Today, The Chronicle turns 120.
Older than the University itself, Duke’s independent student newspaper has served as a dependable source of news for members of the Duke and Durham communities for over a century.
When Trinity College received an initial gift of $6 million from benefactor James B. Duke and was transformed into Duke University, we were there. When students of all races and genders were first admitted to the University’s various undergraduate, graduate and professional schools on equal footing, we were there. When Duke professors earned Nobel Prizes, when the men’s basketball team won its first national championship and when the University climbed the rankings to be listed among the top six institutions of higher education in the nation, we were there — every time.
Over the years, generations of the newspaper’s student leaders have sought to maintain a record that is accurate, balanced, diverse and fair, holding sacred the responsibility of chronicling the history of this University and the people connected to it.
So today, on the anniversary of our first-ever issue — in the University’s centennial year — The Chronicle looks back on a legacy of 120 years of coverage.
On Dec. 19, 1905, The Trinity Chronicle was printed for the first time.
Founded by members of the Hesperian and Columbian literary societies, the paper was written, edited and managed by students at Trinity College, which at that point had been located in Durham for only 13 years but had existed in some form since 1838. Community members could purchase a copy of The Chronicle for just five cents, or buy an annual subscription for $1.50 to receive the news that was published every Tuesday of the academic year.
“With the full vigor of a new life, unhindered by any obstructing, traditional fungus growth, The Trinity Chronicle bursts into flower among you,” the paper’s inaugural team of editors wrote in its first issue. “Primarily, its purpose is to be the voice of a student-body hitherto without ‘an articulate voice,’ to portray college life and activity in all its different phases and to promote and give expression to a manly, healthy sentiment among us.”
That first edition also featured reporting on a debate between the two literary societies, a lecture given on campus by a North Carolina businessman and a meeting of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, as well as a smattering of advertisements and a review of faculty members’ holiday plans.
In the following issue, published Jan. 9, 1906, the paper’s leaders laid out the bylaws that would govern its production for years to come. The two societies resolved to share equally the financial burden of publishing a weekly newspaper and to establish an eight-member board of students to oversee its operations.
“This paper shall be the organ of the student body,” the inaugural board wrote. “It shall aim to give true and accurate reports of college news and to afford an open medium for the expression of the sentiments of the student body. Its editors shall always conduct it, however, under a sense of responsibility for the good name and best interests of Trinity College and shall endeavor to advance the interests of the college by keeping it up to the highest possible standard in mechanical appearance and literary excellence.”
From then on, The Chronicle grew its subscription base and its coverage to serve the interests of its readers.
As its readership grew, the paper also assumed an influential role in defining the spirit of the student body. In a September 1921 issue, The Chronicle asked its readers to help decide on a mascot to represent the college.
“Trinity is again on the eve of a great season in student activities where rival forces are to be met, and still there is no catchy name or appelation [sic] by which her representatives shall be known,” the issue reads. “… The Chronicle intends to see the matter through, to see that something characteristic of the efforts, the traditions and the ideals of the institution shall be applied and that what is applied shall hold.”
The paper organized a “pep meeting” to solicit suggestions, and its editors decided that the ultimate selection should incorporate the school’s colors in some way. Trinity’s football team had often been referred to as the Blue and Whites, and the school had been associated with shades of blue since the 1880s.
But after none of the contenders emerged with a majority of support and another year elapsed without a decision, the college’s other student publications agreed that the ultimate deciding power rested with The Chronicle. In its 18th volume, the paper began reporting on the “Blue Devils,” a choice that has shaped the Duke identity to this day.
Another step toward crafting that identity occurred on Jan. 7, 1925, when The Chronicle ran the headline: “Trinity Becomes a University.”
The previous month, tobacco magnate and industrialist James B. Duke had donated $40 million to establish The Duke Endowment, a private, charitable trust that would support education, health care and Methodist institutions across the state. Some of those funds were earmarked for “the establishment and maintenance of a vast educational institution in North Carolina to be known as Duke University.”
“All his life, James B. Duke has wanted to see North Carolina rise to the heights enjoyed by her sister states in the East and North because of such institutions as Yale and Harvard, or Michigan and Illinois,” reads The Chronicle’s coverage.
James B. Duke gave $6 million to the college “for the purpose of acquiring lands and equipping thereon buildings suitable and adequate for an institution of learning that in time will rival Yale or Harvard in prestige and universal educational facilities.” He dedicated 32% of the trust’s future income to support the operations of the forthcoming University.
Following the announcement, the paper would continue to be published as “The Trinity Chronicle” until June 9 of that year, when the final issue of its 20th volume was printed with simply “The Chronicle” in bold, serif letters at the top of the front page. Besides minor font fluctuations, that nameplate style would hold until February 1933, when the paper officially transitioned to “The Duke Chronicle.”
The rebranding of these two institutions ushered in major milestones, shaping the Duke we all know today.
