a huge mentality shift when doing their jobs. Now, reporters didn’t just think about the words they were going to write to merely document a story. They had

to think about other ways to tell a story — through photos, videos, graphics — sometimes not even having to use text.

Jenkins noted how this especially affected storytelling in sports. It was one thing to talk about superstar men’s basketball player David Nwaba, but showing his talent through photos and video was a whole different experience.

“When you add in that aerial dunking photo of (Nwaba), the audience is more or less forced to watch his athleticism. And that just enhanced the storytelling so much,” Jenkins said.

Along with integrating multimedia into news content, Jenkins and

his staff helped Mustang News build its social media presence, increasing readership by almost double what it had been the previous year.

“By the end of the year I think mostly everybody felt like we were on the same page. We had come together for a really special year and produced an amazing website,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins said he feels proud to have been the face of Mustang News for the year, even though it could be challenging at times.

“There were times when we did something we shouldn’t have done and I had to deal with backlash from students or administrators or whoever it might have been

that day,” Jenkins said. “But it was a privilege to do that for a staff that I absolutely adored and loved. It really meant a lot to represent such a great institution on campus, I thought we were such a great independent voice.”

As far as advice for current and future Mustang News staff, Jenkins said to not be afraid of change.

“Don’t forget the key tenants of journalism, that you’re there to tell the truth, tell good stories and enlighten your audience,” Jenkins said.

“But also don’t forget who your consumers are because you may have to adopt some of their habits and change the way you do your job, and that’s okay.”

ecutive decisions — skills that have been put to the test this year.

Coverage of the SLO Solidarity movement, which was formed from protesting hateful comments written on a “Free Speech Wall” in mid-November, was the “first grand experiment” for this year’s staff, according to Missman.

Missman said that most of the challenge came from coordinating with staff that had dropped everything during dead week to help with the coverage and making sure what Mustang News was publishing was fair and balanced.

Because of the various perspectives on the SLO Solidarity

protests, demands and opinions, Mustang News was able to serve as a platform to facilitate discussions between different parties.

“We haven’t really published many letters to the editor in the past; people don’t really send them in,” Missman said. “So it was so exciting to get a dozen letters and be able to publish a variety of perspectives from the psychology department (to) the Women and Gender Studies Department, to just random students and professors.”

Though there was a bit of backlash about the letters, Missman said overall, Mustang News accomplished presenting both sides

of the argument fairly.

“I’d say it was our biggest challenge so far, but I’m super proud of the way our team handled all of it,” Missman said.

Missman said the Mustang News team is the most rewarding part of her position and if it does well, the whole publication does, too.

“It’s been really exciting to watch our staff grow in numbers as well as grow in talent and interests,” Missman said. “It’s cool to watch our editors become more confident in their skills and more able to help reporters through whatever they’re working on. So what’s really rewarding for me is finding

the right positions for people and helping them succeed there.”

Missman said Mustang News has had a wide scope of articles this year, ultimately benefitting the community. She said that as the staff thrives and improves, the content becomes better and more accurate.

But in order to improve, Missman said it’s necessary to admit that you don’t know everything.

“We’re all students. I’m still learning every day,” Missman said.

“It’s so important that people feel comfortable being vulnerable and asking for help. Humility and the curiosity to learn more are such great skills to have.”

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 19

Recapping our biggest sports coverage Eric Stubben

@ericstubben

ASSOCIATED PRESS

IAN BILLINGS | MUSTANG NE WS CHAMPS | The 2014 basketball team celebrates.

GOLD | Stephanie Brown-Trafton, Cal Poly alumna.

Cal Poly may not be known as an athletic powerhouse, but the last 100 years have

Mustang football players, the team manager, a member of the Mustang Booster Club, and four other persons perished in the crash.” Many players survived and some even ended up playing on the football team the following year.

IAN BILLINGS | MUSTANG NE WS ODDS | The men’s basketball team won the Big West Conference tournament in 2014.

included some incredible moments of sports history. From a tragic plane crash in 1960 to a historic Olympic gold medal in 2008, the Mustangs have left their mark on America’s sporting history.

