As a student at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Jeremy Gragert wasn’t satisfied with the semiweekly campus newspaper. Though The Spectator had won several state and national awards, Gragert felt the 80-year-old paper didn’t cover many of the events and issues he cared most about. After hearing a talk by a professional journalist about the dangers of media consolidation, Gragert decided what the campus needed was a second newspaper, one that would bring an alternative perspective to the university community.

In the spring and early fall of 2003, Gragert and a few friends hosted a series of meetings for people interested in working on the new paper. That October, the team of fledgling journalists put out the first issue of The Flip Side. The premier issue was 16 sheets of 8.5-by-11-inch paper stapled together. “We printed it on campus printers,” says Gragert, a history major who graduated in 2005. “A bunch of us spread out to different printers on campus. It took about three or four hours to print it. Then we got together stacks of the papers and formed an assembly line to put the pages in order and staple them.”

Among the first to notice the appearance of the new paper were reporters from The Spectator, which ran an article about the upstart paper the following day titled “Alternative publication creates new campus medium.”

A newspaper is born

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Every year students launch new newspapers on college campuses around the globe. Some last for an issue or two; others become fixtures on campus and continue long after their founders have graduated.
So what does it take to launch a new college newspaper? Ideas, people, production facilities and money.