There are few rooms in Manhattan where the president of Princeton University is not the most celebrated person present. On the night of Oct. 16, the New York Historical on Central Park West was one of them. That honor went to a member of the Class of 1957 who once proofread lead type for The Daily Princetonian. His name is Robert A. Caro.
The occasion was the 150th anniversary of the Prince, as the paper is known. According to the paper’s own account, published Oct. 23, about 250 people attended, many in orange blazers and tiger-patterned ties. They included Pulitzer Prize winners from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and ABC News, along with doctors, lawyers and authors who once worked on the paper.
The money
The gala was also a fundraiser. It raised about $400,000 for the paper’s stipend program, according to a Prince spokesperson. The program, started in 2021, pays students on financial aid who work at the paper, so that they do not have to choose between the newsroom and a paying job. The Prince takes no direct funding from the University. It relies on advertisers and donors, according to the Princeton Alumni Weekly.
“Part of what we wanted to do was just celebrate a great 150 years,” said Thomas E. Weber ’89, president of the Prince’s board of trustees and a former chairman of the paper. “But part of it is that we also wanted to raise awareness in the alumni community of what the ‘Prince’ is like today.”
What it is like today is a digital paper with a weekly print edition. It switched in 2021 to a “digital daily, print weekly” schedule. According to PAW, its website gets 250,000 views a month and its daily newsletter has 5,500 subscribers. Nearly 200 students contribute each semester.
The president’s joke
Mr. Weber opened the program in the auditorium by quoting the first issue, which promised to foster discussion of “all questions of importance.” “Tonight, we salute their work,” he said, “and we recognize more than ever the need to protect fair, accurate, and most of all, independent student journalism.”
President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83 followed with a short history. The paper was founded during the presidency of James McCosh, from 1868 to 1888, the same era that produced the eating clubs, the Triangle Club and the Glee Club. Mr. Eisgruber noted that McCosh became fonder of the paper after leaving office. He suggested other university presidents had warmed to it when “no longer being among the principal subjects of its coverage.”
“I do not yet have the benefit of such perspective,” he said, to laughter. He settled for quoting the retiring McCosh in 1888, who praised the paper as “conducted in the most admirable spirit.”
Caro
Mr. Caro, a former managing editor of the Prince, talked about typesetting and physically proofreading a daily paper. Along a second-floor corridor, his handwritten interview notes and notebooks were on display. But his point was about the present.
“That mission has never been more important than it is right now,” he said. “When the most powerful man in the country tells falsehood after falsehood, it’s more important than ever to have someone say, ‘No, this is what the truth is,’ and provide it.” The room gave him a standing ovation.
Other alumni offered smaller recollections. Robert K. Durkee ’69, a former editor-in-chief and later the University’s vice president for public affairs, remembered reading page proofs taken off lead type at a linotype shop on Chambers Street, “which made for very late nights.” Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05, a former editor-in-chief now at The Washington Post, recalled changing the paper from a black-and-white tabloid to a color broadsheet and putting it online for the first time.
The panel and the film
The evening included the premiere of “Always on Deadline: 150 Years of The Daily Princetonian,” a documentary by Azza Cohen ’16, a former opinion columnist, and her partner Kathleen Borschow. A panel followed. The panelists were Stephen Engelberg ’79, editor-in-chief of ProPublica and a former Prince sports editor; Barton Gellman ’82, a former chairman; Morgan Kennedy ’07, a former business manager now at Google; and Marie-Rose Sheinerman ’23, a former editor-in-chief now at The Atlantic. Rick Klein ’98, a trustee, moderated.
The panelists talked about the value of community newsrooms in an age of artificial intelligence. “Student journalism ultimately is real journalism, and it’s not something you can do by parachuting in once the story’s already been broken,” Ms. Sheinerman said.
Michelle Osborne ’79, a former sports writer and a member of Princeton’s first women’s cross-country team, said she came to make sure people knew “that there were women writing for the ‘Prince’ fairly early in the tenure of women coming to Princeton,” and that Black students and other students of color had worked there as well.
Dinner was served in the library upstairs, near Picasso’s “Le Tricorne.” The night ended at a nearby bar, Dive 75, where organizers had brought in sandwiches from Hoagie Haven, the Princeton sandwich shop.
A note on independence
Not every college newspaper reaches 150, and not every one that does is independent of its university’s budget. PAW reported that the current editor-in-chief pointed to the University’s recent ban on recording faculty meetings as a reminder that press access requires constant defense. “The Princeton administration has a real respect for press rights,” he said, “but it’s something that we have to continually fight for.”
Mr. Eisgruber, for his part, said he would take his cue for the evening from McCosh’s generous later years. The paper’s reporters will be back on his beat on Monday.
Featured image: The New-York Historical Society building at 170 Central Park West. Photo by David Shankbone via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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