The top five sporting moments in Cal Poly athletic history are described below with excerpts and references to Cal Poly’s student publications. Though not all moments are bright, these five moments represent the largest moments in Cal Poly sporting history.

1960 football plane crash Those familiar with the 2006 movie We Are Marshall may not know that a similar event happened at Cal Poly in 1960.

After the Cal Poly football team suffered a 50­-6 loss to Bowling Green, they headed to Toledo to fly back to California. Minutes after the Curtiss C­-46 — chartered by Arctic­Pacific — took off, some lives of passengers on board changed forever, while others’ unfortunately ended.

The Oct. 31, 1960 edition of Cal Poly’s student newspaper El Mustang reported “Twenty-two persons aboard the twin-engine C­46 airliner, including 16

Ozzie Smith inducted into MLB Hall of Fame Before shortstop Ozzie Smith had his image ingrained in Cooperstown, and before he was making dazzling double plays and doing backflips in the infield, Smit h was a student-­a thlete

at Cal Poly.

Often labeled the greatest shortstop in baseball history by sports pundits, Smith’s induction into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame may be the pinnacle moment in Cal Poly’s more than 100­-year sporting history. Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002, Smith returned to Cal Poly to deliver the 2003 commencement address and attend the dedication of “Ozzie Smith Plaza” near today’s baseball and softball fields.

Mustang Daily’s June 19, 2003 edition reported that Smith wiped tears out of his eyes during the ceremony due to the support of the Cal Poly athletic community.

Alumna Stephanie Brown-­T rafton won gold medal in Beijing Ranked the No. 16 discus thrower in the world prior to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Cal Poly alumna Stephanie Brown­-Trafton was far from the favorite to win the

gold medal.

However, after turning in a 212­- foot, 5 throw, Brown-­ Trafton hoisted the American flag over her head in victory, becoming the first (and only) Cal Poly graduate to win an Olympic gold medal.

Though school was out of session that August, a January 2009 edition of Mustang Daily named Brown­-Trafton’s success one of Cal Poly’s greatest moments of 2008. The article noted that Brown­-Trafton was an engineering graduate and three­time All­-American at Cal Poly.

Cal Poly basketball went to NCAA Tournament “It felt like a Disney movie,” former Cal Poly forward Chris Eversley said after the 2014 men’s basketball team completed its improbable run to the NCAA Tournament. A miracle three­-pointer with 14 seconds left by an unlikely hero, then­ true freshman Ridge Shipley,

the first time, where they faced an uphill challenge as a 16 seed with a play­-in game. After beating Texas Southern in the playin round, the Mustangs were outmatched by No. 1 overall seed Wichita State in the second round. The trip to the tournament did, however, promote the Cal Poly brand around the nation and provide a recruiting bump in following years.

Cal Poly baseball ranked No. 1 in the nation The Cal Poly baseball program is one of storied history. That history came to a pinnacle in 2014 when the team achieved the nation’s No. 1 ranking in the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper poll.

After advancing its record to 34­ - 5, the team became the second Cal Poly athletic team to reach a Division I No. 1 ranking alongside the 1985 volleyball team.

The team finished the season

IAN BILLINGS | MUSTANG NE WS NUMBER ONE | The 2014 baseball team was the second Cal Poly athletic team to reach a Division1 No. 1 ranking.

set the Big West Conference on fire. Cal Poly, the conference tournament’s seventh seed, then became the lowest­-seeded team in Big West Conference history to win the tournament.

The win sent the Mustangs to the NCAA Tournament for

47­- 12 and hosted the NCAA Regional Tournament in San Luis Obispo for the first time.

The Mustangs lost twice to Pepperdine in the regional tournament and failed to advance to the next round.

COURTESY PHOTO | ROBERT E. KENNEDY LIBR ARY ARCHIVES TRAGEDY | In 1960, the Cal Poly football team was involved in a plane crash while flying back to California. Some team members survived, but 22 people on board died — including 16 players, the team manager and a booster.

