By MARGARET HYNDS, CLARE KOSSLER and KATIE GALIOTO Editor-in-Chief, Assistant Managing Editor and News Editor
F
ifty years ago today, the first copies of a new student publication appeared around campus. Students heading into the dining hall or on their way to class picked up The Observer, Vol. 1, Issue 1 — some out of curiosity, some out of boredom and some on a whim. When they picked up the paper, they would have seen that day’s top stories: “Legal Apts. For Off-Campusers Seen as Near” and “Student Stress Study Slated.” And, at the bottom of the page: “A Promise, A Purpose, A Newspaper is Born.” A lot has changed since then. Born out of the ashes of the student newspaper The Voice, The Observer joined Scholastic as one of the regular sources for Notre Dame news. Certainly, The Observer’s coverage has changed, shifted in accordance with the times or in response to issues that have emerged over the years. But it’s more than that — the newspaper’s role on campus, even its day-to-day operations, have radically changed in the five decades since Robert Sam Anson and Stephen Feldhaus first set out with a vision of a new independent student publication. The early years At the same time he was deciding to discontinue The Voice, Feldhaus — its editor and a 1967 graduate — made the decision to found a new paper. It was the fall of 1966, and the first thing Feldhaus realized he had to do was form a core group of students who would undertake the running of a new publication. “I realized … that I needed to be able to attract the best and the brightest. So, with that in mind, I also decided that I should bring in someone with newspaper experience to help me create a longer lasting professional organization. And I knew Robert Sam Anson, and I approached him,” Feldhaus said. “He was a tough newspaper-man mold, and I became convinced he could add a real degree of journalistic professionalism to the organization.” The new Observer staff drew from the previous staff of
The Voice and also attracted new blood, Feldhaus said. For example, Anson, a fellow member of the class of 1967, as well as a few other writers, had previously worked at Scholastic. “We created an institution together that took some of my staff and some of the relationships I had with the printer; and that built on the relationships I had in the advertising community and built on the structure that we had,” Feldhaus said. “And it brought clear improvements, and I’ve been glad to this day that I did what I did because I think that the paper was a better paper as a result, and I think the University of Notre Dame has benefitted from having a firstclass paper.” The goal — as laid out in first issue — was to create a 12page weekly paper, that would transition to an 8-page biweekly paper after one month of publication. After two years of publication, The Observer began printing daily editions Monday through Friday while classes were in session, and has continued to do so since. Anson, who served as Feldhaus’ co-editor-in-chief, said in its first few years The Observer was “a very rambunctious, left-wing newspaper” with “a really, really good staff.” “It was really tough. I mean this was the middle of the Vietnam War … and all kinds of things were going on,” he said. Anson said the atmosphere of the 1960s in many ways shaped his own experience and inf luenced the first year of coverage. “You have no idea what the ’60s were,” Anson said. “I mean you felt as a student that you were right there on the cutting edge of a revolution. “... It just shaped you in an astonishing sort of way.” ‘It was fun to be a ‘first’’ As the turmoil of the 1960s came to a close, The Observer pivoted from its status as a spunky upshot publication to a more established campus institution. Shortly after its inception, The Observer had joined forces with the student paper at Saint Mary’s. A few years after that, see OBSERVER PAGE 2 SUSAN ZHU | The Observer