End of an Era In honor of our last print edition, we reflected on where we’ve been: the major headlines, the best comic strips and even the painful mistakes. Thanks for picking up the paper one last time.
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photo illustration by julia nikhinson, featuring the signatures of diamondback staff members
This, the final issue of The Diamondback, will no doubt receive a fond farewell from every member of the University of Maryland Community. Each person who has spent several years within the walls of our dear old Alma Mater, who has gone through the uncertainties and the pleasures which college life always brings, looks back upon the pleasant days spent there with a feeling of kindliness and love for their erstwhile home. And wherever they may be when they hear of any advancement made by the institution which has equipped them to stand where they do today, their heart glows with pride. This publication was a step forward and upward, and we hope that good to the college has, in a general way, developed therefrom.
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We are much pleased to express our thanks to those who have made it possible.
adapted from the diamondback’s first issue under its previous name, the triangle, jan. 1, 1910
S2 | news
monDay, march 9, 2020
THE ROAD TO
INDEPENDENCE
I
Christine Condon, Lyna Bentahar & Eric Neugeboren | @CChristine19, @lynabentahar & @eric_neugeboren | Senior staff writers
1970 M BOOK University Archives
If you look at the first page of the 1970 University of Maryland M Book — a welcome guide for freshmen — you may not notice anything strange. At least not at first. But if you look a little closer, and then turn the page on its side, you’ll see what the maze of lines and blocks truly spells out: “Fuck Elkins.”
independent board was formed to oversee these publications. “This was all about freedom of expression and freedom of the press, and our ability to print what was going on every day,” said Bob Mondello, a movie and theatre critic for The Diamondback in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. “Frequently, the administration and the student body were very much at odds about that.” Before its independence, The Diamondback received some funds from the Student Government Association. But the paper was already a lucrative business, fueled by advertisements in its daily print editions. In the years since, the circulation of the print newspaper — and advertising revenue — has dwindled. But The Diamondback still supports itself, continuing a legacy of fierce criticism and truth-telling.
Covering a campus in chaos: The Vietnam War
THE DIAMONDBACK May 12, 1970
Photo by Josh Wilkenfield
Wilson Elkins himself, then president of the university, graces the very next page with a message for the class of 1974, blissfully unaware. That year’s M Book was confiscated, said Susan Gainen, its editor and a Diamondback staffer who eventually became managing editor. Nowadays, that moment is considered part of the story of the rift between campus publications and the administration that eventually led to The Diamondback’s financial independence from the University of Maryland. And after the spate of campus protests during the
Vietnam War, and controversial editions of the campus features magazine — Argus — the connection between student journalists and their administrators became even more “untenable,” former Diamondback staffers said. Soon enough, an
Diamondback reporter and eventual editor in chief Chad Neighbor still remembers the day in May of 1970 when the campus protests broke out, shortly after President Richard Nixon announced the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. He and sports editor Jerry Goldberg had been playing tennis on campus. Walking back home, they saw the crowds. “It was like a scene from a film. There were 10,000 people down there,” Neighbor said. “We just looked at it and grabbed our notepads.” Student demonstrators managed to block Route 1 and even ransack the Reckord Armory — the headquarters of the university’s ROTC program. And the police and National Guard marched in, tear gas in hand. The gas, which causes intense eye and respiratory pain, started to become a fixture of the reporting experience at this university in 1970. “Honestly, it was sort of a rite of passage,” Gainen said. Tension on the campus had already been high. Earlier that semester, more than 80 students were arrested during a sit-in at the Skinner Building in support of two philosophy professors who had been denied tenure. “It was just a tinderbox,” Neighbor said. “All you needed was a match.” The protests continued further into May, exacerbated by the killing of four students demonstrating against the Vietnam War at Kent State University by members of the Ohio National Guard. And, at times, The Diamondback published critical coverage of the law enforcement officers attempting to disrupt the rioting. On May 5, the paper published an editorial titled “Gas attack on innocents incomprehensible” on its front page. And on May 6, it published images of tear gas alongside the message: “And the gas just kept on pouring in.” Some readers didn’t take kindly to the paper’s coverage of the campus unrest. “Taxpayers would say, ‘Hey, this is a communist publication,’” said Michael Fribush, who was the general manager for Maryland Media Inc., the company that manages the Diamondback, for over 40 years. For Neighbor, though, the most memorable momentfrom
that era didn’t come during a protest at all. Walking home from the newsroom one night, shortly before the campus curfew, he was arrested by National Guardsmen. When Neighbor saw the guardsmen approaching that night, he hid behind a bush. But they spotted him, and soon enough, he was handcuffed aboard a bus headed for the Hyattsville jail. Naturally, Diamondback editors bailed him out. Many Diamondback journalists from this era consider themselves lucky — to have witnessed history unfold on campus, messy as ever, and to have forged careers in journalism covering a student body torn asunder by a bloody foreign war. “It’s a great crucible for journalists, because you just don’t get better experience than that,” Neighbor said. “The people from that era still get together. We have an annual reunion at Ledo’s and reminisce.” And every day, there was a newspaper to put out. “The Diamondback was absolutely the center of the universe for Maryland,” Fribush said. “Everybody picked up a paper … They were gone at the end of the day.” Back then, editors would drive all the way to a facility in Silver Spring to arrange the type for printing, Fribush said. It was no wonder, then, that class often fell by the wayside. “I was taking this business class, and I missed the midterm, I missed the makeup for the midterm, and I almost missed the makeup for the makeup for the midterm, because I was too busy being a student journalist,” Gainen said.