100 YEARS | 20

100 YEARS

Thursday, April 14, 2016

ANDREW EPPERSON | MUSTANG NE WS

A century of

CHANGE Naba Ahmed

@nabaahmed

Mustang News has been 100 years in the making to create the multimedia newsroom that we have today. From The Polygram to El Mustang to Mustang Daily, this organization has never skipped a beat in covering the most significant events that affect Cal Poly and the San Luis Obispo community.

The start of Mustang Media

The first school newspaper, The Polygram, began in 1916. It was published every two weeks.

News Revival News Revival Publication of the school newspaper temporarily stopped in 1932. After a six­-year hiatus, the paper was published again on Nov. 4, 1938. It was renamed El Mustang.

Poly “P”

Out of a rivalry between the California Polytechnic School and San Luis Obispo High School in 1919 came the Poly “P.” San Luis Obispo High School students had placed a large stone H on the hills surrounding the town. Poly students retaliated by changing each H to a P. After that, Cal Poly students permanently created the “P” on the hillside overlooking campus. The “P” has long stood as a symbol for campus pride.

Learn by Doing

In 1925, the infamous Cal Poly motto Learn by Doing formed its roots in the enterprise projects that were established for agriculture. Students would “earn while you learn” and spend mornings in class and afternoons on their projects. These enterprise projects formed a foundation for today’s senior projects.

Poly Royal

The first Poly Royal took place in 1933. This event was created by Julian A. McPhee as a way to reinvigorate the school and attract more students. Poly Royal consisted of an agricultural showcase where students were judged at the state level. This “County Fair on a College Campus” attracted hundreds of visitors along the West Coast.

Cal Poly Rose Parade Float

Cal Poly has had the long­-standing tradition of participating in the Rose Parade in Pasadena, Calif. It all began in 1949 when the first Cal Poly Rose Float was created through the partnership of the San Luis Obispo and Pomona campuses. Entirely constructed by students, the float is made using resources and flowers that are grown on both campuses.

Week of Welcome (WOW) In 1957, Cal Poly’s orientation program became known as Welcome Week. These students paved the way for WOW today. Complete with a leadership training camp for student leaders on Tuesday nights, WOW is what is today because of the decisions made in the 1960s.

Daily News On April 10, 1967, the campus newspaper makes another name change. Despite only publishing three times a week, it is called Mustang Daily.

Founder’s Day On Sept. 27 and 28, 2001, Cal Poly faculty members, students, staff, alumni and honored guests celebrated a century of achievement with Founder’s Day. Former Cal Poly President Warren J. Baker moderated a panel discussion on educating America’s diverse population for an economy that is increasingly based on science and technology.

Additionally, Baker reflected on Cal Poly’s first century and the service that university faculty has provided in shaping the future minds of America. There was also an all-­university picnic that included festivities and a fitting 100-foot cake. More than 5,000 campus and community members showed up to commemorate 100 years of service in the two­-day event.

Stories that sparked discussion James Hayes

For 100 years, Mustang News has covered a broad spectrum of stories.

Among all the stories, some stand out as stories that created change in the campus climate — stories that resonated not only on campus, but also throughout the whole community.

Poly Royal dissolves into riots The tradition of Poly Royal came to an abrupt end April 29, 1990 after rioting broke out two days before and continued on until that morning. At the end of the riots, 80 people had been arrested and more than 130 people had been injured. The article (one of many) published in the Mustang Daily on April 30 gave insight to the violence and chaos that San Luis Obispo had seen that weekend. The riots and the story marked the end of Poly Royal, as well as created a tension between the community and the college that was not felt prior to the riots and that still lingers today. The effects of the Poly Royal riots still affect events like Week of Welcome and have created a distrust toward Cal Poly students from the community.

The April 30 edition of the Mustang Daily not only featured the article detailing specific parts of the riots, but also editorial and opinion

@jimbles_hayes

pieces from students and Mustang Daily staff members.

Cal Poly freshman Kristin Smart missing This edition of Mustang Daily featured the first article on campus concerning Cal Poly freshman Kristin Smart’s disappearance. Kristin Smart’s disappearance is one of the most controversial cases not only at Cal Poly, but in San Luis Obispo County. Smart was last seen returning from an off­c ampus party May 25, 1996. Her disappearance grabbed the nation’s attention, and her story has been covered multiple times by Mustang News throughout the years. What is so impactful about Smart’s disappearance is that the search hasn’t ended. She was pronounced dead on May 25, 2002, but many have not given up the search. A billboard in the Old Village of Arroyo Grande still has a picture of Kristin and a plea for help to find the missing student.

