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Topic: Mischief: Blue Trojans

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Last Reply: Mar 18, 2024 11:13 AM

Sportsgirl

Joined: Aug, 2007

Location: Los Angeles

Occupation: attorney

Jan 28, 2008, 2:43 PM

4001

Does anyone still have the phony "Daily Trojan" issues that we used to do just before the "big game"? We did some great ones in the 1980s. The DT staff would do their own satire edition of the "Daily Bruin," and our respective staffs would put the other's satire edition on the other campus (i.e. we would write a phony DT and then put them at USC, they would do a phony DB and put them at UCLA). Do the schools still do that?

dlipkin

Joined: Aug, 2007

Jan 31, 2008, 11:22 PM

4006

That is a tradition that certainly does not continue to this day.

Being the youngest poster on this forum (I think), I can say with certainty that the DT never tried to pull anything like that. Neither did we, at The Bruin. We just destroy them in terms of newspaper quality standards, though, with this year's editorial staff, things might change (if you've read The Bruin lately, you know what I mean).

Though I'm kinda glad that tradition ended. Seems a bit too non-journalistic for my taste. I mean, yes, we were college students, but we also expected people to take us seriously!

rees

Joined: Sep, 2006

Location: Puget Sound

Occupation: (City Editor 1964)

Feb 04, 2008, 11:26 AM

4007

The tail twisting was combination of trying to write in the style of the others, and of course of trying to deliver and replace the alternate issues. Done in fun and without conflict - mostly.

In the early 1960s another wrinkle was added. The two papers were for some time printed by the same plant in central LA, though they were composed at different sites (ours was in some dingy dive along Pico or Olympic; someone else will have to remember where).

Until the late 1960s those of us who "put the paper to bed" worked through the evening alongside excellent pros, whose fingers stroked the keys of old-fashioned Linotypes from which emerged cascades of lead slugs. "Night editors" learned to read the inverse surface of the type in their wooden frames, pointing out the lines to be re-set in rounds of composing, proofreading, editing and re-setting that lasted several hours each night. The floor manager had a "special" vocabulary to describe the on-campus editors who let typos get through, and there were both financial and social penalties to be paid for Kerckhoff Carelessness. Since the compositors were union men, paid by the hour, typos cost real dollars, and they could not be recalled by editing the HTML. :-)

The switching of editions with The Evil Empire of Coliseumland was on hiatus during my own era. Just as much fun was the "Cub Edition" each Spring, in which the animals ran the zoo for a day and the senior staff did its best to insert false stories. Bill Christopher's 1964? edition, redesigned to look like the NY Times, was a classic.

rees

Joined: Sep, 2006

Location: Puget Sound

Occupation: (City Editor 1964)

Feb 04, 2008, 11:37 AM	4008
Derek writes "...we were college students, but we also expected people to take us seriously!" It's not just about students' wishes. I think one could safely argue that a whole lot of TV "journalists" take themselves TOO seriously.

rees

Joined: Sep, 2006

Location: Puget Sound

Occupation: (City Editor 1964)

Feb 04, 2008, 11:46 AM	4009
And as to RF material (as we called it in the days of Donald Segretti)... there exists the following. Be our guest. http:/ / www.hopstudios.com/ dtlink/

rees

Joined: Sep, 2006

Location: Puget Sound

Occupation: (City Editor 1964)

Mar 18, 2024, 11:13 AM	6121
Aha! Sadly that item from 2006 has vanished from the WWW; no way to recall/omit the post.

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