Argus fights censorship Before and after the protests in 1970, Argus magazine goaded administrators with raunchy and politically powerful editions, paving the way for an independent board that would manage student publications. In December of 1969, Argus tried to place an image of a burning American flag on its cover, but officials refused to print the magazine until the photo was removed. Eventually, the magazine would be printed with the word “censored” across its cover. Argus ultimately sued Elkins for censorship with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union — and won. A federal district court ruled that the university couldn’t censor similar content in the future. In 1970, the magazine promoted a creative pornography contest, a headline designed to incite the university to block it. “We thought even using the name pornography, with nothing behind it other than saying this is a pornography issue, would be enough to get it banned,” said Dave Bourdon, former Argus editor in chief. Argus would continue a movement of what then-managing editor Alan Lewis called “disruptive political theater.” Meanwhile, there was progress being made toward establishing an outside publisher. But in a proposed makeup of the publisher’s board, only two student editors would have held seats, which prompted
backlash. In an April 1971 editorial, The Diamondback wrote “the proposed board of directors is entirely, unequivocally unacceptable.” Eventually, campus publications — which included the Black Explosion and the Terrapin Yearbook, in addition to
Argus and The Diamondback — accepted a newly proposed makeup of the corporation, and in September 1971, Maryland Media Inc. was established. The paper had officially cut ties with the university. In the months that followed, the paper forged ahead, holding the university’s administration accountable in new ways. In an editorial published in March 1972 titled “What is the administration hiding?” the paper published faculty and staff sala-
THE DIAMONDBACK May 5, 1970
THE DIAMONDBACK May 15, 1970
Photo by Paul Levin ries for the first time. The process was not conflict-free, former staff member Sandra Fleishman said. Before publication, a journalism department staffer tried to take copies of the salaries from reporters. “There were people who felt like it was an invasion of privacy, and I think that the university was embarrassed to not know that we were going to do that,” Fleishman said. The editors of the student publications under Maryland Media Inc. didn’t know how independence would turn out in the long run. But, to this day, the paper remains financially separate from the university it covers — even as the print newspaper business becomes less profitable. “The Diamondback did become the real newspaper it needed to be,” Lewis said. newsumdbk@gmail.com
MONDAY, MARCH 9, 2020
news | S3
A Reckoning: Examining The Diamondback’s failures in covering race By Arya Hodjat, Jillian Atelsek & Matt McDonald | @arya_kidding_me, @jillian_atelsek & @MattC_McDonald | Senior staff writers
On a November day in 1993, many readers looking to pick up a copy of this newspaper were greeted with an empty newsstand — and a flier. “Due to its racist nature, The Diamondback will not be available today,” the note said. “Read a book!” Lamont Clark remembers laughing when he saw that. Then vice president of the University of Maryland’s Black Student Union, he knew that marginalized students took issue with the paper’s coverage of their communities. That was a long-accepted fact. Clark normally turned to the school’s black publications instead, and he was used to feeling disappointed in The Diamondback. That day, about 10,000 newspapers were snatched off more than 60 racks, wiping out a third of the publication’s daily editions. “It was a legitimate form of protest,” Clark said. “The theft was about protesting the portrayal of black life on that campus.” The archives of The Diamondback are littered with images of blackface and front-page headlines advertising minstrel shows. Reporters have decided not to cover stories important to minority students and botched many of the ones that they did. Any examination of our history would be incomplete without highlighting a fundamental truth: Time and time again, this paper has failed its readers. And though such failures affected people with a broad range of identites, the discriminatory treatment of black students and community members was often particularly glaring.
‘A tool of white supremacy’ I n t h ea te rs o n t h i s campus throughout the 20th century, white performers would don blackface and act out caricatures of black people in comedy sketches as part of “Cotton Pickers’ Minstrel shows.” The Diamondback promoted them consistently and zealously. For example, the front page of the January 12, 1951 edition — which contains the news of the inauguration of Maryland Gov. Theodore McKeldin — awards prime real estate to advertising an upcoming show. Those choices made The Diamondback a “tool of white supremacy,” said Andre Perry, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities. Perry received a doctorate from this university’s education college in 2004. During his time on the campus, he dug into the school’s archives to research its racist traditions. “When you’re a journalist,” Perry said, “you like to think that you are trained to remove yourself from that context in order to report on it.” But immersed in the
campus culture, writers and editors have the same “blinders on around race, around racism, that the rest of the community has,” he said. Just a few weeks after this paper boasted a photo of a “blackface spiritual singer” assuming what it referred to as the “traditional pose,” the school’s Board of Regents ordered the university president to admit the institution’s first black undergraduate student, Hiram Whittle. As courts and activists dragged U.S. schools slowly through the process of integration, the paper turned its focus toward a campus in turmoil. But its messaging on the topic was often mixed. In a 1950 issue, The Diamondback printed an anonymous letter to the editor that blasted those who supported integration. “The well-educated Negroes have stated that the Negro is far happier with his own race instead of mixing with us,” it read. “If non-segregation is allowed, this will mean inter-marriage, which I don’t believe anyone really wants.” A n d eve n wh e n t h e paper’s editors took a stand for equality — publishing anti-segregation editorials and condemning discrimination on the campus and in the city — they stopped short of endorsing earnest protest. In a 1954 editorial, the staff wrote that the idea of boycotting College Park restaurants that refused to serve black patrons was an “extreme radical” thought. “We do not believe that drastic action need be taken in the matter,” it said.
kappa alpha order hosted minstrel shows on campus for decades. A spokesperson said the shows “do not represent” the group’s values today. (january 9, 1951)
‘The epitome of whiteness’ dec. 1, 1950
“If you relied on The Diamondback to tell the story of the non-white student experience of Maryland, you would think there wasn’t a non-white student experience at Maryland.” Corey Dade, former Diamondback and Black Explosion staffer
The gaps Harry Clifton “Curley” Byrd wore many hats for this university. From the 1910s to the 1930s, he held titles including head football coach, athletic director, assistant university president and vice president. In 1935, he became university president. He was also an ardent segregationist. But that context didn’t appear to resonate with the editors of The Diamondback’s December 1, 1950 edition. “Byrd Asks For Racial Ballot Test,” the front page read. Its sub-headline: “President Says Negroes Prefer Own Institutions To College Park.” The only source quoted in the article is Byrd. And buried nine paragraphs in is the news that “recently, Parren Mitchell, another Negro, was admitted to the graduate school of sociology.” Mitchell was the school’s first-ever black student. Much of the story of The Diamondback’s failings in later decades is apparent in gaps in its coverage — a byproduct of a campus where the needs of students of color have, for so long, been ignored. That trend continued long after the most blatantly racist content faded from the paper’s pages. It
outlasted the pro-segregationist columns and the jarring images of blackface, pointing to a wider — if quieter — bias. As the Black Student Union fought for increased SGA funding in 1969, protesting at meetings, The Diamondback referred to its actions as “harassment” and “disruptions.” Later, it published a front-page story headlined “Whites protest BSU racism; ask to join.” For another example, look to May 1970, when authorities shot and killed students at two different American universities. One shooting occurred at the primarily white Kent State University in Ohio — the other at the historically black Jackson State College. A search of “Kent State” in The Diamondback’s archives from the years 19701979 yields more than 250 results. There are fewer than 50 references, meanwhile, to “Jackson State” in the same time frame. Many of them appear in articles primarily about the Kent State shootings.
staff editorial, november 19, 1954
oct. 6, 1969
1 9 9 0 wa s a t u r n i n g p o i n t fo r b o t h P r i n ce George’s County and The Diamondback. That year’s census revealed that — after decades of gentrification — enough of Washington, D.C.’s black residents had moved to the county to turn it majorityblack for the first time. And, for the first time in The Diamondback’s then-80 year history, a black man had been selected as editor in chief: Ivan Penn, who grew up in Southeast D.C. Penn, who now works at The New York Times, said many of his peers questioned his decision to work for the paper, often accusing him of betraying his black identity. After a series of complaints from activists over editorial decisions, Penn sat down with the Black Student Union. At the center of a room, in front of a circle of black students — some of whom were his colleagues on the school’s gospel choir — he got an earful. “Their question was, ‘Why are you going to work for the white newspaper?’” Penn said. Bert Williams, a 1996 graduate and current copresident of the university’s black alumni group, said he read the paper every day. But he didn’t always feel satisfied with its coverage. “People probably didn’t feel that we were getting the same platform for a major issue in the black community that some other stories or some other issues were getting,” he said. When Corey Dade — who transferred to this university from a historically black college in Louisiana in the early 1990s — worked for The Diamondback, he was met with a predominantly white staff. “It was the epitome of whiteness,” Dade said.
