The UJ: The Rise and Fall of Daily Competition

By Julia Wilkinson
College Topics Staff Writer

The spring of 1979 was a turbulent time for The Cavalier Daily.

In early April, the CD was kicked out of its offices in Newcomb Hall for several days because it refused to recognize the authority of a Board of Visitors appointed Media Board.

And later that month, fourth-year student Peter Briggs cranked out an 8 1/2 x 11-inch newspaper entitled The UVA Daily from his University Heights apartment. The ideology behind the creation of the paper, which would later be renamed The University Journal, was that the University needed a "second voice." Thus the CD’s first significant competition on grounds was born.

Whether these two events are directly linked remains a subject of speculation. However, there is no doubt that the rise and fall of The University Journal played a role in how the CD developed and was managed over the next 18 years.

Joe Mullen, a key editor and force in the shaping of the early University Journal, also felt that the CD was too negative about the University. He didn’t think it reflected the general student body opinion. "What we were trying to do was to be more objective and constructive in our criticism," he said.

Briggs managed to keep the UVA Daily going for three weeks. But he couldn’t keep up the pace alone. He found one particularly key helper in Mullen, whom he met while trying to sell an ad to Eljo’s. Mullen, a second-year student who worked at the store, was assigned by his manager to talk to Briggs, and he wound up deciding to join this new endeavor.

Size Matters
Although the UVA Daily started out as 8 1/2 x 11-inch paper, Mullen felt it was important to be the same size as the CD. Briggs was more cautious. But they were up against an established paper, one that "would always have some huge issue chock-full of dozens of ads" on registration day, as one UVA Daily staffer put it.

"It was an uphill battle to sell ads against the CD because we didn’t have the circulation," said Mullen. "We were already struggling for our identity and our share of the ad market, so I felt very strongly that we needed to stay as a larger paper," to maintain credibility, he said.

Over the next few months, the paper morphed first into a large four-page publication and then to a full-size broadsheet to rival the size of the CD. But they immediately ran into the realities of having a business where "you have to pay the printer, but you may not get the ad money until weeks later," said one UJ staffer.

Briggs arranged for the Alumni Association to loan the paper $2,000, with his personal guarantee. That was the beginning of tens of thousands of dollars the Association would lend to the paper over the years.

There was controversy about whether the fledgling paper should get funding from University activities appropriations. For any kind of publication to be eligible, it had to be "related to an established curriculum" at the University. Eager to get the funds, Briggs argued that such a curriculum existed, and did get $9,000.

Getting in Gear
That fall, the new paper had dozens of people helping out in its new home, the basement of the Randall building. It also rechristened itself The University Journal.

Briggs, who was by then in his ninth semester, decided by late October that it was time to graduate or his parents would disown him. Mullen signed onto the loan, and spent much of his remaining time at the University working on the paper. In fact, he is credited as the Journal’s founder in some accounts.

The Randall basement venue was Spartan. "We tried to paint the inside swimming-pool blue to try to brighten it up," Mullen said. But it was dank, complete with dangling light bulbs and a rodent problem. In fact, when one staffer’s father visited, a rat fell onto his head from an overhead pipe.

The tough reality of putting out a newspaper on a regular basis continued. Mullen recalled pulling all-nighters just to get the paper out at all. "In going to full-size, we took a big step, and we were understaffed. It got to a point quickly where a lot of the things we were sending out had typos."

Controversy
Despite its troubles, Mullen felt that the UJ was becoming known as a second voice of the press at the University. An incident that illustrates this was a controversy surrounding the election in which Ron Suskind and Karen Rose were running for president and vice president of the College, respectively.

According to Rick Neel, CD editor-in-chief from 1979-’80, the CD reported that Rose suddenly withdrew from the race, saying she didn’t have the time required. After the article appeared, the CD received a call from Suskind saying that both he and Karen had received threatening phone calls. "He called them death threats," said Neel. "We ran an article on Feb. 25, 1980, reporting what Ron told us." However, Rose could not be reached for comment.

Later, Mullen said he received an anonymous phone call, in a voice he said he recognized as Karen Rose’s, saying those stories weren’t true. But the Journal had run out of money and couldn’t afford to put out an issue challenging the CD’s articles.

Then Mullen received another anonymous call, this time from an old man who said, "I understand you’re trying to put out a paper to correct a story that’s been running incorrectly." The man directed Mullen to the West Lawn, where he found an envelope from the Seven Society containing $477.77—enough to enable the short-of-funds paper to put out the next issue.