The Chronicle has been there for all of Duke’s most important moments. The construction of a new Gothic campus to house the fledgling University. The Civil Rights protests that rocked college campuses in the ‘60s. Duke alumnus Richard Nixon’s ascension to — and eventual resignation of — the U.S. presidency. Each of these landmark stories are recorded on the pages of The Chronicle.
In addition to these watershed moments in University history, The Chronicle also reported on countless lesser-known stories that captured campus life and have profoundly shaped the paper itself.
For Volume 76 Editor-in-Chief Scott McCartney, Trinity ‘82, one of the “most impactful” stories from his volume was when reporters from The Chronicle’s sports department asked every member of Duke’s football team to grade their coach, Shirley “Red” Wilson, who ended up earning a C- average. Though the athletics department admitted that the information was “100% on target” and the team wanted the survey to be made public, they wanted The Chronicle to hold off on printing the article until after the new recruits visited Duke. McCartney ultimately chose not to “bow down to pressure” and publish the article on schedule.
But at 5 a.m. on the day of publication, the football team was stationed at all The Chronicle’s distribution centers around campus, and they took all of the newspapers and threw them away before the recruits could get a hold of the information.
About a decade later, Volume 85 Editor-in-Chief Craig Whitlock, Trinity ‘90, and his reporters uncovered that a supposed student posing as a member of a notable French banking family, “Maurice de Rothschild,” was actually a 37-year-old impostor named Mauro Cortez Jr. who had fooled the University about his identity.
The Chronicle reported on over a decade’s worth of crimes Cortez committed at Duke and across the country. The University admitted at the time that they had not known who he was.
Cortez ended up trying to transfer to Harvard, where the admissions officer allegedly knew that Cortez was an impostor.
According to Whitlock, “The Harvard dean couldn’t believe that Duke had actually allowed Maurice to enroll, so he never bothered to alert folks in Durham.”
Later in Whitlock’s term, another exposé made headlines — this time about former men’s basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski. After The Chronicle wrote another iteration of its report card article, but written about the players by the sports staff, Krzyzewski invited the student reporters to the locker room for what was advertised as a “get-to-know-you-better” chat. Instead, he yelled at them ruthlessly for the article.
One reporter, Andy Layton, Trinity ‘90, thinking that he would have the chance to interview Krzyzewski, brought a tape recorder which clearly captured the coach’s scathing remarks to the reporters. The Chronicle soon published an article recounting the interaction — profanities and all.
The tape recorder still exists to this day.
Such stories exist across The Chronicle’s volumes, ranging from reporting on a first-year student who moonlighted as a porn star, to uncovering that former Executive Vice President Tallman Trask allegedly called a parking attendant a racial slur after hitting her with his car, to Krzyzewski once again yelling at a Chronicle reporter, this time at a postgame press conference.
The paper also ramped up its publication over the years, gradually moving from a weekly print schedule to regular daily production by September 1968. In 1984, The Chronicle published its first full-color photo, marking the shift from black-and-white print to a new age of reporting in color.
For decades, The Chronicle existed as a University-sponsored student organization.
When construction of the Allen Building was completed in 1954, the Old Administration Building — now the Flowers Building — was renovated to house a number of student groups. The building’s third floor was christened “Pub Row” and became a home for Duke’s various student publications, including the Peer, Playbill, Archive, Chanticleer and Chronicle, which held the largest suite of offices.
While the other four groups largely fizzled out and eventually disappeared over the years, The Chronicle continues to publish 70 years later. Its editorial offices remain on the third floor of the Flowers Building to this day. For Chronicle reporters, “301 Flowers” has become synonymous with the very essence of the paper itself.
In an important step toward independence, the paper stopped taking student fees to support its operations in 1989. The Chronicle formalized its separation from the University four years later, when it incorporated as the Duke Student Publishing Company in 1993.
In breaking its formal ties with the University, The Chronicle has been able to retain a contractual relationship for its office space and distribution rights — and most notably, the ability to use “Duke” in the paper’s name. Today, The Chronicle is financially supported through advertisement revenue and donations, meaning that it does not accept University funds, and is governed by a 16-member board composed mostly of former staff members.
This structure is not common for college newspaper organizations. As of February, only 52 of 512 student news outlets were established as official 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations independent of their respective universities. Of those with independent boards, some include members of university administration, while others are entirely student-run or have a combination of students and former staffers.
This independence gives The Chronicle the freedom to cover campus news without the fear of repercussions from University administration.
In another pivotal move, The Chronicle launched its website in 1995, which now has a monthly readership of 350,000. Though the paper operates today as a digital-first news organization, it continued to print daily until the 2010s. The Chronicle still produces several special print editions per year.
While the paper grew in prominence over the years, it was thrown abruptly into the national spotlight in 2006 when the Duke lacrosse scandal rocked the country — with The Chronicle’s student reporters as some of the first on the scene.
