Evolution:

Media Credit: Bowdeya Tweh
South End editors published many stories against the criminalization of marijuana. These words ran as a headline to a story supporting the drug's legal use.


Evolution: Radical changes, unbiased reporting color newspaper's history
By Ashley Woods
Issue date: 12/12/07 Section: 40th Anniversary

September 1967 was, by all accounts, a month of chaos.

The riots in Detroit had ended two months earlier, but the nation's fifth-largest city was still smoldering. Time magazine estimated in 1967 the damage done to the city totaled $500 million.

The Vietnam War was in full swing.

During a Sept. 17 taping of the Ed Sullivan Show, a young guitarist named Jim Morrison and his band, The Doors, defied CBS censors and sang the word "higher" in their No. 1 single, "Light My Fire."

The Daily Collegian would soon disappear and The South End emerged. The first issue, distributed on Sept. 28 of that year, featured drawings, advertisements, poetry and a manifesto proclaiming a new era of journalism on the Wayne State campus.

"We do not consider this a 'newspaper' like The Detroit News or The New York Times," the essay said. "We are a communication medium, and we hope to exploit the various and multi-dimensional method of reaching other people."

The South End quickly became a newspaper chronicling the burgeoning student protest movement in Detroit. In the fall of 1967, articles on the National Students Association Congress, Students for a Democratic Society and the Young Socialists' Alliance were prominently featured in the newspaper. The paper also devoted significant space to protests against the treatment of graduate students and recruiting for the war on campus. Several staff members, like 1968 editor in chief John Watson, worked outside the newspaper in the civil rights and labor movements.

"Wayne State was like rad[ically] central," former South End reporter Tim Kiska said. "And The South End was rad central for rad central."

He started working at the paper in 1970.

"At that time, the Vietnam War was going on, and Nixon was still in office," Kiska said. "The paper would post full-size posters of radical leaders such as Malcolm X and Bobby Seals of the Black Panthers."
Vince Kern, who served as managing editor of the paper in 1986 and editor-in-chief in 1987, said The South End was not a traditional newspaper and it served as a radical voice for the campus community.

However, the radical voice faded over time as career-minded journalists joined the staff.

"And I was one of them, being less interested in being a voice of radicalism, than establishing a true-to-journalism environment at the newspaper office, so it could train and help propel people's careers into journalism," he said.

Charles Maldonado, editor-in-chief for The South End in 2006, said he felt that the 21st century incarnate of The South End lacked a specific political agenda.

"It's gone back and forth through the years," he said. "Sometimes, I'd feel like we were rewriting press releases for the university. Some days, we were at odds with the WSU administration."

Maldonado said the paper's reputation of bias followed him through his tenure as editor-in-chief.

"A lot of people thought I had an agenda," he said. "I was equally called a raging liberal Commie or an ultra-conservative Zionist. I figured that if everybody hated me, I must be doing a good job."

Many editors in chief remembered their tenure at the newspaper for the unique combination of late nights, missed classes and many, many cups of coffee.

Kern said he found it difficult to balance his priorities during his year as managing editor.

"Not only was I the editor in chief of the newspaper, I went from my first year being managing editor and having two or three freelance beats, and working full time at a scrapyard," he said.

"The pressure was very overwhelming," Maldonado said. "I didn't go to class, really. I worked about 70 hours a week."

Kiska linked the lessening of activist journalism at The South End to the unique situation of Wayne State students.

"It's easy to overblow this stuff," Kiska said of WSU's radical factions. "It's a lot like today. You had people that just wanted to get their BA and get into the real world. A lot of people would say, 'Yeah, I'd like to protest, but I need to keep my job and make tuition.'"
Patricia Maceroni, The South End's editor in chief in 1985, knows the cost of taking a stand. The newspaper's publication board fired her in October 1985 for refusing to print military advertisements in the paper.

"The more we looked into what was going on in Nicaragua, with the Contras, it was a stand we really needed to take," she said. News of her dismissal was included in the Oct. 7 edition of the New York Times.

Maceroni, who filed a lawsuit to protest her dismissal, said WSU President David Adamany was trying to negotiate military contracts with the College of Engineering and the WSU School of Medicine when she refused the advertisements.

"The paper was just faltering," Maceroni said. "No one felt comfortable stepping up to the gate. The staff was demoralized by what happened."

She was reinstated later in the school year, provided she accepted the military advertisements. But Maceroni had a different strategy.

"We ran the ads on the editorial page," she said. "And we ran them right next to these really graphic, violent pictures from Korea and Vietnam."

"The military ended up yanking the ads anyway," she laughed.

Despite her battle with the university, Maceroni said she only had good memories of her six years working for The South End.

"Alvin's was like the second office," she said of the Cass Avenue bar. "We would work in the afternoon, and go to Alvin's for drinks and dinner almost every day, and then wander back to the office."

"Once the paper was finished - and it had to be finished - that's when people would kick back," Kiska said.

But he said that putting out the daily paper always came before partying.

"The biggest problem for staff members is sleep deprivation, not alcoholism or drug abuse," Kiska said.

"It was like living the life you always wanted to live, without any responsibility," Kern said. "We weren't married; we didn't have kids; we didn't have homes. It was the opportunity to do what you always wanted, and just immerse yourself in that life."