About The New University

The New University

The New University, known to its campus as the New U, is the student-operated weekly newspaper of the University of California, Irvine, founded on 23 September 1968. It began as Spectrum, the name under which UCI's earliest student journalism appeared while the campus itself was only three years old, and passed through the names Spectre, The Tongue and The Anthill before settling on New University. Published in tabloid format with a recorded circulation of 8,000 in reference listings, it occupies an unusual position among American college newspapers: it is officially a department of the university under student government and student media, yet it is funded solely by advertising in the fact base's account, has no faculty adviser, is not formally tied to any academic programme, and elects its editor in chief by staff vote each late winter.

That combination of official status and practical autonomy, protected by California's Leonard Law, has defined the New U for more than five decades. Its pages recorded UCI's antiwar era, including four consecutive issues devoted to dissent in May 1970, and its leadership history has become a study in changing access, with sixteen women serving as editor in chief across its first 55 years, and every editor in a recent seven-year span a woman.

The Spectrum Years at a New Campus

UC Irvine held its first classes in October 1965 with about 1,589 students. Its first student newspaper, Spectrum, was publishing by December 1965, when it broke the news of the anteater's election as campus mascot, one of the first moments UCI students made their collective voice heard. A campus that young had no traditions except those its students were inventing in real time, and its newspaper was present at the inventions.

The paper's early names trace the experimental culture of the founding campus. After Spectrum came Spectre and The Tongue, and by 1966-67 the weekly student paper was The Anthill, a title playing on the anteater mascot, whose pages previewed campus performances by figures such as Duke Ellington and the Martha Graham Dance Company. UCI Libraries' digital collections preserve the Anthill as the fourth UCI student newspaper, running two volumes, before the 1968 re-founding consolidated the lineage under a durable name.

Founded as New University in 1968

On 23 September 1968 the paper was founded under the name New University, and the digitised run preserved by UCI Libraries, issues from 1968 to 1983 digitised from microfilm in 2007-08, begins with that title. The name declared an ambition matching the institution's: this would be the newspaper of a new kind of university, and by extension a new kind of campus journalism, shedding the whimsical succession of earlier titles for a permanent identity.

The founding came at the opening of UCI's most turbulent period. The paper established itself just as the Vietnam War, draft resistance and conflicts over academic freedom reached Irvine, and its second year was led by the first woman to hold its top editorship, a sign of both the era's upheavals and the paper's openness.

The Antiwar Record

Scholarly work on UCI's antiwar movement, drawing on the New University itself, records that the paper was not run by the administration and continued printing during campus shutdown and tumult. In May 1970 four consecutive publications focused on dissent against the war. The 6 May 1970 edition altered its logo to feature a clenched fist, the symbol of the strike and solidarity, under the headline On Strike, and reported a 4 May meeting of more than five hundred community members planning pickets, a march and daily leafleting in support of a strike at a war materials supplier.

Those issues mixed Irvine writers with contributors from around the nation, addressing readers' fears and commitments in a moment when the campus newspaper was the community's forum. The episodes demonstrate the practical value of the paper's independence: an administration-run publication could not have served as the strike's chronicler and platform, and the surviving issues are now primary sources for the university's own history of the period.

An Official Department With No Adviser

The New University is an official department of the university, housed under Student Government and Student Media, and benefits from that status with rent-free office space, free advertising space and exclusive distribution boxes on campus, advantages not generally available to other student media. At the same time, its press freedom is legally guaranteed by California's Leonard Law, extended in 2006 to public higher education institutions, and in practice the paper operates with relative independence and autonomy.

Unlike many college newspapers, the New University has no faculty adviser and is not formally tied to any academic programme. Funding through advertising and student fees, rather than academic budgets, supports that separation. The editor in chief is elected late in the winter quarter by a vote of the current staff, and the editor-elect then selects senior and associate editors, a self-governing succession that renews the paper's leadership democratically each year.

Women Editors and Changing Leadership

UC Irvine's own history of the paper counts sixteen women as editor in chief across its first 55 years. Amanda Spake, class of 1970, was the first, leading the New U in 1969-70 through its second year and the antiwar spring, before a career that included U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post and Mother Jones; she died on 23 January 2022. For the paper's first 37 years women editors were rare, one every five years or so, as former editor Beth Blenz-Clucas, editor in chief in 1979-80, recalled of an era when women were steered toward features and arts rather than hard news.

The pattern broke in the 2010s. From 2012 the gap disappeared, and for a documented span of seven years every editor in chief of the New U was a woman, including the editor who authored the university's retrospective. The paper presents that shift not as a programme imposed on it but as the outcome of its staff-election system once newsroom culture changed, a case study in how student media leadership diversifies when the pipeline does.

Awards and Standing

The New University is recorded as a winner of local, regional, state and national awards, a breadth consistent with a weekly that competes in California's deep college-media field. Award recognition for a paper without a journalism-school pipeline or faculty adviser carries a particular point: its standards are maintained by students teaching students, validated externally by professional and collegiate judging.

The tabloid format and weekly frequency, with a reference-listed circulation of 8,000, positioned the paper for depth rather than daily churn: reported features, opinion and arts coverage built over a weekly cycle. In the digital era the New U is described as a fully digital weekly newspaper serving the campus and the Irvine community since 1968, publishing on Mondays in listings, while maintaining the weekly identity its name and archive embody.

The Archive at UCI Libraries

UCI Libraries hold the paper's early record in depth. The New University collection comprises issues from 1968 to 1983 digitised from microfilm in 2007-08, with current and some back issues available through the paper's website, and the libraries preserve the predecessor titles as well, including The Anthill's two volumes. Together the collections let a researcher follow UCI student journalism from Spectrum's mascot election coverage in 1965 through the New University's antiwar years without leaving the catalogue.

Preservation matters especially for UCI, a university young enough that its entire history fits within living memory. The student newspaper is the most continuous narrative of that history, and the libraries' stewardship treats it accordingly, as the campus's diary rather than as ephemera.

The New University Today

Today the New University continues as UCI's official campus newspaper, student-operated, staff-elected and adviser-free, publishing weekly in digital form for the campus and the city of Irvine. Its staff consists of UCI undergraduates, and its beats span campus news, opinion, arts and sports, the standard college-paper range executed under an uncommon governance model.

From Spectrum to the New U, the paper's story is one of self-invention repeated annually: a new campus invented a newspaper, the newspaper reinvented its name four times, settled in 1968, recorded a war's campus echo, and built a self-governing newsroom that has outlasted every administrative structure around it. For UC Irvine, the New University is both the first draft of its history and a standing lesson in how much autonomy students can responsibly carry.