“Plenty of them did have some personal experience with people of color, but they didn’t know how to translate that into their coverage.” So, Dade said, when those white reporters wrote stories criticizing the universities’ black fraternities, for example — or stories that misspelled Frederick Douglass’ name and mistakenly identified W.E.B. DuBois’ book The Souls of Black Folk as “Sales of the Black Folk” — it only reinforced to black students that The Diamondback didn’t care. “If you relied on The Diamondback to tell the story of the non-white student experience of Maryland, you would think there wasn’t a non-white student experience at Maryland,” Dade said. “It almost never existed. And when it did exist, it was problematic.”
Next pages It had been more than 20 years since black students stole issues of the newspaper when Maya Dawit felt compelled to sit down at her computer and write a letter that began: “Dear Kyle.” Days before, The Diamondback had published a column online headlined “The problem with today’s race war.” Kyle was the column’s author, and he’d crafted an argument against the Black Lives Matter movement that was reliant on false claims and faced intense backlash from the campus community in July 2016. The hashtag #DearKyle gained traction on Twitter. Though The Diamondback’s then-editor in chief issued a statement recognizing that the column should not have been published, it had — by that point — worsened the paper’s already-fraught relationship with minority students. “When people talked about The Diamondback, there was this idea: It’s very institutionalized. If you’re in it, you’re in it. And if you’re not, it’s hard to find your place. So then it’s really hard to diversify the stories that come out of there,” Dawit said. Journalism is the first draft of history. Over the course of The Diamondback’s 110 years in print, we often got that draft wrong. Those failures, though they vary in scope, are as evident in the case of #DearKyle as they are in the pages of a 1940s newspaper that saw fit to advertise minstrel performances. This isn’t an allencompassing look at our shortcomings, but we hope it’s a start. From Monday on, what was the result of an act of protest in 1993 will become a stark reality: This paper will forever be absent from campus newsstands. But the remnants of our ugly history — as a university, and as a publication — will remain, and we must reckon with it.
newsumdbk@gmail.com
S4 | NEWS
monDay, march 9, 2020
HISTORIC HEADLINES A look back at some of The Diamondback’s biggest stories By Rina Torchinsky | @rinatorchi | Senior staff writer
testudo arrives (June 7, 1933)
hail to the terps (October 22, 1957) Graduates of the class of 1933 donated the iconic Testudo statue following their commencement. The bronze terrapin found its initial home outside the entrance to Ritchie Coliseum. Over the years, the terrapin statue was stolen and recovered as far away as Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown and West Virginia. The statue weighs 400 pounds. It was later filled with cement to ward off thieves.
vietnam protests (May 4, 1970)
Queen Elizabeth II attended a football game in 1957 and was featured on the front page of The Diamondback. The front-page photograph shows the queen shaking thencoach Tommy Mont’s hand, as then-Maryland Gov. Theodore McKeldin — for whom McKeldin Mall is named — looks on. The queen and Prince Philip made their way to the stadium in a royal caravan. There were about 43,000 fans in attendance. The Terps beat the North Carolina Tar Heels 21-7.
a campus in mourning (June 26, 1986) Students rallied on May 1, 1970, to protest the United States’ invasion of Cambodia, amid Vietnam War tensions, according to Diamondback archives. The protest spanned 13 hours and continued throughout that month. Police used tear gas and riot sticks in response to the rally. Students responded with rocks and bottles, among other things. The next day, then-Gov. Marvin Mandel declared a state of emergency on the campus.
deadly tornado (September 25, 2001)
Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose just after he was chosen by the Boston Celtics as the second overall pick in the 1986 NBA draft. Then-men’s basketball coach Lefty Driesell called Bias “the greatest basketball player that ever played in the Atlantic Coast Conference” according to Diamondback archives. In the 1985-86 season, Bias averaged 23.3 points per game and shot .864 from the free-throw line. Four days after his death, more than 11,000 people gathered at Cole Field House.
first basketball title (april 2, 2002) A tornado tore through College Park on Sept. 24, 2001, tossing a vehicle and killing its two passengers near Easton Hall. Then-Gov. Parris Glendening declared a state of emergency in Prince George’s County. Forty-seven people were taken to local hospitals with non-life threatening injuries, according to the archives. “It’s total devastation,” then-university President Dan Mote said.
Maryland took home its first national title in men’s basketball in April 2002, dispatching their future Big Ten rivals Indiana 64-52. As the Terps secured their victory down in Georgia Dome in Atlanta, students back in College Park were feverish with excitement. At least 10,000 students showed up at Fraternity Row to celebrate, according to archives. Students “mooned, flashed and taunted” police, who would about six people.
arson in college park (May 2, 2005) A fire engulfed a home on Princeton Avenue in April 2005, leaving 22-year-old student Michael Scrocca dead and another student with critical injuries, according to archives. Stephen “Tex” Aarons, a survivor of the fire, jumped out of a second floor window to escape the blaze and landed on a car. He had burns on 30 percent of his body. Freshman Daniel Murray, also a student at this unviersity, would be sentenced to 37 years in prison for murder in Scrocca’s death. According to court records, Murray had been taunted earlier in the night by a partygoer at the house and returned to set a couch on fire.
big ten bound (July 3, 2014) The University of Maryland started a “new chapter” on July 1, 2014, when the school moved from the ACC to the Big Ten. Testudo joined his new Big Ten colleagues, including University of Iowa’s Herky the Hawk and Ohio State University’s Brutus Buckeye, at a block party at Nationals Park to celebrate.
MONDAY, MARCH 9, 2020
news | S5
“A Really Beautiful Thing” Diamondback alumni reminisce about their time at the paper By Angela Roberts | @24_angier | Senior staff writer
left to Right: Diamondback staffers work in the newsroom in the 1980s. (diamondback archives) Diamondback editors pose for a 2015 photo in the newsroom office. (courtesy of laura blasey) Students gather for the 1989 Diamondback yearbook picture. (university archives)
F
or some Diamondback staff members, the steady shuffle of life after college has left the years spent in that slightly dingy room above the South Campus Dining Hall a bit blurry around the edges. But how could they forget the night the cops showed up at a newsroom party after a couple of people decided to launch an old typewriter outa window? What about election night in 1968, when a hard-pressed editor coming up against a deadline OK’d the next day’s print paper, which would announce — incorrectly — that it looked as if the next president could be decided by the House of Representatives? They’re eager to recount the D.P. Dough feasts, the impromptu rooftop concerts, the couch of questionable origins that was probably flecked with questionable substances. And they recall the screwups, the times they let their readers down. Most of all, though, the alumni of The Diamondback remember what it was like to have a scrappy student newspaper utterly consume their lives — the sort of exuberant, sometimes delirious level of devotion required to capture life at the University of Maryland. Things will be a bit different at the paper after this week. After years of watching its print circulation steadily drop, The Diamondback will become an online-only publication. Even journalists are prone to sentimentality when endings are in sight. So, as the weeks before the final print edition ticked by, former Diamondbackers revisited their years at the paper — the stories that shaped campus, the experiences that shaped their lives and how things will change moving forward. “It’s just a time in my life that I’m gonna remember forever,” said Mike King, the paper’s editor in chief from 2013 to 2014. “You know, the specific details of the technical things like working with the copy editing software, calling the printing press and that kind of stuff — that’s part of it. But the main part is just the memories and learning and growing and meeting people.”
