The University Weekly staff of 1906-07
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The First Editor
J.O. York, a senior from Bellefonte, Arkansas, in Boone County, served as the first editor of The University Weekly, the first student newspaper at the University of Arkansas. York and about a half dozen other students published the paper weekly during the 1906-07 school year, starting with the first issue on Oct. 10, 1906.
Copies of only three issues from that first year are known to exist. The only hard copy is dated Jan. 30, 1907, and the original is held by McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. The May 8 and May 15 issues of the first volume are on microfilm at Mullins Library, and a copy of the Jan. 30 issue is also available in Special Collections.The University Weekly started as a five-column tabloid-size paper with a column of advertising down the left side of the front page. Front-page stories included addresses by professors, notes from the residence halls, recounts of social receptions and sermons in favor of living virtuous lives. Stories of sporting events, student debates and poetry could be read side by side.
A staff box on Page 2 said the paper was published by the student body of the University of Arkansas. Single copies cost five cents, and a year's subscription cost a dollar. Editorials, exchanges from other college papers, and miscellaneous announcements filled out the page.
Page 3 included society and club news, while Page 4 was reserved for sports. On a spring week when the baseball team was playing away, coverage of the rugby team dominated the page.
In the first history of the University of Arkansas, the writers lamented the demise of the literary magazines and said of The University Weekly: "It has made a place for itself by giving gossipy news from week to week and more or less full accounts of important events of university life."
John Hugh Reynolds and David Yancey Thomas. History of the University of Arkansas. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas, 1910), 331.
The University Weekly. Jan. 30. 1907; May 8, 1907
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