TheDaily Bruin distributes about 6,000 copies across campus three times a week. It also publishesPRIME, a quarterly arts, culture and lifestyle magazine.[2]
TheBruin was published Monday through Friday during the school year prior to theCOVID-19 pandemic, twice a week during the last week of the quarter, once a week during finals week, and once a week on Mondays in the summer quarter. As of the 2022-2023 school year, theBruin is published three times a week during the school year on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. TheBruin's staff also publishesPRIME, a quarterly lifestyle magazine, and maintains Bruinwalk.com, a professor and apartment review site.[3]The Daily Bruin produced a total of 2,419 articles in the 2021/2022 academic year.[4]
It is published by theASUCLA Communications Board, which sets policies for the newspaper and other campus communications media. The current editor in chief is Lex Wang.[5]
TheDaily Bruin has 13 editorial departments: news writing, sports writing, arts & entertainment writing, opinion writing, blogging, infographic reporting, digital development, video journalism, copy editing, photojournalism, design,PRIME, enterprise reporting and cartoons and illustrations.[6]
TheDaily Bruin was preceded by the weeklyNormal Outlook on the campus of UCLA's predecessor, the Los Angeles StateNormal School, from 1910 through 1918 or 1919 (the records are incomplete).[8]: 3–6
Upon the establishment in fall 1919 of theSouthern Branch of the University of California, as UCLA was first known, the twice-weeklyCub Californian was first issued on Sept. 29, 1919. Its name was changed to theCalifornia Grizzly with the issue of March 21, 1924, and on Sept. 13, 1925 it began to publish five days a week.[8]: 7, 17, 19
On October 22, 1926, the newspaper became known as theCalifornia Daily Bruin.[9] During World War II it reduced its publication frequency to three times a week under the titleCalifornia Bruin,[8]: 66 reverting to a daily publication at war's end. On April 2, 1948, the name was changed toUCLA Daily Bruin.[8]: 91, 92
The newspaper has generally been under control of thestudent organization now known as theAssociated Students UCLA, or ASUCLA, although during the summer sessions of the 1920s and 1930s the newspapers were used as laboratory papers for university journalism classes. A student body president in 1931 advocated that the Bruin be made independent from control by the ASUC, as it was known then, so it might act as a check on student government. In the 1950s, theSummer Bruin was again taken over by the Administration, and '"controversial social issues" were banned from print during the summers.[8]: 128–129 [10]
Until 1955, the Associated Students was considered the publisher of theDaily Bruin, sometimes directly under the student council and sometimes with the interposition of a Publications Board. Editors were named by the student council. This system resulted in frequent political struggles between the staff (which nominated candidates for the key editorial positions) and the student council.[8]: 50 and following
During the height of theMcCarthy era, with the newspaper staff being accused of Communist leanings, the university administration in 1955 revised the governance of the paper and instituted a system whereby the student body itself elected the editor (see below).[8]: 144–145 "Editors had to run for elective office just like politicians, and the newspaper was closely controlled by the [student] Council," wrote William C. Ackerman, the ASUCLA graduate administrator.[11]
The practice of student election of editors ended in 1963 with the establishment of the ASUCLA Communications Board,[8]: 150 a student-led organization that selects the editors of theBruin as well as the editors for the other seven newsmagazines and UCLA Radio.[12]
In 1926, editor John F. Cohee was expelled from school byErnest Carroll Moore, the campus administrator and director, for what Moore called "certain indecent statements which affront the good name of the women of the University." These were apparently atongue-in-cheek "report" that some sorority women had been seen cavorting nude in the Pacific Ocean surf.[8]: 25–32 This article was included in a twice-yearly burlesque edition of theDaily Bruin known as "Hell's Bells." (Cohee transferred to the Berkeley campus and graduated there in 1927. He later went on to become a professional reporter.)[8]: 25–32