“And I think it’s a really beautiful thing.”
*** Jerry Ceppos remembers how heavily the Vietnam War hung over the campus in the 1960s. Even students who weren’t facing the draft were scared for their brothers, their boyfriends. And just as the war consumed the thoughts of everyone on campus, Ceppos said it seemed to consume The Diamondback’s coverage. “It was a shared experience in every sense of the word,” said Ceppos, who was editor in chief from 1967 to 1968. “So it was a story that affected all of us more than most stories.” In the end, these kinds of stories are the ones that reporters and editors remember: the ones that tore at the fabric of campus life and broke the heart of the community. They remember the ones they reported even as grief or fear spun through their own lives and the ones that shocked administrators into action. But they remember moments of softness, too. Maria Stainer describes her favorite memory from the many years she spent at The Diamondback as the time she helped cover a poetry reading from Gwendolyn Brooks. At first, she remembered, the audience was quiet as the small woman stepped up to the podium. Then, like a “Sun god” busting into the room, Terps basketball superstar Len Bias strolled in, clutching a bouquet of pink carnations and daisies and wearing a navy blue suit. He presented the flowers to Brooks and gave her a kiss on the cheek — prompting the crowd to jump to their feet, yelling and cheering. Brooks, Stainer remembers, smiled ear-to-ear. Stainer was still working at the paper when Bias died due to a cocaine overdose in the summer of 1986, just two days after he’d been drafted by the Boston Celtics. Bias’s funeral service was the last thing Matt Wascavage ever photographed for The Diamondback. It was a surreal experience, said Wascavage, who worked at the paper from 1982 to 1986. “It’s sort of one of the times that, [when] I look back at The
Diamondback, that I remember pretty vividly,” he said. “I remember being up on the top of the hill of the chapel, where we were, standing across the street. Just being there.” Another moment burned into Wascavage’s memory is the Challenger space shuttle explosion in January 1986, killing all seven crew members. One of them, Judith Resnik, earned her doctoral degree at this university’s engineering school. Wascavage had photographed her once, he remembered. Since the science reporter had been late to the interview, Wascavage spent some time alone with the astronaut, snapping pictures and listening to her stories. On that day in January, Wascavage remembers watching the explosion on his television at home and taking in what had happened. Then, he pulled his things together and headed over to the newsroom. When Jaclyn Borowski thinks back to her years at The Diamondback, she doesn’t recall a time of sadness. She remembers unbridled joy. It was Nov. 4, 2008, the night Barack Obama was elected president. A horde of students charged through campus, shouting and cheering. Borowski doesn’t know when they gathered exactly or where they came from. “I think students were just so happy. It was such a big moment that they just wanted to celebrate with other people,” said Borowski, who worked at the paper from 2007 to 2011. “It seemed like they just had a bunch of energy and they didn’t know what to do with it.” They wound up sending the paper late that night, Borowski, said. Way past deadline. When all was said and done, another editor brought Borowski home. And as they drove back to her dorm, dawn began to break.
*** In the beginning, Mike King wasn’t exactly Laura Blasey’s favorite person at The Diamondback. He was just some weird, bald guy who liked to coordinate newsroom D.P. Dough orders. Then, in the fall of 2012, she got him for a Secret Santa gift exchange. She bought him a D.P. Dough gift card and a box of Cheez-Its — and he freaked
out. Hugging the Cheez-Its to his chest, King shouted out, “My wife!” Blasey didn’t find his reaction very funny. “I was like, ‘Are you joking?’” she said. “I was just so put off by that.” Throughout the following year, though — when King was editor in chief and Blasey was news editor — they gradually became close friends. Then, more than friends. And in less than three months, they’ll be getting married. The Diamondback has produced its fair share of couples. But the newsroom, with its grimy floor and temperamental thermostat, has led to lifelong friendships, too. Debra Moffitt remembers it as a haven of acceptance. The campus is big, she said, and often, you’re judged based on how you look — especially if you’re a woman. That wasn’t true at The Diamondback. “It was a place that kind of valued your mind and your intellect,” said Moffit, who worked at the paper from 1987 to 1989. “And you could be a quirky person there, and there was almost no downside.” From Stainer’s first day at the paper, that was the impression she got, too. She had just transferred to this university’s journalism school after spending almost four years studying biology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The second she walked into the newsroom, she remembers, “it was like, put your coat down — we have work for you.” More than 30 years later, Stainer still thinks of the people she met that day as family. They laughed together, drank together, crashed on each other’s couches. One night, as they were nosing around South Campus Dining Hall, they found their way onto the roof. It became their hang-out spot, Stainer remembers. “[The newsroom was] where we studied, that’s where we did homework, that’s where we socialized,” Stainer said. “That was sort of a second home.” Dilshad Ali, who worked at The Diamondback from 1993 to 1996, echoed Stainer. Throughout college, she commuted from Gaithersburg. She didn’t have a dorm to go back to during the
day, so the newsroom became her pitstop — where she went to work between classes, to make phone calls, to nap on that “god-awful sofa.” More than anything, though, Ali remembers how much everyone learned from one another, how seriously they took their jobs. For some, she said, it was almost like they weren’t at school to get a degree, but to work at The Diamondback. “It wasn’t like this thing you just did to put on your resume, or to get some work experience,” she said. “We cared. We cared about the newspaper, we cared about the university and the community, we cared about reporting the truth and the news. We cared about doing a good job.”