Roof collapses during St. Fratty’s Day party One of the most recent events that caused a huge impact in San Luis Obispo was the roof collapse at the St. Fratty’s Day party in March 2015.

This story was one of Mustang News’

most prominent instances of digital­ first breaking news coverage, and it also caused lasting effects on the relationship between greek life and university administration.

Since the roof collapse, relations between greek life and Cal Poly administration have been strained. Fraternities were put on social probation and the San Luis Obispo Police Department (SLOPD) increased fines during holidays. The ramifications of this event not only hurt greek life, but also alienated the community like the Poly Royal riots.The story published by Mustang News was updated throughout the day as new information came through, which was a huge step for Mustang News. Reporters, broadcasters and designers worked together and were able to provide an up-to-­date and continuous stream of information to the student body.

Today, Mustang News operates around the clock providing the student body with information on news relating to Cal Poly and the community. News teams, designers and photographers all work together to create content that is both informative and impactful to students, so the legacy that has been created for 100 years can be added upon by future generations.

Our biggest and best coverage Peter Gonzales

Over the past 100 years, Mustang News has covered an extensive amount of stories, from campus happenings to crime to reactions to national events. Below are 10 of the best covered stories from the past 100 years.

Campuses cooperate: Parade float results On Jan. 9, 1949, Reporter Paul Tritenbach reported in El Mustang about Cal Poly partnering with California Polytechnic University Pomona for the universities’ joint entry into the 26th Annual Rose Parade. The float was named the “Rocking Horse” and cost a total of $250, with $150 of the cost paid by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The faculty adviser for the project was Oliver A. Batcheller, who said that he hoped that the “year’s entry would establish a precedent for future rose parades.”

@CPMustangNews

Mustang Daily. A photo of Curry was included with the story as well as details of the investigation, dates of the trial, information from the ballistic report and information on how the arrest was made. The story provided a detailed look at a crime story that affected the campus.

Poly newspaper gets colorful for 71st year and Polygram to Mustang Daily The March 13, 1987 edition had two stories on the front page. Jennifer Manor reported on the change of name and the beginning of the use of the new color printing press. The front page also utilized photos to help tell the story, from a photo of the new $500,000 printing press to illustrate the switch to a color edition of the paper to a photo of the first Polygram staff from 1916.

McPhee climaxes 33 years at Poly El Mustang reported on July 8, 1966 that then­-Cal Poly Vice President Julian A. McPhee would be retiring. The front page featured a photo of McPhee, accompanied by the article that discussed his work at Cal Poly. The front page also included details on his state­wide recognition, his contributions toward expanding agriculture programs on campus and information on the trust that Cal Poly was setting up in McPhee’s honor.

Cal Poly RPTA Department generates national ‘buzz’ Marisa Bloch reported on the recreation, parks and tourism administration department’s national recognition. The story was in the Nov. 29, 2004 edition of Mustang Daily.They received three special recognitions — to a student for winning a future scholars award, a group of students winning a quiz bowl and a handbook created by a group composed of staff, faculty and students.

Librarian shot: Officials looking for suspects, clues Mustang Daily staff reporter Pamela Ramstrum and Daily news editor Janet Krietemever reported on the shooting of Cal Poly library director Dr. Norman D. Alexander in the Jan. 16, 1979 issue of Mustang Daily. The article was a front page story and was beside an image taken of Alexander’s umbrella near where he was approximately found. The story included interviews with witnesses and with the professor who found him, however he remained anonymous in the story and the only detail on his identity was that he taught architecture.

The Polygram reports on the end of World War II The issue that was published on Nov. 13, 1918 featured a statement of condolence on the front to Cutler Dyer, a 1913­ 14 Cal Poly student who died while serving his country. The issue also had letters from two former Cal Poly students who were overseas serving.

