About The Daily Titan

The Daily Titan

The Daily Titan is the student newspaper of California State University, Fullerton, in Fullerton, California, published since 1960 and recognised as the student voice of Cal State Fullerton. Its first issue, under the name Titan Times, appeared on 4 January 1960, the year the university's first students were settling into a campus founded only shortly before. Under California law the Daily Titan is editorially independent from the university and the College of Communications, a legal status that has shaped its self-confidence for more than six decades. It publishes in print Monday through Thursday during the fall and spring semesters, with weekly editions in the first two weeks of each term and during finals week, alongside its website.

About sixty reporters, editors and advertising staff, chosen each semester, produce the paper, working under faculty advisers who do not exercise editorial control. That structure, a real daily newsroom staffed entirely by students, has made the Daily Titan one of the most decorated college newspapers in California, with more than sixty awards in a single year recorded in 2018, and a continuing presence in debates about student press freedom, most recently when the Fullerton City Council barred it and other non-governmental publications from distribution on city property in July 2025.

Founded as the Titan Times in 1960

Cal State Fullerton students have produced a campus newspaper since 1960. The first issue of the student newspaper, the Titan Times, was published on 4 January 1960, as recorded in the university's own photographic history of its founding years. The timing placed the paper at the creation of the institution itself: the university's founding president had taken up his post in March 1959, working from leased offices, and the first cohorts of students were inventing campus traditions, from the Greek system, also founded in 1960, to the famous elephant races of 1962.

From its founding in 1960 through spring 1968, the paper was known as the Titan Times, publishing one to three times per week with occasional summer editions. It was briefly The Titan in fall 1968 and spring 1969. In fall 1969 it took its enduring name, Daily Titan, and began publishing four editions each week, a frequency that expressed both ambition and the growth of the university around it. The name changes track the paper's maturation from occasional bulletin to true daily.

Editorial Independence Under California Law

The Daily Titan's defining institutional feature is its editorial independence, guaranteed under California law. The paper is editorially independent from the university and from the College of Communications in which many of its staff study. News and advertising faculty advisers support the operation but do not exercise editorial control, leaving content decisions to the student staff selected each semester.

Independence of this kind changes a newsroom's psychology. Reporters can investigate university decisions, criticise administrators and cover campus controversies knowing that the law, not administrative goodwill, protects their right to publish. University descriptions of the paper emphasise the immersive training value of that arrangement: the Daily Titan replicates the deadlines and working experience of a real newsroom so students can prepare for internships and professional roles, precisely because its editorial judgements are genuinely its own.

The Daily Routine

The Daily Titan publishes a print edition Monday through Thursday during the fall and spring semesters, moving to weekly editions for the first two weeks of each semester and during finals week, when staffing and readership patterns change. Its recorded circulation is 4,500 copies, and its bibliographic identity is fixed by OCLC number 15193278. A staff of roughly sixty reporters, editors and advertising sales executives, chosen each semester, sustains that output.

Semester-by-semester staff selection means the paper reinvents itself twice a year while preserving continuity through advisers, archives and tradition. New editors inherit beats, sources and standards from their predecessors in a compressed apprenticeship. The advertising side is integral rather than incidental: student executives sell the space that helps fund the operation, learning the commercial half of publishing alongside the editorial half.

Awards and Professional Recognition

The Daily Titan's competitive record is extensive. In 2018 its staff won two first-place awards, a second-place award and three third-place awards from the Los Angeles Press Club at the 60th annual SoCal Journalism Awards, including first place for best feature photo and for breaking news writing, and third place for best college newspaper and best news website. With eight additional nominations, the Titan was a finalist in more college media categories than any other California university that year, and the LA Press Club results brought its awards total for the year to more than sixty.

The previous academic year was similarly decorated. The paper reported 53 awards in 2017-18, including first-place best in show from the Associated Collegiate Press and Most Outstanding College Newspaper from the American Scholastic Press Association, with finalist honours for best daily student newspaper from both the Los Angeles Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists. Students also won for best news website, social media, multimedia packages and presentation, and for writing, reporting, photography, design and illustration across the staff.

Investigative Reporting With Consequences

Individual Daily Titan reporting has changed campus outcomes. Student Bryant Freese's investigative story on turmoil inside the women's basketball programme, which led to the departure of the team's coach, won first place in the national Hearst Awards competition, with a cash prize and a matching grant to the Department of Communications, as well as top reporting honours from the American Scholastic Press Association and the California College Media Association. A student investigation producing a coaching change is the clearest possible demonstration that the paper's independence is practised, not merely proclaimed.

On the business side, Titan advertising students won awards for audience engagement strategy, guerrilla marketing, promotional materials, special sections and display advertising. The combination matters for the paper's educational claim: graduates leave having worked in a newsroom where editorial distinction and commercial competence were both expected and both rewarded.

The 2025 City Distribution Ban

In July 2025 the Fullerton City Council banned all non-governmental publications, including the Daily Titan, from distribution on city property. The decision removed a student newspaper from public distribution points by municipal action, drawing coverage from EdSource, the statewide education news organisation, where the paper's perspective was presented under a defiant headline affirming that removal from city property would not stop publication. The episode extended the Daily Titan's press-freedom story beyond the campus boundary: its independence, guaranteed against the university by state law, was now tested by city government.

The ban also illustrated the paper's civic role. A campus newspaper distributed on city property serves readers beyond the student body, and its removal was therefore a public issue, not an internal campus matter. The Daily Titan's response, continuing to publish while contesting the restriction in public, fits the pattern of a newsroom accustomed to defending its right to reach readers.

Training Ground in the College of Communications

The Daily Titan operates within the orbit of the College of Communications and its Department of Communications, whose faculty have included editorial adviser Bonnie Steward and advertising adviser Michelle Kurland, both full-time lecturers recognised in the paper's award coverage. The arrangement gives students professional mentorship without professional control, a balance the department presents as the core of the Titan experience.

Because the paper replicates a daily newsroom, students rotate through reporting, editing, photography, design and sales under real deadlines for a real audience. Alumni carry that experience into Southern California's media market, where the Titan name is familiar to editors who once worked on it or competed against it. The 59-year legacy of independent student journalism celebrated in the paper's 2017-18 award report has only lengthened since.

The Daily Titan Today

Today the Daily Titan continues to publish in print four days a week in term and online continuously, staffed each semester by a new cohort of about sixty students. Its identity is unusually stable for a student publication: same name since 1969, same independence, same daily discipline. That stability lets each year's staff measure itself against a long record rather than starting from nothing.

From the Titan Times of January 1960 to the city-property dispute of 2025, the Daily Titan has been the student voice of Cal State Fullerton in the literal sense: students choose the staff, students make the editorial decisions, and students answer for the result. Its awards cabinets, its investigative record and its longevity all rest on that foundation, which California law protects and Fullerton students renew every semester.