Auburn’s student-run newspaper went by the name The Orange and Blue for 29 years after its 1893 founding, but nearly a century ago became The Auburn Plainsman.
Now The Plainsman is undergoing another evolution by retiring its printed product this semester to go along with the new age of the journalism industry. The Plainsman contacted past editors-in-chief to give word of the transition and allow them the opportunity to remember their time in the newsroom designing weekly broadsheet issues.
Chris Roush, a 1987 Auburn graduate in journalism, was elected editor of The Plainsman from 1986-1987. Today Roush is the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, but he said the paper remains near and dear to him. Roush’s son, Tyler, wrote for The Plainsman as a sports reporter in 2018 and assistant sports editor from 2018-2019.
“I have my bound volume in the office and I have issues of The Plainsman with my son’s byline on the front page in my office,” he said.
During Roush’s year as editor, Harold Melton was elected Auburn’s first Black SGA president, which Roush said was the paper’s most prominent moment that year. Roush spoke with Melton for a Q&A story following the win — one of his most notable articles while at The Plainsman.
“We actually sent that [article] to a Black-owned newspaper in Atlanta, and they ran a full [story],” Roush said.
Chris Roush poses for a campaign photo before being elected 1986-1987 editor of The Plainsman. Editors were elected by the Auburn student body until the early 2000s.
Roush said the announcement was disappointing to receive but inevitable as other college newspapers around the country look to make similar changes in operations. Though he thinks there will always be an audience preferable to printed news, Roush said this group will likely continue to shrink as time passes.
“Some of my fondest memories were working with the staff on Wednesday afternoon and Wednesday evening to get the paper out and published for Thursday morning,” Roush said. “The fact that I’m not going to have those memories of a printed Plainsman anymore... it hurts.”
The Plainsman has seen other changes in its history as newswriting and technology have mixed. Since 2001, pages have been sent over the internet to be printed, but before then staff cut and pasted pages by hand on Wednesday each week. Napo Monasterio, a 2002 Auburn graduate in journalism and the 2001-2002 editor, recalled the switch to this method under his leadership.
“At 4 [p.m.] someone from the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer would come and actually pick up the newspaper,” Monasterio said. “It wasn’t like ‘Hey, you have to send your pages at 4,’ but like ‘Hey, there’s someone here at the door.’”
From left to right: Ed Williams, adviser for The Plainsman, Napo Monasterio, 2001-2002 editor and Adam Jones, managing editor and 2002-2003 editor in the newsroom on March 18, 2002, in Auburn, Ala.
Monasterio named many key news events that happened throughout his year as editor, from a series of “back-and-forths” with the Auburn University Board of Trustees to an alumni board controversy to incidents of blackface. Most impactful, however, occurred on the third week of classes, when Auburn witnessed the 9/11 attacks along with the rest of the nation. The Plainsman’s front page that week focused on local reactions.
“I helped create that [front] page with Drew Reese who went on to work for the Boston Globe,” Monasterio said. “Toward the end of the school year, we had one about how many [administrative]-level positions there were at Auburn at the time. We put a ‘now hiring’ sign in front of Samford Hall so that was kind of fun.”
Monasterio went on to pursue a design-focused career, largely motivated by the storytelling through design he said he experienced as an editor at The Plainsman.
Front page design was also important to Corey Williams, a 2017 Auburn graduate in journalism, who served as 2016-2017 editor of The Plainsman. She said she anticipated a move to exclusive online publishing but finds it difficult to process.
“There was always that one front page story you worked toward,” she said. “It’s a clear record of time at Auburn, those front pages. How our history is being recorded now is different.”
Williams said her biggest front page story was a piece she wrote on mental health her junior year. Stories like this, she said, can have more of an effect in print though she was accustomed to online publishing by the time she was Plainsman editor.
“It’s just different seeing them in print than online and I think it’s just things that are online ... can be edited,” Williams said. “When I was writing I was picturing the words in print than on a screen.”
Plainsman staff pose for a group photo at a holiday party in 2014. Corey Williams is pictured second from right in the middle row.
Even over four years, Williams said journalism can adjust significantly. Instagram has become more of an emphasis for news publications on social media than when Williams was the editor, she said.
Now Williams is a search engine optimization writer for AllRecipes, a cooking recipe website. While she said she will miss The Plainsman’s print editions, she admitted online publishing can be more efficient for journalists.
“[Print] has been around for so, so long and it’s such an institution,” she said. “However, things are much more streamlined now [online].”
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Tim Nail, junior in journalism, is the campus editor for The Auburn Plainsman.