*** In the 1960s, Ira Allen got to be a bit famous around campus after he started writing columns for The Diamondback that skewed on the liberal side. Some students didn’t take too kindly to his opinions — they called him a communist, a radical, “every name in the book.” But he didn’t really mind. In fact, he enjoyed it. It taught him how powerful the press was — a power that was underlined by its tangible product. “It was in print, you could hold it, you could read it,” he said. “Even if it was dumped in a hallway or under a desk in a class, it kind of had a life.” The announcement in September that The Diamondback would move entirely online came as a blow to those who fondly recall the days when it seemed like everyone had a copy of the paper hidden in their notes during class — and not so much to those who remember walking past newsstands that always seemed overfull. But for most, it wasn’t a surprise. The agreement was preceded by the decision to cut the Friday edition in 2013, and in 2015, to print only once a week. Blasey was editor in chief when the latter decision came down. She remembers the frustration that led up to it — of needing new camera or computer equipment and realizing there just wasn’t enough money. She also recalls the rude awakening she received when a science professor pulled out a huge stack of Diamondback
issues from the storage closet and spread them over the tables before beginning some messy experiment. “I remember the paper that was on my table had a story that I had written from several years ago,” she said, laughing. “Just knowing that there wasn’t really a demand for the print product anymore, and a lot of that demand that we were still seeing seemed to be from science professors picking up a stack of newspapers for their lab class.” When the cuts were announced, Blasey said, she didn’t remember hearing a lot of opposition from reporters or editors. Instead, much of the pushback came from Diamondback alumni. “It feels like this very emotional, personal experience,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard to separate the financial reality from all of these nice memories that you have. And I think that’s sort of where people were coming from — they were sort of in mourning for this paper that they had in their head.” But this time around, even folks who were raised by a Diamondback that churned out a print edition every weeknight have been understanding of the move. Most have even been supportive. Ceppos called it the right decision, especially for “a market full of young people who are just not picking up print newspapers anymore.” Ali called it an “inevitable” change, falling right in step with the changing face of journalism. Stainer was optimistic, too. “It’s not the delivery system that makes it important,” Stainer said. “It’s not the plate you [use] to serve the spaghetti. It’s how good the spaghetti is.”
*** Reader, in this topsy-turvy industry that seems to be in a constant state of change, we can’t say a whole lot for certain. But we can promise you one thing: Although we will undoubtedly come up short sometimes, we will keep on trying our damndest to do right by you. And together, my good friends, we will make some incredible spaghetti. newsumdbk@gmail.com
monDay, MARCH 9, 2020
S6 | opinion
Opinion Danielle Ohl, former Diamondback editor in chief “THIS ONE ACTUALLY MADE IT TO PRINT! :D” That’s what my eager little thumbs tapped out, probably as soon as I got my hands on that day’s issue of The Diamondback. It felt like summiting Everest. No one is eager like a fresh journalist with their first print byline. I was no different. I’m sure anyone who saw me on Sept. 24, 2013 nearly called campus police. I was that jazzed. Just over the moon. Bursting. Tweeting. Journalists all like to act like we’re in it for the civic duty. Sure, we get to yank a politician back to earth every now and again. We right wrongs. We
ask the questions you wish you could. That’s part of it, absolutely. Really though, we’re as vain as anyone else. Probably moreso. And there is absolutely nothing like seeing your name in print for the first time. Nothing beats knowing you’re one of the privileged few who gets to become indelible. It was absolutely a privilege. I was even lucky enough to go from squealing about a measly general assignment story to running the whole damn Diamondback. Being a part of it — a bona fide print paper that people picked up and read in Bagel Place — made me feel like more than some anonymous college kid. The print paper meant something.
I could see it every day on campus and know we did good. It was the honor of my life to stay up until 2 a.m., blowing the print deadline to get breaking news onto the front page. I made my closest friends in the world sitting in our newsroom, arguing about front page design. Some of the best drinks I ever had were after putting a particularly solid paper to bed (sorry, Arnie). I feel sad knowing there will be future DBKers who won’t get that. Of course, I understand. The stacks got thinner as we cut circulation. Print editions languished, unloved anachronisms waiting for recycling bins. We shuffled racks, trying to trick students with smartphones into
carrying clunky sheafs of paper. We considered an ill-fated pivot to tabloid. I don’t fault the current staff for ending the print edition. They’re brave for doing what the rest of us pushed off. The writing was (literally, in the ed office) on the wall. The funny thing about newspapers, though, is that they might be the last thing that really lasts. As a professional journalist, I regularly rely on archives of dead papers to tell me what happened before. I relish seeing those names and thinking about the other people who got to be as lucky as I am. As we tried to upgrade our online presence, we lost things. Links started to break. The spiffy multimedia spreads and 3,000 word features we slaved over
no longer exist. That first print byline of mine? I have no idea what it was. The article linked in my tweet redirects to an error page. It’s probably for the best; I’m sure it’s God-awful. I’ve been assured the actual article does exist somewhere on The Diamondback website. That’s probably true. But it doesn’t have my name on it. So long, old friend. I’ll miss you.
Danielle Ohl worked at The Diamondback from 2013 to 2017 and was the editor in chief for the 2016-17 academic year. Ohl is now a reporter for the Capital Gazette and part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, in addition to being chair of the Chesapeake News Guild.
Jeff Kinney, former Diamondback cartoonist The Diamondback made me. It made a lot of us. A simple internet search will turn up scores of Diamondback alumni who went on to become reporters, writers, critics, producers — and, sometimes, cartoonists. Thinking back on my years as a comic strip artist, then a graphics editor and sometimes-writer in the early 1990s, The Diamondback was the ultimate proving ground. Twentythousand in print, daily. If you were a young person with something to say at the University of Maryland, The Diamondback was the place to do it. The opportunity was obvious. Truthfully, we were spoiled for it. A good chunk of students who worked for The Diamondback were journalism majors looking for some writing experience. I came in through the side door, earning one of the three coveted cartoonist’s slots. I might not have been on a journalism track, but the second I stepped through the doors, I knew I was with my people. And they were the best kind of people. Smart, opinionated, dedicated, ambitious, and fun. It’s the best batch of people I’ve ever worked with, and I feel lucky to have shared desk space with a fundamentally decent group of people, many of whom became lifelong friends.
This was pre-internet and pre-social media. The way I got “likes” was by going to the dining hall at lunchtime and watching people’s expressions when they read my strip. If someone laughed, it would make my day. The Diamondback made me, and it undid me. The late-night, deadline-driven lifestyle was addictive. McDonald’s dinner runs at 1 a.m. were the norm. Academics went out the window. When I had to choose between writing a comic that 20,000 people might read and a term paper that would be read by a single professor, I always opted for the bigger audience. I was a good student in high school, but I’d be embarrassed to put my final college GPA in print. I’ve heard they’ve cleaned up the offices. Maybe that’s because more staffers send in their stories electronically now. Maybe it’s because the health department came and threatened to shut the place down. But when I worked there, the pizza boxes were stacked high, and you’d hear the cockroaches before you’d see them. In my opinion, that’s how a newsroom should be. When I read about The Diamondback ending its regular print publication, it made me sad. Picking up a paper in a dining hall or the student
union was second nature when I was a student there. The internet was just getting started. We didn’t know then that it would take over almost every aspect of our communications and completely change the way we received information. But of course change is inevitable, and it’s usually good. The Diamondback, and the ideals it represents, will carry on. Just in a different form. The Diamondback isn’t going away, it’s just evolving. If you’ve read this far, chances are, you’ve read it on your phone. But the fact that you’re reading it means that journalism is alive and well. As we suffer through this shameful era where our elected leaders attack truth itself, I take comfort in knowing that history will remember journalists as the heroes of this age. So tonight I’ll raise a glass to the students who are starting their careers at the independent newspaper at my alma mater. Long live The Diamondback. Jeff Kinney worked at The Diamondback as a cartoonist before he graduated in 1993. Kinney is now a children’s author, widely known for his ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ series. He is also the creator of Poptropica, which was named one of Time’s 50 Best Websites.