Three years later, Director Moore suspended 14 students for publishing the January 23, 1929, issue of "Hell's Bells," "the filthiest and most indecent piece of printed matter that any of us has ever seen." Some of those students were later reinstated. That was the last issue of "Hell's Bells."[8]: 25–32
1935. The student council namedGilbert Harrison as editor. Harrison was soon at loggerheads with Tom Lambert, the ASUC president, who wanted more coverage of the student government. Frustrated, Lambert resigned, and the council named a committee to publish the paper when the staff threatened to strike. Lambert returned to his job.[8]: 52 [10]
1938. The council named a salaried director of publications who would be responsible for all content, but in October a newly chosen council decided that the appointee would have no editorial control.[10]
1939. The student leaders adopted a resolution requiring theBruin to deny publicity to "all unrecognized organizations." The editor called the action an "unwarranted restriction of press freedom," and four thousand students signed petitions opposing the restriction, which was repealed.[10]
In October 1944 the student president charged that theBruin was "unrepresentative and self-perpetuating" and that it was controlled by the liberalAmerican Youth for Democracy. The staff threatened to strike but found that the president had already sketched out a plan forsubstitute staffers, so it refrained.[10]
In spring 1949 Jim Garst andClancy Sigal were nominated by theBruin staff as editor and managing editor. Some student leaders charged that the two favoredleftist positions. Garst was chosen editor by the student council, but Sigal (who had been asked by a member of the council whether he was "a Communist") was rejected. The staffers refused to work over the summer, and in the fall a new council approved Sigal. The same council, however, refused to reappoint him in the spring 1950 term. A student vote rejected Sigal, 2,272 to 676.[13][8]: 98–99
In the spring semester 1951, PresidentRobert Gordon Sproul wrote ProvostClarence Dykstra that he had received letters "pouring in" aboutopinion columns written by studentArt Janov (later the author ofThe Primal Scream), "including one from the governor's office.... I do hope that some way will be found to keep this young man from using thefeature page of the Bruin as a medium for propaganda of theparty line." On February 13, 1951, Dean Hahn replied in a memo to Dykstra that "we are still looking for an editor with more moderate leanings."[8]: 104
The student council turned down the staff's nomination of Jerry Schlapik as editor for the spring 1951 term in favor of conservative Bob Strock, who was then deemed ineligible because of a lowgrade-point average. On February 7, 1951, the council appointed Martin Brower as editor but also chose Rex Rexrode, a non-staffer, as feature (opinion) editor. Brower immediately submitted his resignation, and the entire non-sports editorial staff resigned. Most of them returned to work in two weeks after the council agreed that, from then on, all top editors would be chosen from the newspaper's senior staff.[14][8]: 105–109
On November 23, 1954, PresidentRobert Gordon Sproul approved a new student-election plan for the newspaper. Dean of StudentsMilton E. Hahn sent a memorandum to UCLA ChancellorRaymond B. Allen on December 7. 1954. He wrote:
For twenty years there has been no commonly accepted policy regarding the student publications at U.C.L.A. TheBruin has been the chief problem. It has been a prime target forMarxist groups which, at times, have had almost complete control.[8]: 133
Editor Martin McReynolds caught word of the plan and published an editorial on December 8, stating that "Someone, probably the Administration, has been planning this change for at least six weeks. The planning has all been kept secret fromThe Daily Bruin and the students at large." On the same day, Hahn submitted the plan to the Student Council.[8]: 145
There were to be student elections for editor, who would name the editorial board, subject to approval by the Student Council and veto by the Administration. Because of lack of time, elections would not be held in the spring semester, but an editorial board would be chosen by a two-man committee composed of Student Body President Skip Byrne and an Administration representative.[8]: 145
The plan required that:
Non-staff opinion pieces would be limited to 150 words in the letters column.
Controversial articles would be "matched" with an opposing opinion.
