The Daily Evergreen

About The Daily Evergreen

The Daily Evergreen is the student newspaper of Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. First published in March 1895, it has appeared continuously during the school year for more than 130 years, making it one of the oldest college newspapers in the Pacific Northwest. Calling itself "the student voice of Washington State University," the Evergreen covers the campus, the city of Pullman, and the surrounding Palouse region — and it doubles as a professional training ground whose alumni have gone on to newsrooms from the Spokesman-Review to the New York Times.

History and founding

The Evergreen's origins reach back to the earliest days of what was then Washington Agricultural College and School of Science. The school's first student paper, The College Record, published its first four-page issue in February 1892 — just a month after the school officially opened that January — printed on cream-colored satin. Ten issues appeared through April 1893 before the paper folded under debts to its printer. By 1902, when editors asked readers to donate old issues for a new archives room, none of them had ever seen a copy of The College Record.

After two years without a campus paper, students called a meeting and established a new publication with student Will D. Todd as editor. They left no written explanation for why they named it The Evergreen. The first issue came out in March 1895 as a 12-page broadsheet produced by seven editors, sold for 75 cents an annual subscription or 10 cents per issue. It has published continually during the school year ever since.

Early issues mixed local news with essays, creative writing, jokes, and news tidbits exchanged with other college papers of the West. College president E. A. Bryan later described the early paper as a clean, worthy sheet, breathing a true college spirit of loyalty — full of news and well-written articles, with poetical contributions from students.

A trailblazing editor

The Evergreen got its first female editor-in-chief in the spring of 1899, when Dora Lobaugh took the helm — a notable milestone at a time when women in newspaper leadership were rare anywhere in the country, let alone at a land-grant college in the rural Northwest. The Chinook yearbook marked the occasion, and Lobaugh's editorship set a precedent for generations of women who would lead the paper. In the century since, the Evergreen's staff has reflected the changing student body it serves.

Distribution and reach

The Daily Evergreen is an 11,000-circulation newspaper distributed on weekdays throughout the academic year, with weekly publication in the summer. It is read by more than 83 percent of WSU students and more than half the faculty, and it circulates not only across the Pullman campus but throughout the city and across the state line in Moscow, Idaho. The paper is printed on the press of the Lewiston Morning Tribune, about 40 miles south in Idaho.

What sets the Evergreen apart from most college papers is the breadth of its coverage area. It is unique among student newspapers in covering the entire Pullman community and surrounding region as a matter of course. The only professional newspaper with reporters in the area is the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, based across the border in Moscow — which means the Evergreen functions, in practice, as one of the two real newsrooms serving the Palouse.

Structure within the university

The Evergreen is technically not part of WSU's Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, though many Murrow students work there. It is housed under the university's Office of Student Media and is supported by services and activities fees — a student fee — along with advertising sales and Chinook yearbook revenue. Students from every college and major are welcome on staff, and many non-journalism majors have passed through its newsroom.

WSU's Murrow College dean has described the paper as a learning lab — almost a finishing school for the journalism program — where students pull together under deadline pressure on stories that make a real difference. Alumni consistently single out their Evergreen years as a turning point in their education.

Coverage and sections

The Evergreen's reporting spans campus administration, the Associated Students of WSU, academics and research, and student life — from housing and dining to Greek life and campus safety. Sports coverage follows the Washington State Cougars across football, basketball, and Olympic sports, a beat with a passionate regional audience. The opinion section hosts student columnists and editorials, including the paper's own institutional voice on university controversies.

Beyond campus, the paper covers Pullman city government, regional development, and Palouse community life — a scope that gives its student reporters experience more like a small-city daily than a typical campus paper. Special editions have marked the paper's milestones, including a centennial edition in spring 1995 that took a full semester of archival research to produce.

Standing up to pressure

Independent student papers periodically clash with the institutions they cover, and the Evergreen is no exception. In March 1961, ASWSU presidential candidates used a campus "Popcorn Forum" debate to launch a united attack on the paper, accusing it of bias and of covering only bad news — one candidate quoted the old saw that good news is no news and bad news is news. The episode entered Evergreen lore as a reminder that a student paper doing its job will sometimes be unpopular with the powerful.

More recently, the paper has used its own archives to reckon with its history, publishing retrospective features — including a 130th-anniversary series in 2025 — that revisit its biggest stories and the controversies they sparked.

A training ground for professional journalists

For more than 125 years, the Daily Evergreen has done double duty as both a source of information and a training ground for student journalists. The experience has helped alumni land jobs in newsrooms throughout the country — from the Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Spokane's Spokesman-Review to the New York Times. Staffers learn reporting, editing, photography, design, and management by running a real newspaper on real deadlines, and the paper's alumni network remains deeply engaged with the newsroom.

One former editor who joined as a freshman in 1992 described the Murrow basement newsroom as a second home, working as a general reporter, then ASWSU beat reporter, then managing editor and editor-in-chief — and editing the 100-year anniversary edition in 1995. Decades later, visiting the newsroom, she found that centennial edition still pinned to the bulletin board.

130 years and counting

In 2025 the Evergreen marked 130 years of continuous publication — a milestone few American newspapers of any kind can claim. The anniversary prompted a new round of archival storytelling, with current staffers digging through the paper's own history to resurface the stories that defined it: student-government scandals, campus protests, championship seasons, and the everyday life of the Palouse across three centuries. The celebration underscored what has always been the paper's dual identity: a first draft of WSU history and a school for the journalists who write it.

Reading the Daily Evergreen

The Daily Evergreen publishes on weekdays during the academic year and weekly in the summer, with news available online at its official website, dailyevergreen.com. Print copies circulate across the Washington State University campus, throughout Pullman, and in Moscow, Idaho. The paper's archives — more than 130 years of Palouse and campus history — are a resource for researchers, alumni, and anyone tracing the story of the inland Northwest.