The Daily Pennsylvanian: A Penn Institution
The Daily Pennsylvanian has been a visible fixture on the Penn campus for more than 120 years. Generations of Penn students and faculty have relied on the "DP" to learn what's new, what's happening, what's coming to campus. DP reporting has not only informed and educated the campus community, but has also helped to bring change and reform to the University. Every Penn alumnus has memories of the DP as part of the college experience; the DP is a part of the fabric of life at Penn.

As important as the DP is to the Penn community, the newspaper's mark on its own alumni is even more indelible. From those who have turned their work at the DP into lifelong careers to those who formed lifelong friendships in the long days and late nights, the DP is a valuable, and often central, piece of the undergraduate experience of more than 3,000 Penn alumni. Today's DP staff of more than 250 students continues to add to the tradition of excellence.

The DP Office: a Brief HistoryFor many decades, the DP occupied an office at 3443 Woodland Avenue in the heart of campus. In 1961, the DP moved from its longtime home to the basement of the Sergeant Hall dormitory at 34th & Chestnut Streets. In 1975, with the demolition of Sergeant Hall imminent, the DP was moved to 4015 Walnut Street.

For the past 30 years, the nearly-windowless second floor office has been home to the newspaper's expanding operations. The space was gutted and remodeled in 1987, with the floor tile and paint trim colors earning the office the "Pink Palace" moniker. Smaller renovations in 1996 and 1999 helped refine space utilization to accommodate departments new to the organization and take advantage of new technology.

When the DP became independent from Penn in 1984, the paper and the University signed a 20-year lease agreement for the DP's office space at 4015 Walnut with steadily increasing, but below-market rate, rental payments by the DP. Two three-year extensions have assured the DP office space until the summer of 2010.

But the stay at 4015 Walnut will likely soon come to an end. The 8-story building, built in 1924 as the Atlas Storage Warehouse, still houses 6 unfinished floors of warehouse space used by the Penn Records Center; only the DP's second floor office and a small first floor coffeehouse and art gallery have ever been developed as commercial or retail space. As Penn has worked over the past decade to redevelop the neighborhood around 40th & Walnut streets into a bustling, lively retail area, Penn officials believe there are better uses for the building than warehouse space. Although the timing remains uncertain, Penn plans to hand the building over to an outside developer who will completely gut the building and renovate it into a residential or office building with ground-floor retail. When that happens -- sometime after a major construction project to build new retail space and apartments on the adjacent 3900 block of Walnut Street is complete in late 2008 -- the DP will need a new home.

A new office: what and where?
Currently, the DP's office occupies approximately 7,200 sq. ft. The paper's leadership believes the DP of the future will need office space comparable to, or slightly larger than, the current office. Technology changes over the past two decades have created some savings in space; however, expansions in the organization's scope, products and staff have consumed any space freed up by the advances in technology, and has resulted in tight quarters for the DP today.

An informal space plan developed by the paper demonstrates a need for slightly more space than the current office (without providing any additional space for future growth). While it is difficult to predict what changes the future may hold, the paper's leadership does not envision changes that would allow the organization to function in less space. A college newspaper office is, of necessity, a collaborative workplace; even if emphasis some day shifts from the printed product to the online product, the need for writers, editors, photographers and designers to interact will not significantly change. Possible expansion into audio and video production for the paper's web sites may require some additional space.

Another key to finding a future home is location, location, location. The paper's leadership strongly feels that the optimal location for a DP office will be in the area bounded by 36th & 41st Streets east-to-west, and Chestnut and Spruce Streets north-to-south.

This geography is based on a number of factors, the most important of which is proximity to where students live today and are likely to live in the near-term future. Even with the upcoming eastward expansion of campus, most of the DP's staff (the large majority of whom are upperclassmen) will continue to live near 40th Street -- in university dorms or off-campus housing. Those staff members work all hours of the day and night; most editors, for example, walk home from the office each night between midnight and 3 a.m. Additionally, many staff members -- reporters, photographers, advertising representatives -- need to be in and out of the office multiple times throughout the day. Proximity to a variety of food establishments is important due to the hours of production. The DP also receives a significant amount of foot traffic from members of the community who come to our office to meet with reporters, place advertisements, enter reader contests, etc.