JEFF KINNEY portrait (Courtesy of Filip Wolak)
David Simon,former Diamondback editor in chief I will not occupy any space in this last print edition of the newspaper that I most love to falsely claim that much of the work we once did there mattered remotely, or that the stuff we wrote is timeless prose, or that we were on any given night princes and princesses of journalism. Fact is, the years that I spent as a Diamondback writer and editor were an apprenticeship, and on a few notable occasions, a pratfall. As an independent, student-run newspaper, we had notable standards, and often, we kept to them. There were some fine moments. The Student Union ballroom burned in a late-night fire. We were able to strip it across the front page. The chancellor resigned and we had double-truck coverage of his career ready the next day. We went to Baltimore and wrote a feature story that actually referenced a dildo that we described, in print, as being the size of “a healthy pine sapling.” We did think it all mattered. You have to think so. Journalism is no fun at all unless you come to the newsroom every day and think it all matters. As has been said of all academia, the fights were so ruthless because the stakes were so small. Or so it seems in retrospect. The issues and the arguments and the headlines do not, for the most part, rise to the level of being the first draft of any history that much matters to anyone nearly forty years later. Tuition hikes, campus desegregation goals, student
government misallocations, dormitory vandalism – all of it now seems dry grist for a small-market mill. And yet, my god, we did care about doing it right. What the Diamondback delivered to anyone whoever walked up the main dining hall stairs, veered into its doors, sat down and began to type copy was this: A simple and abiding belief in an unaligned and apolitical craft. We genuinely didn’t give a shit if the University of Maryland excelled or collapsed, or if Hell cracked a gaping maw under Route 1 and swallowed College Park whole. We only cared that we could report as much in some coherent form and maybe get a photog down there so there would be art on the front page. Once, covering a Board of Regents meeting, I came up with an ethical test that no hack regent could pass and in doing so, I saw the simple opportunity for a story. It seems a new member of the regents was one of the largest construction magnates in the Washington area. Would the regents put him on the university board’s building committee and risk the obvious conflicts every time that panel voted on a capital project? Or would they embrace an ethical moment and assign him to other duties and ask that he recuse himself on all matters involving university building projects? I asked the Board of Regents Chairman. “What would you do?” Peter O’Malley asked, turning the question back on me. “Me? I don’t care. I get to write the
story either way.” The man looked at me with real contempt. “That,” he said, “is incredibly cynical.” “Thank you,” I replied in earnest. Mind you, these were the years after Watergate, when the journalism school was flush with acolytes, and when American institutions were being doubted and interrogated in every possible way. I do believe that many of us in that tiny newsroom were preparing ourselves for a career in which permanent doubt was to be the operant ethic. The world could no longer be relied on to provide proper outcomes in the wake of proper journalism. At best, you could find a place to stand upright on the notion that you got as much right in your story as you possibly could. The world might not get fixed, but your third graf could be made better if you reworked that lumpy middle sentence. About a year after I finished my three and a half years at the student newspaper, when I was stringing for a newspaper in Baltimore, covering the campus and the Maryland suburbs and trying to write my way onto the metro staff, I caught the university’s men’s basketball coach in a vile little scandal. In this era of #MeToo and #TimesUp, Lefty Driesell would have been immediately sacked for throwing a tantrum after a campus judicial board had disciplined one of his players for a sexual impropriety, and for calling the reporting victim repeatedly and screaming at her over the phone that if she didn’t withdraw
the complaint her reputation would be destroyed on campus, and for doing so with a university administrator listening on a phone extension in the undergraduate’s dorm room. A scenario even half as ugly would destroy any practicing sonofabitch today. But no, back in 1983, boys would be boys and after a long, quiet investigation and then a public wristslap, the University of Maryland gave Driesell a five-year contract extension and more money. From that moment forward, I knew my ethos: The world will be the world. Corruptions may abide. Deceits may prevail. Reform may descend to farce. And the response to the best journalism might be for someone to rush into the breach and pass the worst law. All of that may be true, but in the end, I still get to come to the campfire and tell you a story. And if the story is true, if I know most of what I need to know and if I write it well enough, then, okay, the rest of you motherfuckers can never say you didn’t know. I’ll take that much and run with it. Forty years after I walked into the Diamondback, that’s the only ethos that still stands. And while nothing much that I wrote or reported or edited in the pages of the campus daily stands up to time in any way, the matter of publishing an independent edition of a newspaper every day and giving some weight to getting shit right, or even written a little more cleanly, was maybe the first real opportunity for a bratty, argumentative, suburban wiseass to grow up. Above all, I have to credit the Diamondback fully for this.
When I went to Baltimore to be a newspaperman, I wasn’t going to be easily rattled or flattered or co-opted by any other cause than clean copy. In short, I was already enough of a sonofabitch to do the job. The Diamondback gave me that and in retrospect it was the greatest gift. That there will be no more newsprint makes me wince, but I am a sucker for the worst kind of nostalgia. The fact is, the institution of the student-run daily in College Park, Maryland still evidences itself online. The premise of undergraduate reporters and editors wrestling with words and quotes and arguments is still served. A rose by any other name. And to those now in that newsroom, I can offer only one other retrospective notion and it’s this: If you spend a lifetime in journalism, you may have some stories that matter more, you may do work that is of greater importance, and you may serve some greater societal purpose. But you will never have as much fun as when you and the other sleep-deprived and beerstained wonders around you published your own damn newspaper.
David Simon worked at The Diamondback from 1979 to 1982 and was the editor in chief for the 1981-82 academic year. Simon is now a writer and producer, well-known for creating ‘The Wire’ television series. He has won two Emmys, and previously reported for The Baltimore Sun.
monday, march 9, 2020
news | S7
Diversions
classic cartoons
revisiting memorable diamondback comic strips By Evan Haynos | @evanhaynos | Senior staff writer
In 1994, Drew Weaver, The Diamondback’s then-editor in chief, explained to The Washington Post: “For some reason, this paper has been a magnet for talented cartoonists. We have so many success stories.” That continued to be the case for many years, as the paper went on to launch the careers of several notable cartoonists.
When Frank Cho transferred from Prince George’s Community College in the early 1990s, he brought his artistic talents to The Diamondback. He published multiple comic strips, including University2 and Everything But The Kitchen Sink. After graduation, Cho’s syndicated comic strip, Liberty Meadows — based loosely on University2 — was picked up by The Washington Post. Though he graduated in De-
cember 1995, Cho’s impact on the student body and The Diamondback was lasting. When The Post stopped publishing his strip in 1998, saying it had “lost its steam,” The Diamondback’s editorial board came out with a column firmly pushing for Liberty Meadows to get picked up again. Ultimately, Cho pulled the strip for good in 2001, citing censorship and creative interference.