Cal Poly student helps tackle crime The Aug. 25, 1983 summer edition of El Mustang reported on a student who helped police by tackling a man who attempted theft on campus. The story is written similar to a sports story, there’s a play­-by­-play of the attempted crime and ensuring foot chase. The ending of the story also wraps up by leading up to the moment when officers called the student the next morning.

Suspect in Cal Poly murders says not guilty Staff writer Rosemary Costanzo gave a detailed report of the Kenneth Wayne Curry trial in the Oct. 16, 1984, edition of

Greatest boost to Poly advertising in history Giles Liegerot reported for El Mustang on Dec. 16, 1938 on the filming of a technicolor film on Cal Poly life. The roughly 20­-minute film was to be shown at the World’s Fair in the Future Famers building. What stands out most in the story, however, is the way that the scene is painted for readers; sounds of the movie production are described as well as the description of the plot and which buildings will be featured.

Coeducation time­turning event El Mustang featured several stories on the front page that referred to the admittance of women into campus. The Sept.

18, 1956 issue included a welcome letter/statement from President Julian A. McPhee which addressed the admittance of coeds to Cal Poly, as well as the words “Hello Girls!” on the masthead.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 21

Lessons that last a lifetime GEORGIE DE MATTOS | MUSTANG NE WS

Sabrina Thompson @sthomp_jour

People have said that the skills we learn through experience will carry us through life — that even the smallest things that we may find tedious or menial, those are the things that teach us the most. For many Mustang News alumni, this has proven to be tried and true.

Working at a newspaper is not the easiest task. Balancing a workload plus school — no matter what position held or what major — can be extremely difficult. But it is in times of trial that we find what keeps us moving forward. For some it’s the relationships, and for others it’s the knowledge that these things will help define their future.

Erica Husting was the special sections coordinator for Mustang News her senior year in 2014. She started two years before that as a copy editor after seeing an ad in the then-Mustang Daily. In her three years at the paper, she cultivated relationships that have carried her through life.

After graduating, Husting spent time in Madrid teaching English at an elementary school. During her time in Madrid, several of her

friends she had made at the paper came to visit.

“The friendships you make at the paper apply half a world away,” she said.

Beyond the friendships that have lasted through her post-graduate career, Husting remarks that after joining the organization, shy and without her niche, she was able to step outside her comfort zone and be more adventurous and bold. Now, working at a public relations firm in San Francisco, Husting reminisces on the many memories of working on the paper, and how that first step of venturing out of her comfort zone helped her get where she is now.

Former editor-in-chief Brian De Los Santos, who captained the last ship called Mustang Daily in 2013, feels the same.

A 2013 journalism graduate, De Los Santos went on to a graduate program at Northwestern University before working at the Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Magazine and now Mashable, where he works as an assistant editor.

“It was really cool to be surrounded by people who were like-minded in their interests, in career goals,” De Los Santos said

of working at the Daily. “Everyone had this passion for storytelling and for editing and for writing.”

While he was editor, Mustang Daily was printing Monday through Thursday, a news cycle De Los Santos said kept him in the newsroom 20 hours per week at minimum.

“It really took a lot of people who were really passionate about journalism, and it put everyone into one room, I think it was a really unique experience,” De Los Santos said. “It seemed like we were all working for one collective goal and that was to put out the best product we could.”

After he graduated from Northwestern, De Los Santos was a digital editor at the Chicago Sun Times for three months before holding an internship at Chicago Magazine.

De Los Santos began working at Mashable in July 2015, and has been living in New York ever since. Mashable is the first true online publication in which he has worked.