Weighing all these factors, an office on the new eastern edge of campus would not be at all practical for the newspaper's operations.

Working with Penn to find a new home

Because Penn owns or controls the large majority of the land and buildings in the target area for a new office, working with Penn to secure a new office location is a matter of common sense. Additionally, a consultant hired by the DP in 2005 to gather feedback from DP alumni found that a significant majority of DP alumni expect Penn and the DP to work together to find a long-term housing solution.

Since 1998, the DP has been talking with Penn about a future home for the newspaper. While the DP's independence means that Penn has no obligation to the paper, officials at Penn have seemed genuinely interested in helping the DP find a new home.

Unfortunately, through nearly a decade of informal talks, no viable plan with Penn has yet emerged. Only one plausible space has ever come up, and it would have carried rental rates at least six times higher than the DP's current rent -- a change which would have decimated the paper's budget. But talks are ongoing, and university officials have extended the DP's current lease through 2012 in order to have more time to develop a plan which will prove viable for both Penn and the DP.

Please check back here periodically to read about progress on and plans for a future long-term home for the DP.

About The Daily Pennsylvanian
Since 1885, The Daily Pennsylvanian has been an integral part of the University of Pennsylvania, printing the news, providing valuable education and training for generations of students, and producing many notable journalists. The Pennsylvanian, which began as a weekly student newspaper, expanded to publish five days a week in 1894. Since then, except for a hiatus during World War II, the paper has been continually published.

In 1962, the College for Women's separate newspaper, The Pennsylvania News, merged into The Daily Pennsylvanian, and the paper broke away from control and funding through the men's student government after a short-lived attempt to shut the paper down. (That change stands so significant in the paper's history that it is still commemorated and fondly remembered in the paper's annual gag issue each spring). The weekly 34th Street Magazine was established in 1968.

In 1984, with the encouragement of Penn President Sheldon Hackney, the newspaper formalized its autonomy from the University by becoming an independent, non-profit corporation. The change guaranteed that the newspaper's editorial voice -- and the finances which allow it to operate -- could continue in perpetuity without fear of attempts by administrators to ever again shut down or control the paper's content.

At the same time, the newspaper formed the DP Alumni Association. In its two decades of existence, the DPAA has worked towards fulfilling its dual mission of helping current students on the newspaper's staff and helping DP Alumni keep in touch with each other.

After expanding into year-round publication with the launch of The Summer Pennsylvanian in 1984, the DP family grew once more in 1989, with the addition of The Weekly Pennsylvanian, a weekly subscription publication specifically for alumni and parents. In 1995, the DP launched its presence on the emerging World Wide Web with "DP Online" (now known simply as DailyPennsylvanian.com). Today, nearly as many people visit the paper's web site each day as read the printed edition on campus.

The Daily Pennsylvanian has long been regarded as one of the best college newspapers in the country. In recent decades its reputation has soared as improved technology and larger budgets from increased advertising sales have enabled student reporters, photographers, designers and editors to continually improve and enhance the newspaper. "We were incredibly -- and justifiably -- proud of the paper we produced in the late 1970's," says longtime DP General Manager Eric Jacobs '80, "but the paper today's students produce is simply head and shoulders above what we did less than three decades ago."

There is no journalism department at Penn. While a few scattered journalism-related courses have been offered over the years, it is The Daily Pennsylvanian which has been the preeminent source of journalism education at Penn for more than a century. Today, you can find DP alumni working at The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, and dozens of other newspapers; at Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, Inc., GQ, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly and dozens of other magazines; at ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, PBS, CNN, ESPN, and numerous other national and local broadcast outlets.

But the education the DP provides has never turned out just journalists; DP alumni -- from lawyers to doctors, investment bankers to social workers, engineers to accountants -- frequently cite the writing, deadline, management, and people skills they learned at the DP as useful in their careers.

In recent years, the DP's reputation has been bolstered by an unprecedented number of awards to the paper and its staff members. The most prestigious award for college newspapers is the Pacemaker award -- often referred to as the Pulitzer Prize for college journalism -- from the Associated Collegiate Press. In late 2004, the DP received its fourth consecutive Pacemaker award, the seventh in the paper's history.