All images courtesy of university archives
Jeff Kinney, a Prince George’s County native and 1993 graduate of the University of Maryland, is an alumnus with a talent for penning and portraying. Kinney is the mind behind Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the bestselling book series chronicling the adventures of middle school slacker Greg Heffley. The criminology and criminal justice major published his comic, Igdoof, in The Diamondback more than a full decade before Wimpy Kid first made its debut on Funbrain.com in 2004. Though it took Kinney two years to get
The Diamondback to publish his strip, it quickly acquired a cult status. After graduation, Kinney tried to syndicate Igdoof, but there were no takers, so he shifted his efforts to Wimpy Kid. Kinney published the first hardcover book in the series in 2007, the same year he developed Poptropica, a popular online game for children. From there, he published 13 more books in the series and saw it make the big screen in 2010, when the 20th Century Fox-produced adaptation hit theaters.
HUmor Humor us: when the news gets amusing By Jason Fontelieu | @JasonFontelieu | Senior staff writer When you print a paper make any journalism profor 110 years, it’s impossible fessor sip their coffee with for every story to be salient, satisfaction. hard-hitting news. Over the years, The Diamondback has “Nude woman on ticket sparks printed its share of outraCabinet debate” geous content, and we’d be Rob Wishart, April 24, 1968 remiss if we didn’t look back at some of the silliest stories. The figure appeared on the ticket for comedian Dick “Pancake politics” Gregory, and people were Kellie Woodhouse, April 7, 2008 big mad about it. But at least one person interviewed was The thought of the Student at peace with it, going so far Government Association as to call it “pretty groovy,” president and the College in the most spot-on, dated Park mayor engaging in a way possible. pancake-eating competition While this article may sounds too much like a simu- not seem like anything out lation to ever be reality. But of the ordinary, it raises the alas, in 2008, it happened. question: Would people react SGA President Andrew any differently if this were to Friedson and Mayor Stephen happen today? And though Brayman engaged in what, on it’s over 50 years later, I’m any other occasion, might inclined to say no. seem borderline grotesque. But Woodhouse’s writing in “Nude runs penetrate this piece has such steady campus lifestyle” momentum that it feels as Carolyn Spears, Nov. 9, 1973 if you’re watching a WWE smackdown. And the expert Okay, what is it with this use of a blind lede would university and nudity? Back
in the early ‘70s, a group of students came together for their shared passion: running around butt-ass naked. There were three types of runners: those who did so to feel “initiated” as college students, those who did it just for shits and giggles and those who were looking for one last thrill before graduation. A lot of nude runs happened on Wednesdays and Thursdays, when people were kind of “wrecked.” (I propose we cover more of the university’s “wrecked” community.) None of the runners quoted in the article are named, preserving their anonymity. A tradition like this probably wouldn’t be possible nowadays, as social media erases any potential for anonymity, so maybe this university is in need o f a n o t h e r ca m p u sw i d e bonding activity. Shuffleboard, anyone?
Before people all over the country — and eventually the globe — got to experience the sardonic world of Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks, students at this university got a preview. The comic strip was published in The Diamondback from December 1996 to March 1997, before a technical error resulted in the printing of the word “OOPS!” instead of the comic strip. McGruder permanently pulled the strip when the paper didn’t print a correction. Despite the inauspicious end to its time in
“Planned food ruckus erupts in upper main dining hall” David Sturm, March 5, 1970
The Diamondback, The Boondocks, which follows the life of the scornful Huey Freeman, got picked up for newspaper syndication in 1999 and ran in more than 300 publications. An animated TV series based on the strip made it to Adult Swim in 2005. The Boondocks was ahead of its time, making hilarious racial and political commentary, and all credit goes to the mind (and hand) of McGruder.
er-student alliance faction of Students for a Democratic Society even felt the need to publicly deny any connection to it. The idea of some Nowadays, the idea of crew of student and campus a cafeteria food fight just employees having to clean seems like an unrealistic the mess of some privileged film trope, but in 1970, this college students didn’t really campus actually saw one of mesh with their agenda. But its own — in epic propor- apparently, a good part of the tions. The article details 100 participants thought it vivid images of the veal was a “blast.” cutlets and apple pie strewn across the floors of the deci- “Cops crash newsroom party” mated dining hall. And the Mara H. Gottfried, May 7, 1998 best part? Dining Services knew about the planned Clocking in at a mere six edible massacre, and still paragraphs, embarrassment is chose to do nothing. almost oozing out of this article. T h e f o o d m e l e e — a University Police noticed a planned protest against the disturbance coming from the dining hall “crud” — caused third floor of the South Campus such a ruckus that the work- Dining Hall while investigating
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a possible theft. T h ey we n t i n s i d e t h e building, only to find what a police spokesperson described as “numerous people in The Diamondback news room having a party and drinking alcoholic beverages.” Imagine getting busted by the cops, only to have to write about yourself getting busted by the cops, so your entire college community could read about you getting busted by the cops. The laughably short article was also tucked in the bottom right corner of a page, so small you could’ve missed it. Damage control at its finest.
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S8 | sports
monDay, march 9, 2020
Sports OF A LEGEND By David Suggs | @David_Suggs3 | Senior staff writer
A
leather-bound book lies in state, resting in a trunk beneath the spattering of diplomas and family photos that dot the walls of Glenn Dickinson’s California home. It’s full of newspapers and was a gift, a relic from his time at The Diamondback, where he served as editor in chief from 1986 to 1987. Once opened, though, the book reveals more — the wounds of a community left reeling after the loss of one of its own, Maryland men’s basketball star Len Bias. On June 19, it will be 34 years since Bias collapsed in Washington Hall. He would be pronounced dead hours later, a cocaine overdose cutting his life short at 22. Just two days earlier, the Boston Celtics had selected him with the second overall pick in the 1986 NBA Draft. During the summer, The Diamondback would temporarily become a weekly publication, prompting a few reporters to take summer classes to stay close to the newsroom. Dickinson, whose term as editor in chief began just a week before, vividly remembers the moment he found out.