Editorial columns "shall be used by the editor-in-chief in any manner consonant with journalistic practice and the wishes of SLC [Student Legislative Council] subject to the contribution that contributors be bona fide staff members or members of SLC."[8]: 145–146
A total of 3,004 signatures, representing one-fifth of the student body, were collected for a petition to be sent to Sproul to retract the plan. The number of signatures was about a thousand more than the number of votes in the preceding student-body election.[8]: 145–146
TheBruin staff nominated six candidates to become editors the following year, but all six were rejected by the selection committee appointed to decide on the new editors.[8]: 146–147
In 2013, theDaily Bruin's publisher laid off most of its full-time employees, following more than a decade of consistently declining advertising revenues that reflected the national newspaper industry. Despite layoffs, it retained UCLA Student Media Director Doria Deen, editorial advisor Abigail Goldman and Business Manager Jeremy Wildman.[15]
In spring 2016, UCLA's student body voted in favor of the "Daily Bruin and Bruinwalk.com Referendum," which guaranteed student fees to support theBruin as its print advertising revenues continue to decline.[16]
Following COVID-19 lockdowns in March 2020, the upper management of theBruin decided to cease all print operations for the rest of the school year after initially pausing it for the first two weeks of the spring quarter. It was the first time the paper had scaled back its daily print operations since World War II.[17] The paper resumed printing once a week the next school year in 2020-2021 while UCLA was still holding all classes remotely, before scaling up to two days a week in 2021-2022 and the current schedule of three days of week in 2022-2023.
In 2013, theDaily Bruin created the "Stonewall" as an online record of sources who "stonewalled," or refused to speak, with reporters.[18] The "Stonewall" was created in effort to maintain transparency with readers about individuals in the community who thwartedDaily Bruin reporters' attempts at providing information. The most recent stone added to the "Stonewall" was on June 5, 2019, when the UCLA media relations office for several weeks delayed an interview with administrators regarding a professor's conviction of child sexual abuse.[18]
Data editor Neil Bedi launchedThe Stack,Daily Bruin's data journalism andnewsroom techblog, in March 2015.[19] Articles analyze public data and present them with accompanying quantitative graphics and visualizations.[20] Previous projects include examining the data of the mandatory Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) student fees over time,[21] funding sources behind UCLA research projects,[22] and rate of major changes among UCLA students.[23]
1936-1937Stanley Rubin (In 1970, Rubin recalled that in the middle 1930s,Max Rafferty, who served from 1963 to 1971 asCalifornia Superintendent of Public Instruction, had physically attacked him over controversial content inThe Bruin.[25] Rafferty dispatched a letter to theLos Angeles Times in which he describedThe Bruin as "one of the most prejudiced newspapers on the Pacific Coast" and complained that the "radicalism" of the publication "is not so funny if it keeps [students] from getting a job.")[26]
TheDaily Bruin and its staffers earn honors at local, state, regional and national levels on an annual basis. Listed below are some of the prominent honors theDaily Bruin has received.
TheDaily BruinEditorial Board presents the opinions of veteran staff members of the Bruin about topics relating to UCLA.[70] It is made up of five standing members in addition to staff representatives. The board operates separately from the newsroom, and the editorials represent the majority opinion of the board. Editorials are published once or twice a week throughout the year.[70]
Class of 2000:William E. Forbes (1906–1999), class of 1927, president of the Southern California Music Co. and a regent of the University of California.[8]: 20–21 [71]
Class of 2001:Flora Lewis (1918–2002), class of 1939, foreign correspondent and columnist.[8]: 45 [72]
Class of 2002:Stanley Rubin (1917-2014), class of 1936, Emmy award-winning screenwriter and producer.[73]
Class of 2003:Frank Mankiewicz (1924–2014), class of 1947, screenwriter, regional director of the Peace Corps, press attache for Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.[8]: 90–91 [74]
^Al Greenstein, "History of SEC, DB Debates Tells of Staff Walkout in 1951" and "Bruin Staff Walkout in 1951 Threatened Paper's Demise," January 7, 1953, pages 1 and 3
