Portrait of Kate Stanley and oral history interview item records in the University Digital Conservancy, 1979, 1999
In 1999, journalist Kate Stanley, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily from 1979-1980, was interviewed by University Historian Ann Pflaum. A transcript of the interview is preserved in the University Digital Conservancy: Interview with Kate Stanley, 1999.
In the interview, Stanley described her role in guiding the Daily through the controversy that followed the publication of the 1979 Finals Week humor issue and the lawsuit filed against the Board of Regents to defend the First Amendment rights of the newspaper.
Stanley also reflected on the role of the Daily as an institution and credited the student editors and reporters for its success:
“If you look at the Daily over time, what you see is a phenomenal journalistic product put out on the streets every day by nineteen and twenty and twenty-one year olds. How are they able to do it? They do it because they must and because they’re expected to do it and because no one has told them they can’t. The Daily has developed wonderful quality control systems over the years and has a history that no one dares betray. That’s why it’s the wonderful institution that it is…
… The Daily has a long history of exposing wrongdoing at the university, of highlighting tremendous successes and bringing them to the fore, of challenging the administration in its times of folly, of promoting innovations that have enhanced the university’s reputation. It is journalism at its very best.”