“I walked into the newsroom, and [sports editor] David Grening is there,” Dickinson said. “He’s standing at the printer and staring down printing something out. And I say ‘Dave, what’s up?’ And he looks up to me with this dead look on his face and he said ‘Len Bias died last night.’ … I remember thinking my whole summer just turned upside down.” Bias’s death brought an onslaught of turmoil, not just for the University of Maryland’s athletic department and administration, but for the student newspaper, too — idealistic young writers, editors and photographers instantly thrust into the world of professional journalism. Yet through it all — the countless nights when reporters hunched over a clunky Teletype machine to await details of potential sanctions, the press conferences where Dickinson was surrounded by people who had decades more reporting experience than him — The Diamondback staff persisted, fueled by a sense of camaraderie that extended well beyond the newsroom. “It draws you together,” Dickinson said. “When you go
through an ordeal with people, you develop a closeness.” The Diamondback’s tightknit nature started slowly, though. With national publications descending upon College Park, veteran journalists’ voices dominated press conferences and interviews. And for amateurs such as Grening, the stress of the competition was difficult to escape. “[The Washington Post’s] Sally Jenkins, I remember she was there like every day,” Grening said. “They have great sources — even though you’re a student at the school … I didn’t co-mingle with the basketball team and [didn’t] really [know] how to cultivate sources at that time.” But as time went on and the scandal surrounding the athletic department and university administration intensified, The Diamondback’s group of young reporters found their footing, strengthened by a collaborative process that fortified relationships between its staff. The news desk handled most of the coverage, a byproduct of the circumstances surrounding Bias’s death and the scale of the NCAA’s subsequent investigation. The sports desk served
more of an advisory role, giving an athletic context to some of the upheaval. “It was really the editors getting together and just determining [to] let the news reporters be the news reporters, and let the sports reporters help out,” Grening said. It wasn’t always easy — the two desks often clashed over which direction to take a story, Dickinson said. But the arrangement worked well for both parties in the end. Editors Neff Hudson and Janet Naylor earned plaudits from Dickinson for their investigative reporting and interviewing skills, while Grening and assistant sports editor Bob Mosier were able to immerse them-
selves in their beats. And as The Diamondback’s staff continued to report on the scandal — which would trigger the resignations of men’s basketball coach Lefty Driesell and athletic director Dick Dull — so grew their affinity for one another, best reflected on Friday and Saturday nights when reporters dropped their notepads and pencils in favor of beer cans and booze. “We did develop a very serious camaraderie, and we would have parties, and we would hang out together,” Dickinson said. “Really great parties, actually — I remember some of them so vividly. A little wild, a little bit bohemian, but nobody broke any laws.” What The Diamondback’s
staff lacked in experience and clout, it made up for in solidarity. The newsroom served as a habitat for collaboration — and keggers, on occasion. It was a togetherness that was calcified in the early days of the Bias saga, its reporters sitting at bulky computers for hours on end trying to find some sort of new angle that hadn’t been explored in the sea of national media attention that followed Bias’s death. And it’s a togetherness that’s captured in the weathered book that rests in Dickinson’s trunk, tales of a group of young friends who fought for their seat at the table in the midst of tragedy.
said. “But it’s the beauty of student newspapers. You kind of have that freedom and flexibility.” In that edition, the element of surprise was clear, said Jonathan Schuler, another former Diamondback editor in chief. In The Diamondback’s editorial section, there was no mention of the impromptu campfire down on Frat Row. Instead, a staff editorial chastised readers for not attending an event featuring black activist and essayist Dick Gregory earlier in the week. That would change in later years, when riots began to shift from front-page news to the inside pages. The
second raucous celebration — sprouting from another win at Cameron Indoor on Feb. 27, 2001 — earned the headline “ENCORE” splashed across the page, featuring images of another blaze and a soccer goal making its way to join the bonfire. But the third — the one Stevens watched unfold down by Knox Road after the 2001 Final Four loss — only warranted a front-page tease, a biproduct of a cool-down period as Saturday night’s news waited for the Monday print paper. “There’s sort of that old saying like, the first time is the first, the second time is a coincidence, the third time is a
trend,” Schuler said. “And what we saw over the course of three years is a trend become sort of ingrained as culture. For better or for worse.” The art of rioting has disappeared, perhaps a casualty of Maryland’s move to the Big Ten and the subsequent evaporation of yearly matchups with Duke. But those print editions — flashy headlines and all — continue to convey the spirit of the rowdy reactions, the ones that spilled over into something beyond delight or dismay, turning parts of College Park into an inferno over wins and losses alike.
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Up in
FLAMES
By Andy Kostka | @afkostka | Senior staff writer
P
atrick Stevens needed a moment. He needed a moment to look around and take it all in, the pure debauchery — and, at its worst, destruction — going on below him. He wasn’t naive to the situation. It had occurred twice before, after all. But as Stevens stood on the crest of a hill near Knox Road watching the people running around and the bottles breaking and the fires burning and the clunky televisions and couches fueling those flames, he opted to observe. He pulled out his notebook and wrote as much as he could, documenting the dissolution of civility around him, the outpouring of grief over Maryland men’s basketball’s blown 22-point lead to Duke in the 2001 Final Four — an outpouring that wound up costing $500,000 in damages. “You’re just sort of like, ‘All right, well, this is happening,’” Stevens recalled. Stevens, a former sports editor at The Diamondback, had covered his fair share of memorable moments. He was in Miami for the 2002 Orange Bowl — a resounding Terps defeat — and in Atlanta for the basketball team’s resounding success later that year. Those were great. Those stand out among his fondest Diamondback memories. But those riots? Seeing Maryland basketball fans turn revelry and sorrow alike into bonfires? That’s one-of-a-
kind. And that’s what keeps it vivid in Stevens’ memory nearly two decades later, as well as so many former Diamondback reporters who covered the early instances of a growing Maryland tradition. “It was just so bizarre,” Stevens said. “It was not something you expected to run into.” It was even less expected on Feb. 9, 2000. That’s when the Terps ended the Blue Devils’ 46-game home winning streak with a 98-87 victory — and that’s when those fans left behind in College Park began spilling out of bars, dorms and frat houses. That’s when The Diamondback newsroom began hearing rumors of a gathering near Fraternity Row, a celebration after a breakthrough at Cameron Indoor. As reporters made the trek to the growing commotion, they realized what their night would suddenly involve. Couches from surrounding houses became kindling for a growing blaze; a giant Scooby Doo doll turned to ash, too, according to a Diamondback report; a torndown goalpost from what was then called Byrd Stadium made its way through the campus on students’ shoulders before its addition to the fire. And then Etan Horowitz, a former news writer and editor, laid eyes on the largest guy around. Matt Slaninka, a 7-foot-4 center who redshirted that year and hadn’t traveled to Durham, North Carolina, with the team, pranced around the bonfire as onlookers chanted,
danced and fueled the flames. “It was kind of the perfect storm of celebration and not thinking straight,” said Matt Sheehan, a former Diamondback editor in chief. That’s a lot to take in, and a lot to turn around onto the front page of the next morning’s edition of The Diamondback. But there it rested on newsstands the next day, “CHAOS” emblazoned across the top, with nine contributing reporters and the black-and-white photographs of revelers reveling and a couch up in smoke. That word — “CHAOS” — has lasting power. But “chaos” and “riot” also proved to be somewhat contentious vocabulary. Tim Lemke, a former news editor, got into a debate with a professor over whether “riot” was the correct word. Lemke’s professor had seen riots in the 1960s. Lemke saw fire on Feb. 9, 2000. He saw a mass of people running around, adding to those flames and breaking bottles. He eventually saw police in riot gear dispersing the crowd. But was it chaos? “In retrospect, probably being, you know, a 40-yearold adult right now I look and think maybe a more measured explanation might have been more appropriate,” Lemke said. “But you also kind of have to think about it in context of the students and how they felt at the time and the moment. And I think we were able to capture just how significant it was.” “In hindsight, it might have been a bit hyperbolic,” Sheehan
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