The Maneater

About The Maneater

The Maneater is the official, editorially independent student news publication at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Founded in 1955, it has served as the student voice of MU for more than 70 years, building a reputation for aggressive, independent reporting summed up in the newsroom's famous manifesto: "If you want to keep us out, better bar the door." One of the most decorated college newspapers in the country, it has won the Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker Award four times and the Online Pacemaker five times. It publishes at themaneater.com, covering campus news, sports, arts and entertainment, and the city of Columbia and the state of Missouri.

The paper's name, its attitude, and its independence all date to a single founding moment in 1955, when a new editor took over a sleepy campus paper and transformed it into a journalistic tiger. That founding ethos has survived seven decades, six decades of editors-in-chief, and the transformation of the media industry, making The Maneater a distinctive institution in American student journalism.

1955: Joel Gold founds The Maneater

Sixty years before its 60th anniversary celebration, Joel J. Gold published the first issue of The Maneater on February 18, 1955. Before that, the campus paper was called The Missouri Student, a paper originally published in 1926 that was largely regarded as a public-relations newsletter for the student government and Greek life. For the six years of its existence under that name, the Missouri Student was staffed by members of the Delta Upsilon fraternity.

When Gold and business manager Jim Willard took over, they promised a more aggressive stance on reporting and journalism, something the university had not seen before. The first thing Gold did was change the paper's name to The Maneater, and with the new name came a new editorial policy that would define the paper for generations. Since 1955, The Maneater has striven to produce the best content possible, serving as the main source of campus news and coverage of student organizations and the Missouri Students Association.

The story behind the name

The choice of the name The Maneater was deliberate and provocative. As the paper's own history explains, the name "Missouri Student" reflected the editorial policy of the former paper all too well: it signified nothing. Gold wanted a name that signified a strong and aggressive paper, and he found it in the image of the man-eating tiger.

The name has since signified exactly what Gold intended: a paper with fangs bared, ready to pounce on the stories that matter. Every five years, The Maneater produces a commemorative anniversary issue with articles about the history of the publication, and the origin of the name has been retold and debated in those issues for decades, with Gold himself correcting the record in the paper's 30th anniversary edition after an earlier anniversary issue published the wrong facts about how the name was chosen.

The manifesto: a tiger with fangs bared

Along with the new name, Gold instituted a new editorial policy that remains the paper's creed: "The Maneater by its very name cannot content itself with merely presenting the news. The Maneater is a tiger with fangs bared and claws sharpened ready to analyze the facts and then to pounce." The manifesto continued with a warning to anyone who would obstruct the paper's reporters: "If you want to keep us out, better bar the door. And don't try getting rough or screaming 'libel' when a Maneater reporter crashes your meetings. When The Maneater gets mad, all hell is going to break loose. You've been warned."

For 60 years, under 61 editors-in-chief and at least half a dozen newsroom locations, Maneater staffers have lived by that manifesto. It is more than newsroom decoration: it is a statement of the paper's adversarial relationship with institutional power, including the power of its own university, and a promise to its readers that the paper will not be intimidated out of pursuing a story.

Independence within the university

The Maneater has remained editorially independent throughout its history, a status it has defended against repeated attempts to bring it under institutional control. The School of Journalism, the world's first, founded at MU by Walter Williams in 1908, has offered to absorb The Maneater into its system many times through its history, but the paper has remained afloat of its own accord and at a distance from any such attempts.

Today, The Maneater is a division of the university's Department of Student Life. The paper is printed in Sedalia, Missouri, and though a publications board still exists to handle the publication's internal matters, its editorial content remains independent of any university authority or student group. The paper has remained free, in the sense that matters most to a newsroom, for its entire existence: free to report, free to criticize, and free to crash the meetings it is told to stay out of.

Awards and recognition

Both the newspaper and the website are highly decorated publications, consistently distinguished by state and national press honors. The Pacemaker Award, widely considered the Pulitzer Prize of collegiate journalism, has been awarded to The Maneater newspaper four times: in 1996, 1999, 2001, and 2007. The paper was a finalist for the award in 1993, 1994, 2000, and 2012.

The Maneater's website has been even more decorated. It has received the Online Pacemaker, established in 2000, five times: in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009, and 2012, and it was a finalist in 2005. The paper has also earned Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards and Missouri College Media Association Better Newspaper Contest awards, making it one of the most honored student publications in the Midwest across both print and digital categories.

What the 'Eater covers

As the official student voice of MU, The Maneater covers campus news, sports, arts and entertainment, and the latest news in the city of Columbia and the state of Missouri. Its reporters cover the Missouri Students Association, student organizations, university administration, and the issues that affect students' daily lives, while its sports section follows the Tigers through the Southeastern Conference seasons.

In recent years the paper has focused increasingly on long-form and profile stories, giving its writers room to pursue ambitious narrative journalism alongside daily news coverage. It has also provided an open forum for students to share their viewpoints and opinions about current issues, maintaining the tradition of the opinion pages as a campus town square. The paper's duty, as its own about page puts it, is to keep students informed about issues that concern them immediately as students at MU, but also as members of a global community.

Notable alumni

The Maneater's alumni have carried its aggressive reporting ethos into professional newsrooms across the country. Derrick Goold, class of 1997, is a sportswriter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where he covers the Cardinals; he has said he does not know if he would have become a sportswriter without The Maneater, crediting the paper with accelerating a career that began when a sports editor noticed his stories and asked him to cover a football game.

Evelyn Kanter, class of 1963, was a feature editor at The Maneater whose first assignment was covering a football game she had never seen before; she went on to work for ABC News and CBS News as a writer, producer, and reporter, and is now a freelance travel, automotive, and environmental writer. Larry Van Dyne, class of 1967, joined the staff in the fall of 1964 and later assumed an editor position. Linda Quinet, class of 1965, served as a managing editor, working late nights in Read Hall and needing a special pass to be out past the 10 p.m. curfew for women at the time; she went on to a career in journalism and communications. The paper's alumni network spans broadcast, print, and digital media, a testament to the newsroom's role as a training ground.

Anniversaries and the evolving newsroom

The Maneater marked its 60th anniversary on February 18, 2015, celebrating six decades of student journalism with special coverage of its own history. By then the paper had seen 61 editors-in-chief and at least half a dozen newsroom locations, and it had redesigned its website roughly six times, adapting to the ever-evolving field of journalism while holding to the founding manifesto.

The anniversary coverage reflected on how the paper had changed with the industry, from exploring multimedia and long-form journalism to rebuilding its digital presence again and again, and on how it had stayed the same: a student-run newsroom, independent of the university it covers, committed to the aggressive reporting its founder promised in 1955.

Reading The Maneater

The Maneater publishes at themaneater.com, with daily coverage of the University of Missouri, Columbia news, Tiger athletics, arts and entertainment, and student opinion. Print editions circulate across the MU campus. Seventy years after Joel Gold renamed a sleepy campus paper and promised that a Maneater reporter would crash any meeting worth covering, the paper remains what he made it: the independent student voice of Mizzou, with fangs bared and claws sharpened.