On Feb. 27, after Rose submitted a statement to Dean of Students Robert T. Canevari, the CD ran a story stating that Rose denied receiving death threats, but that Suskind stood by the report he gave to The Cavalier Daily.

Whatever the truth, known only to Rose and Suskind, the incident illustrates the power and complexities of having two newspapers on Grounds.

The Spirit of Competition
As the ’80s got under way, the Cavalier Daily/University Journal relationship changed. Although Neel said he never viewed the UVA Daily as a realistic threat because he "had bigger things to concern myself with," by the early ’80s it was clear the UJ was becoming more established.

"By the time I was editor, it was a whole different scene," said Brian Kelley, UJ editor-in-chief from 1984-’85. "I got involved when I first arrived in ’82. There were people interested for ideological reasons, but for the most part, it was just people interested in journalism. Actually I think the rivalry or competition between the papers attracted a lot of people, too, because it was fun."

"The papers were essentially run the same way, but the structure of The Cavalier Daily was a lot more formalized," said Lora Johnston, who was a reporter for both papers at different times during her college career in the mid-’80s. "The UJ did tend to be a little more laid back than the CD, but that was probably because it came out only three times a week while I worked there," she said.

"My personal take was always that the CD was our competition, but didn’t have to be our enemy in a vitriolic way," said Lewis Brissman, UJ editor-in-chief from 1990-’91. "That was also a function of the political activism of the ’70s, when the Journal was founded, giving way to what was more of a political apathy in the 1980s." He added that he felt that neither paper defined itself ideologically by the mid-1980s, and probably made a point of not doing so.

The competition may have been intense, but it was not always without friendships. Brissman and rival CD editor Diane DeBerry Krehmeyer were "very good friends." Brissman said during their tenure the UJ and CD actually found things they could actually work on together, such as co-drafting a letter to various student committee leaders alerting them to some freedom of information concerns about meetings that had not been announced.

While Brissman didn’t think the UJ was more "conservative" than the CD by the time it reached his year, there was still a drive to "scoop" the other paper. For example, in March 1990, the Board of Visitors announced the selection of John Casteen as future University president just before Spring Break. "A bunch of us at the UJ decided to stay in Charlottesville over break, and when everybody came back, we put out a special edition," which the CD did not do, said Brissman. He added that Krehmeyer offered him heartfelt congratulations after the scoop.

The Pendulum Swings
In the spring of 1991, the UJ decided to go to four days a week by adding Thursday, and then to five days a week that fall by adding Tuesday. According to Dan Oakey, a CD ads representative at the time who became business manager the following year, while Thursdays were lucrative ad days, Tuesdays were "relatively dismal." In hindsight, this growth was too quick for the UJ staff and advertising base to handle.

Although the UJ had an exclusive advertising contract with University Union, which brought in a good amount of cash, and it still received appropriations funds from the University, the CD was able to offer major advertisers exclusive deals at lower rates.

The CD was doing great financially and had just become debt-free, Oakey said, so they "had no problem doing this. Even with the subsidies of the University, the UJ couldn’t compare to our profitability."

And printing costs were high. "Not only was there daily publication, but more issues were being printed than needed to be, sometimes with more extravagant expenses, such as color photography," said Jeff Sigler, technically the final editor of the University Journal when it folded in the spring of 1998.

But the UJ was not selling enough ads to cover these costs, said Sigler. And, "from what we can tell, no one was paying the bills," he said. "Each managing board was writing checks it couldn’t cover, and wasn’t held responsible for them anyway. There was no incentive to worry about cost."

In the fall of 1996, the UJ cut back to three days a week to help with the debt. But by the end of 1996, the debt to their printer reached upward of $120,000.

Then came a fatal blow: Student Council defunded the paper. Although Student Council was not the primary source of the UJ’s funding, the defunding made their printer lose confidence in the UJ’s ability to repay. From that point on, the UJ had to prepay the printer for each issue as well as make installment payments on its debt.

The UJ published sporadically for the next year or so, but in the end, "we eventually became pretty much completely broke, and couldn’t even afford to file for bankruptcy," said Sigler. Aside from a "joke" issue of the spring of 1998, the final issue of the UJ was printed in December 1997.

After the Fall
For the former staff of the UJ, the demise of the college newspaper was a bitter pill to swallow. "The University misses the UJ," said Sigler. "I think it’s dangerous to get your news from a single source."

Many CDers also miss having another paper to keep them on their toes. "I’ve always been of the opinion that every community needs as many voices as possible," said Greg Trevor, editor-in-chief of the CD from 1985-’86. "I always viewed the Journal as a strong competitor that helped make the CD a stronger newspaper in terms of editorial content."