A “Must Read” for Campus and Beyond

By Anne Levin | Photos by Jeffrey E. Tryon

The best college newspapers are those that concern themselves not only with what is happening on campus, but with the outside world as well. The Daily Princetonian is widely considered to be among them.

Celebrating its 150th birthday this year, the Princeton University publication nicknamed “the Prince” was founded as a biweekly called The Princetonian in 1876, and renamed when it went daily 14 years later. It has been the launching pad for an impressive list of noted achievers — authors Robert Caro and F. Scott Fitzgerald; journalists R.W. “Johnny” Apple, John Stossel, and staffers at The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The Boston Globe, and People magazine; and political figures Woodrow Wilson, Adlai Stevenson, and Elena Kagan — just to name a few.

Operating since 1966 out of an appropriately messy office at 48 University Place, The Prince is directed by a graduate board of trustees, made up of former editors and business staffers. It supports itself, receiving no financial backing from the University or alumni. The paper is a registered nonprofit that prides itself on its independence from the University.

“It does maintain its independence pretty well,” says Rich Rein ’69, who was chairman (the post was renamed editor-in-chief when Princeton went coeducational) during his senior year and served on its board from 1979 to 1990. Rein was founder and editor of U.S.1 newspaper and currently edits the TAPinto Princeton news site. “The paper reflects the tone and tenor of the University,” he continues. “There was a lot of reliance on established rules. But we were not toadies of the University.”

Rein recalls putting in 40 hours a week at the Prince, squeezing in his academic requirements. A few decades later, Tom Weber — current president of The Daily Princetonian’s board of trustees — had his own obsessive schedule at the paper.

“My sophomore and especially my junior years, I was at the Prince 60 hours a week,” says Weber, who became a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal and executive editor at Time magazine, where he now serves as a contributing editor. “It was hard core journalism training. For me and my friends taking the reins, it was thrilling in a lot of ways to have a place with so much independence, and to feel so much responsibility related to that independence. If you were headed into journalism for a career, the Prince back then was the academy for you at the University.”

Editor-in-Chief Jerry Zhu, Class of 2026.

Despite the decline of the newspaper industry — most recently the February 4 layoffs of 30 percent of its staff by The Washington Post — being part of The Daily Princetonian continues to engage undergraduates. Some 400, including those in the news, business, and technology departments, are currently on staff, says current editor Jerry Zhu ’26, an economics major who started on the Prince as a copy editor.

While more interested in pursuing an academic rather than journalistic career, Zhu puts in four nights a week in the newsroom and is dedicated to its purpose. “We are aware we have a long legacy of being the paper of record for the University,” he says. “We do it because we understand the mission of keeping the University informed.”

Columnist Audrey Tan, left, and Head Opinion Editor Lily Halbert-Alexander, right.

The late 1960s were turbulent times for college campuses. The Prince was busy covering protests of the Vietnam War, the beginning of coeducation, changes in University governance, and diversity. Rein’s classmate Bob Durkee, who would go on to spend 47 years as the University’s vice president and secretary, was a sophomore when he arranged to interview Robert Kennedy in Washington, D.C., for what became a two-part article. Equally significant, he broke the story about the University’s decision to admit women in 1969.

“When people ask me what I majored in at Princeton, my answer is The Daily Prince,” Durkee says. “It was such an amazing experience to have the responsibility to put out a newspaper five days a week. I became a very prolific reporter, which allowed me to do all kinds of interesting things.”

Rein recalls major changes on campus during his tenure at the paper. Then-President Robert Goheen “admonished us to break out of our conservative shell,” he says. “When I showed up, the paper was as conservative as the University. By the end, we were doing all sorts of out-of-the-box stories. We were blowing the roof off some stuff. We came in and were immersed in the old, and then got dropped into the new.”

Five days a week, Durkee would start about 1:30 p.m. in the paper’s office and end up about 1:30 a.m. at the Princeton Herald print shop on Chambers Street, which dated back to the 19th century (in the days before desktop publishing). “You had to figure out how to do all this and sleep, eat, and meet academic requirements,” he says.” I think when I was hired to work in the president’s office here, one of the things [then President] Bill Bowen most valued was that I had had that experience at the Prince.”

Durkee spent a summer interning at The Washington Post and wrote for The Staten Island Advance. Rein was a summer reporter for Time magazine and was assigned to its Chicago bureau. “If you got elected chairman, you pretty much got a summer internship at Time magazine starting in 1961,” Rein says.

From the end of World War II until 1987, young staffers at the Prince had an unofficial mentor in production supervisor Larry DuPraz, described in James Axtell’s book The Making of Princeton University as “a flat-topped, cigar-smoking townie, high school graduate, and volunteer fireman. In the minds of thousands of his student-fans, this stubby veteran with a bite as sharp as his bark was ‘one of the toughest ‘professors’ at Princeton.”

Scores of student journalists who worked at the Prince remember DuPraz fondly, despite his gruff exterior. When Rein started U.S.1 in 1984, DuPraz was there to help him compose the first issue.
In recent years, the University’s Program in Journalism has become another source for learning about writing and reporting the news. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eliza Griswold, a contributing writer for The New Yorker, is director.

Assistant Sports Editor Jordan Halagao, left, and Head Sports Editor Doug Schwartz, right.

“It has grown and become much more robust, so the Prince is not the main route anymore,” says Weber. “But it’s still the only place to go for real life experience as a daily journalist. And as somebody who is an alum of the newsroom, I never want to underestimate the importance of the business staff, who sell ads. There is a weekly print edition now, but ad sales are mostly around the online edition. That opportunity to be entrepreneurial and have management responsibility has been just as impactful for those who have come through the business staff as us in the newsroom.”

Two books have been written about the paper and its history. Judy Piper Schmitt ’76 is the author of The Prince Remembers: One Hundred Years of The Daily Princetonian. The 1992 managing board and staff of the paper is credited with compiling and writing The Orange & Black in Black & White: A Century of Princeton Through the Eyes of The Daily Princetonian.

In that book’s introduction, then University President Harold Shapiro wrote, “The full sweep of this history has been chronicled, debated, and assessed on the pages of the ‘Prince’ Through its mystical blend of fact and fiction, fantasy and fulmination, it is the ‘Prince’ that informs us, challenges us, enrages us, provokes us, occasionally amuses us, and sends us to bed each night with at least some trepidation about what the next morning’s edition will bring.”

The official celebration of the Prince’s 150th birthday is a gala dinner set for October 16 at The New York Historical on Manhattan’s Central Park West. “The event is an opportunity for ‘Prince’ alumni — as well as anyone who supports our mission of vibrant, independent college journalism — to come together to celebrate the history of the ‘Prince’ and demonstrate support for our future,” reads an email to the University community. Additional commemorations, including a gathering at the annual Reunions in May, are in the works.

“So many of us as alumni want to give back to an institution that gave so much to us,” says Weber. “We really want to pay tribute to this important part of the Princeton community. Starting in 1876, the Prince has been there for every moment, all of the ups and downs, and the country as it affects the campus. We have a lot to celebrate.”