The Daily Wildcat

About The Daily Wildcat

The Daily Wildcat — formally the Arizona Daily Wildcat — is the student newspaper of the University of Arizona in Tucson. Founded in 1899, it is a century-old institution on the UA campus, distributed across the university and the Tucson metropolitan area. Under the umbrella of Arizona Student Media, it publishes in print and online throughout the academic year, and its website was among the very first college newspaper sites in the country. Along the way it has earned national collegiate journalism honors, including a Princeton Review best-college-newspaper nod and multiple Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker awards.

History and founding

The Wildcat's story begins in 1899, when it debuted under the name Sage Green and Silver — a nod to the University of Arizona's original school colors. In the decades that followed, the paper changed names several times: Arizona Weekly Life, University Life, Arizona Life, and Arizona Wildcat all preceded the modern Arizona Daily Wildcat name. The school colors themselves changed in 1900, when a student manager accepted a deal on inexpensive solid blue jerseys trimmed in red; the university soon settled on cardinal red and navy blue, while the paper's original name preserved the old sage and silver.

Through the twentieth century the Wildcat grew with the university, moving from a small campus sheet to a daily publication covering a major research university. Its newsroom spent decades in the student union, where generations of staffers treated it as a second home — a place alumni later recalled as the launchpad for careers across journalism, media, and beyond.

Distribution and publishing schedule

The paper's distribution reaches roughly 20,000 readers across the University of Arizona campus and the Tucson metropolitan area. During the fall and spring semesters the website, dailywildcat.com, is updated regularly with campus and city news, while the print edition is distributed on Wednesdays. In the summer months, when the campus population thins, the paper publishes weekly as the Arizona Summer Wildcat.

The Wildcat describes itself as the campus newspaper of record, and for many UA faculty, staff, and students, picking up the paper has long been part of the morning routine — a shared touchpoint across a large and diverse university.

A digital pioneer

The Daily Wildcat was an early adopter of the internet. In 1994 it launched its first online news site — one of the first college newspaper websites anywhere — beginning as a rudimentary text-only version. A more robust graphical website followed in 1995, the forerunner of today's dailywildcat.com. Four National Online Pacemaker Awards later, the paper remained an innovator in college media, continuing its evolution into digital-first publishing while employing hundreds of students a year across news, sales, marketing, design, IT, and advertising.

In the 2010s the paper launched an "Innovation in Media" campaign — a multi-year fundraising effort aimed at transforming the Wildcat into a modern 21st-century college news organization, funding the shift from print-centric to multi-platform operations without sacrificing the student experience that made the paper valuable.

Coverage and sections

The Wildcat covers the full scope of university life: student government (ASUA), administration, academics, campus construction and development, and the student experience from housing to tuition. Sports coverage follows the Arizona Wildcats — football, men's and women's basketball, baseball, softball, and Olympic sports — with the paper's online sports reporting earning national recognition. Arts and culture reporting covers Tucson's music and arts scenes alongside campus events, and the opinion section hosts student editorials, columns, and letters that spark campus debate.

The paper has also been at the center of campus controversies over free expression. A 2012 cartoon published in the Wildcat drew thousands of petition signatures calling for staff changes; the paper issued an apology and parted ways with the cartoonist. Episodes like that have repeatedly tested the newsroom's commitment to editorial independence and accountability.

The May Day Mystery

One of the Wildcat's most beloved oddities is the May Day Mystery. Every year since at least the early 1970s — and at various other seemingly random times — cryptic advertisements appear in the paper on May 1 containing puzzling "clues" to some sort of mystery. The tradition's origins appear to stretch back to the 1890s, and generations of students have tried, mostly in vain, to solve it. It remains one of college journalism's longest-running unsolved puzzles and a signature piece of Wildcat lore.

Awards and recognition

The Wildcat's trophy case is among the deepest in college media. It was named Best College Newspaper in the Princeton Review's The Best 361 Colleges, 2006 Edition. In 2010 it won the Associated Collegiate Press Online Pacemaker, was a Pacemaker finalist in print, earned a Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award as a national finalist for online sports reporting at a four-year college or university, and won the College Media Advisers Apple Award for best four-year broadsheet newspaper. In 2015 it took Best of Show at the ACP National College Media Convention. Its multiple National Online Pacemaker Awards reflect the paper's early and sustained digital excellence.

Notable alumni

Wildcat alumni have succeeded across journalism and beyond — from higher education to thoroughbred racehorse training. In the journalism and media fields, alumni include Gilbert Bailon, who became editorial page editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The paper's alumni association actively cultivates the connection between past and present staffers, celebrating the newsroom as a formative experience: one former editor described the Wildcat as giving them their first taste of journalism and the first adrenaline rush of reporting on a university in transition.

Sports coverage and the Tucson connection

The Wildcat's sports desk is one of its most decorated operations. In 2010 the paper was a Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence national finalist for online sports reporting at a four-year college or university, reflecting its deep coverage of Arizona Wildcats athletics — football, men's and women's basketball, baseball, softball, and the university's Olympic sports. That sports coverage matters well beyond campus: with distribution across the Tucson metropolitan area, the Wildcat serves a city whose identity is closely tied to UA athletics, and its reporting reaches alumni and community readers as well as students.

The paper's broader Tucson footprint also shapes its news coverage. City issues that touch students — housing, transportation, local elections, and the university's physical growth — all fall within the Wildcat's beat. The paper's long-running "Innovation in Media" fundraising campaign, launched in the mid-2010s with a three-year, $250,000 goal, was explicitly aimed at sustaining that community-wide role: keeping hundreds of students employed each year in newsgathering, sales, marketing, design, and digital media while the organization completed its transformation into a modern multi-platform newsroom.

A century-old campus institution

In a 2001 staff editorial, the Wildcat described its newsroom as a place of great significance to the university community — where some of the best journalists in Arizona and the country launched their careers, and where professional reporters, editors, cartoonists, photographers, and advertising managers all got their start. The paper noted that while its physical newsroom location might change, its commitment to coverage would not. That sentiment has held through moves, format changes, and the digital revolution: the Wildcat continues to show up for the UA community every semester, as it has since 1899.

Reading the Daily Wildcat

The Arizona Daily Wildcat publishes online throughout the fall and spring semesters at its official website, dailywildcat.com, with a print edition distributed on Wednesdays across the University of Arizona campus and the Tucson area. The Arizona Summer Wildcat appears weekly during the summer. The paper's alumni association also maintains archives and history at dailywildcatalumni.org, preserving more than a century of Wildcat journalism.