Exotic dancer Crystal Mangum accused three Duke men’s lacrosse players — David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann — of raping her at a team house party held March 13, 2006. The allegations launched a year-long investigation that ultimately found the three players to be not guilty.
Volume 101 Editor-in-Chief Seyward Darby, Trinity ‘07, shared that reporting on the scandal meant “be[ing] as utterly fair as possible … [by] not suggesting guilt when it had not been proven.”
As national media outlets descended onto Duke’s campus to cover the case, misinformation spread en masse, leading many community members to not know what to believe.
“As student journalists, we were stunned — and just tried to manage the onslaught as best we could, remembering that our responsibility was to report the news fairly and clearly,” Darby reflected 10 years later. “It didn't matter what we thought or what our hunches were if we couldn't report them out; it mattered what we knew.”
On Dec. 12, Mangum confessed that she fabricated the allegations because she “wanted validation from people and not from God.” Nearly two decades later, The Chronicle was there to break that news, too.
As the paper continued to grow, The Chronicle founded Pitch Story Lab a decade later in 2017 in an effort to increase revenue. Pitch, the paper’s creative services agency, helps run The Chronicle’s social media accounts and has since grown to serve clients across the University and Durham.
Though the paper had faced internal changes throughout its hundred-plus year history, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 marked the beginning of a major shift in The Chronicle’s production.
Volume 116 Editor-in-Chief Matthew Griffin, Trinity ‘22, headed the paper’s production as campus shifted into its new COVID landscape.
The Chronicle wrote “slice-of-life” stories, recounting the experiences of students, both domestic and international, and articles delivering the information members of the Duke community needed to stay safe during the period of uncertainty.
As Volume 115 Opinion Editor Leah Abrams, Trinity ‘20, wrote in a March 18, 2020, editor’s note, “Scrolling through the digitized archives of The Chronicle, you will find no parallels in Duke’s history — nothing to draw on, nothing to consult. In the coming days, we will have to learn to write the script ourselves.”
So, as the paper worked to navigate this new period of coverage, it was confronted with redefining the medium through which it engaged with its audience. In a society now characterized by remote interactions, The Chronicle began its first, albeit unofficial, period of publishing solely online.
By the end of the 2020-21 academic year, The Chronicle solidified its new digital-first identity, when its staff stopped producing regular print editions.
The paper began to reduce its print schedule in 2013, when it stopped publishing every weekday. Print issues slowed from five times a week to four, three, two and eventually one during Volume 116. Then in May 2021, newly instated Editor-in-Chief Leah Boyd, Pratt ‘23, announced that weekly print would not continue in Volume 117.
“Our student journalists are tireless and bring a renewed sense of energy and creativity to our paper that impresses me every day. It’s time to start putting that all towards something our readers will appreciate just as much as we do,” she wrote. “Surveys and a quick look at the print racks show that readers just aren’t as invested in a print product as they used to be.”
Since making the move, The Chronicle’s staff has worked to live up to the goals Boyd outlined at the outset of her term: “to reach audiences beyond what we could have imagined 10 years ago. To make our content more accessible and available. To revitalize our website. To get to know our readers better than ever and make The Chronicle a one-of-a-kind news experience for everyone. To be anything but ordinary.”
Today, The Chronicle stands as a nationally acclaimed student news organization, continuing to make major headlines with its coverage while upholding the highest journalistic standards.
Although Duke does not have a journalism school or major, The Chronicle continues to welcome in over 100 new staffers each year who are eager to report on any and all things Duke — whether that be by breaking the latest University news in the News section, covering Duke’s 27 Division 1 teams in the Sports section, exploring campus arts and culture in the Recess section, dishing out their hottest takes in the Opinion section or capturing campus scenes in the Photo section.
The University’s impact ultimately transcends the bounds of Durham, leading The Chronicle to send its reporters across the country to cover the news. Most notably, the sports and photo departments send their reporters to Duke’s away games, while news reporters attend presidential campaign rallies and Recess reporters review live shows and concerts.
In 2015, the paper received its first Online Pacemaker Award from the Associated College Press, which is considered the equivalent of a Pulitzer Award for college journalism. Since then, The Chronicle has earned the award in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
This does not mean that The Chronicle has always gotten it right. Throughout the past 120 years, the paper has certainly made errors, for which it has expressed its regrets in ink and pixels. The paper’s editors have hoped that this transparency could serve not only as an accountability mechanism, but also as a signal of The Chronicle’s commitment to best serve its audience.
As we look forward to another 120 years of coverage, we are excited to continue to bear witness to the new people, innovations and stories the University ushers in.
And we promise, we will be there.
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Zoe Kolenovsky is a Trinity junior and news editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.
Abby Spiller is a Trinity junior and editor-in-chief of The Chronicle's 120th volume.