Mr. Norris: “That tune haunts me.”Mrs. Norris: “No wonder – you’ve murdered it so many times.”

This joke is one of many that appeared in the Jokes section of The Chalkline, the first student newspaper of the then State Teachers College of Johnson City. Although jokes like these remain funny today, a lot of things have changed since the early 1900s when what we now know as East Tennessee State University was first formed. Among these many changes is the evolution of ETSU’s student newspaper.

First it was The Chalkline and then it was The Collegian. Later they called it the Pirate Press. Now it’s simply known as the East Tennessean. Throughout the last 100 years, East Tennessee State University has been publishing a student newspaper, in some form or another, that covers issues both on campus and worldwide. Through name changes, office changes and technology changes, ETSU’s student newspaper has survived it all.

East Tennessee State University opened its doors to students in October 1911 and by 1923, the university was producing its first school newspaper, The Chalkline. Since the journalism department was not added until 1969, students with an interest in news and social events got together to put out The Chalkline, a newspaper that somewhat resembled an end-of-the-year yearbook. The Chalkline featured news about past alumni, records of weddings of recent graduates, weekend events for students, athletic information, student-written short stories and even a page that was set aside for jokes.

Many things were different in the early 1900s. ETSU’s student newspaper from that era highlights how much has changed in the last 100 years. Years ago it was taboo for young women to be allowed out to certain places, at certain times and with certain individuals.

“No young woman student in the normal school will be permitted to dine at a public hotel with an escort and without a chaperon and no young woman student will be permitted to attend any public dance,” said Sidney G. Gilbreath, ETSU’s first president, speaking of 1912’s student population.

Society in this era functioned with a tremendous amount of restraint and The Chalkline reflects that restraint in it’s neatly typed, decades old pages. Pictures in these old issues show young men and women who were smartly dressed and appropriately covered. Academics and athletic activities took up the students’ time. The pages of The Chalkline highlight campus organizations and social events that the students participated in. This early version of ETSU’s student newspaper was more focused on documenting student activities than on hard news.

As The Chalkline evolved over the years, the writers became more critical of campus affairs, faculty and administration. The Chalkline began to feature content that was notably more newsworthy. The newspaper underwent its first name change in 1938 when it was renamed The Collegian.

Throughout the late ’40s and early ’50s, the writers at The Collegian took part in editorials that both criticized and praised certain professors or aspects of administration. At one point, an editorialist with the byline “Disgusted” wrote about the grading practices of professors, which prompted the newspaper to poll students. The poll indicated that most students thought that teachers were fair in their grading of papers but the general consensus on campus was that professors sometimes did succumb too easily to “lazy flatterers.”

By the time the paper was re-introduced to the student body in 1973 as the Pirate Press, the Department of Communication had been established at ETSU and students could major in mass communication with a concentration in journalism. With the addition of a journalism concentration to the university, the Pirate Press became even more news-oriented and began its era with a staff full of journalism students who were passionate about news and media.

During the years of the Pirate Press, the publication was a large 16 to 28 page newspaper that kept the staff of students up all throughout the night on production nights.

Published once a week on Fridays, the staff of the Pirate Press worked with local papers in Greeneville and Elizabethon who did the printing and helped with copy editing.

In 1971, Dr. Jack Mooney took over as advisor for the Pirate Press and watched the newspaper grow into the paper that it is today.

“Originally the paper was viewed as an extracurricular activity,” says Mooney, who recently retired after 40 years of teaching at ETSU. “With the addition of the journalism degree and the dedication of the students who were interested in it, the Pirate Press became a real newspaper.”

The coverage in the Pirate Press is similar to the coverage in the newspaper today. Whether it was on campus or nationwide, the Pirate Press had an opinion about it.

“Parking on campus is always going to be an issue you see in a student newspaper,” says Mooney. “We covered those kinds of campus issues in the ’70s and we’re still covering them now, decades later.”

In November 1973, Marcia Inzer, the student editor of the Pirate Press, was successful in changing the name of the newspaper to the East Tennessean.

On Nov. 2, the Pirate Press ran for the first time under the new name. In that issue, feature editor Randy Moore wrote an article on the subject and noted that the newspaper was never authorized to change its name from The Collegian to the Pirate Press.

As the editor, Inzer felt that with everything going on in the 70’s, the name the Pirate Press was just too radical.

In Moore’s article on the name change, he quoted ETSU President D.P. Culp as saying “I had no violent objection to the name Pirate Press but I was inclined to think there was a better name than that for the student newspaper because it gave no indication of where it was.”

Since the death of the Pirate Press in the early ’70s, ETSU’s student newspaper has been published under the name East Tennessean.

Over the last few decades, the East Tennessean has lived through the growth of the newspaper and media industry.

From paper and tape to iMacs and Adobe InDesign, the East Tennessean has survived it all. Covering campus and worldwide issues, featuring editorials, reviews and columns, the East Tennessean has continued to grow from the foundation that was set by The Chalkline back in the early 1920’s.

“The East Tennessean brings in a lot of money,” says Dr. Mooney, who advised the paper while it transitioned from the Pirate Press to the East Tennessean. “The paper runs like a professional paper.”

As the ETSU Department of Communication grows, the strength of the student newspaper will grow as well. From the early days of The Chalkline when students were concerned with girl’s dormitory visiting hours to the debate of gay marriage as seen in the pages of today’s East Tennessean, ETSU’s student newspaper has covered it all.

As issues and trends change, one topic will always remain in the pages of ETSU’s student newspaper – parking.

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