Media contact:
Sarah Lopes, DB&H Communications Agency representative
916-217-7441, sarah.lopes@sjsu.edu
SAN JOSE, CA – The Spartan Daily, San Jose State University’s student newspaper, is celebrating the digitization and online presence of more than 80 years of hyper-local news.
The SJSU School of Journalism and Mass Communications will be having a public launch event on May 2, 2016, from 10:30-11:45 a.m, at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in room 225.
For the past year, JMC, in partnership with King Library, has been working to digitize and upload searchable PDF issues of the newspaper dating all the way back to April 1934.
A plethora of historical events, arts and entertainment, opinions and sports has been resurrected and can be found online with just the click of a mouse. More than 77,000 pages of the school newspaper are available to the public.
The project received funding from Jack and Emma Anderson, who profited from typesetting and printing the Spartan Daily over the years. Former King Library Associate Dean Mary Nino partnered library resources with the journalism department to help manage costs and add this archive to the ScholarWorks digital collection.
Tim Mitchell, SJSU journalism lecturer and design adviser, has overseen the project and is enthusiastic about what this means for the university and the public.
”In the process of brightening old, faded ink, we are opening the historical vault to many perspectives of change through the eyes of student journalists: cultural shifts in campus life for students, faculty and staff; [transitions in] metal typesetting, design and printing in the digital era; student-targeted advertising; and Vietnam War protests, to name a few [items of interest]. This is a record of the local area transitioning from farmland to Silicon Valley. We are sharing to the world big time,” Mitchell said.
About the Spartan Daily
The Spartan Daily is the student newspaper, currently distributed three days a week on the San Jose State campus and in the surrounding community. The newspaper covers news, sports, arts and entertainment, tech and opinion relating to the campus and its students. The first issue with the Spartan Daily title was published April 9, 1934. Alumni include six Pulitzer Prize winners, including four winners since 2000.