“This publishing cycle is really rapid, so a lot of my days entail editing anything from eight to 18 stories a day, it really comes fast and quick, and that’s kind of Internet

media today,” De Los Santos said. such a fundamental part of my In many ways, De Los Santos journalism education and for that said his role at Mashable is sim- I’m forever grateful.” ilar to what his job entailed as But recent alumni aren’t the only editor-in-chief of Mustang Daily. ones who gained lessons and skills “The actual process and the job from their time at Mustang News. responsibility that I had as Editor of El Mustang in 1957 editor of the Mustang Alton Pryor shared Daily isn’t so difthat his experiferent than me ences writing at being an ediCal Poly were tor at Mashlife-changable,” De Los ing. Pryor’s The friendships that you Santos said. story goes all make at the paper apply half “Granted, the way back the stakes to his days a world away. are higher in the navy and a lot more and continue ERICA HUSTING people are reading today, where he the content.” has self-published 25 At Mashable, De Los Sanbooks at his company Stagetos’ responsibilities include en- coach Publishing. suring proper media coverage of Pryor majored in what is now news events, contributing story agricultural communication. ideas and planning larger editori- However, in his graduating al campaigns for New York Comic year, the major was known as Con, the Super Bowl and election agricultural journalism. coverage, among other things.

Right after graduating, he worked “The skills that you learn in stu- at United Press International, and dent media are so valuable and a then ended his reporting career at lot of people come out of college California Farmer Magazine. After without really exposing themselves he spent 27 years at the magazine, to that resource,” De Los Santos it closed its doors, and Pryor’s said. “Working at the Daily was son encouraged him to write his

first book, “Little Known Tales in California History.” He has since written and published 25 novels, including his own self-publishing guide and a book he considers to be “the highlight of his writing career” in which he had the opportunity to interview President Ronald Reagan.

Pryor’s time at Cal Poly and working for El Mustang is far different than it is today. During his time here, it was an “all-male” college, where “type was still being set

by Teletype machines.” However, some of the lessons that he learned are still relevant.

“Newspaper layout, type sizes and fonts. I still find that information valuable in laying out my books,” Pryor said.

Pryor attributed some of his success to working on El Mustang, and speaks with fond memories that have lasted him a lifetime.

For some alumni it has only been a year or two out of the Mustang News newsroom, and for others it has been decades. Mustang News cultivated journalists whose moments and experiences as part of the news team have taught them lessons that will last their entire life.

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER:

@cpmustangnews

Thursday, April 14, 2016

100 YEARS | 23 Continued from page 16

MUSTANG NEWS’ VISION STATEMENT IS TO BE THE ULTIMATE NEWS SOURCE AT CAL POLY AND TO DRIVE CAMPUS CONVERSATION. IN THE TIME WE’VE BEEN ON STAFF, WE HAVE STOOD BY THESE GOALS AND MADE PROGRESS TOWARD THEM. BENJY EGEL AND JEN SILVA

As editors, we make a concerted effort to remove reporters from stories if they may have a connection — either positive or negative — to the subject of the story.

For example, one of our photographers is a member of SLO Solidarity. Because of her ties to the group, she was not allowed to shoot any of the protests, discussions or rallies that took place during dead week of fall quarter.

Staff reporters are expected to cover a wide range of news while maintaining professionalism. The same journalist who covered differences in the university’s responses to reported sexual assaults at Pi Kappa Alpha and Alpha Gamma Rho also interviewed Sage the Gemini and Hoodie Allen at Spring Stampede. Sometimes news coverage means attending fun events like concerts, and other times it means digging into gritty details of crime and policy.

This reporter maintained her composure in both situations — something we try to teach our staff to do.

What does fair coverage mean?

Along with newsworthiness, we aim to cover events fairly and accurately. This can mean getting both sides of the

story in an article that seems inherently negative.

Take, for example, a feature Mustang News ran on how surging textbook prices have inspired students to look for other ways of obtaining the material or not bothering to seek it out at all. The article included statistics and anecdotes on how expensive hard-copy textbooks can be, including those sold at the Cal Poly University Store.

The reporters who wrote the story spoke to numerous students about their experiences and mined the Internet for data about textbook prices’ cost.

They also spoke to psychology professor Laura Freeberg, who said that books in the Cal Poly are less expensive than they are at other universities because the store is independent.

Media outlets can have a large impact on their surrounding community, but as the Spiderman cliche goes, with great power comes great responsibility. Our work has little value if the proper bases are not covered during the reporting process.

Mustang News’ vision statement is to be the ultimate news source at Cal Poly and to drive campus conversation. In the time we’ve been on staff, we have stood by these goals and made progress toward them.

Thank you for allowing us to serve you for the past 100 years.