The Independent Florida Alligator

The Alligator began as an independent student-run newspaper called The University News on October 19, 1906. The paper came together in time to report on the University of Florida's opening ceremony in its new permanent home in Gainesville. Much of the first issue was devoted to reprinting word-for-word the farewell speech given by then-Florida Governor Napoleon B. Broward.

A 1922 issue of the Florida Alligator.

The Alligator remained independent until 1912, when it became part of the university and was renamed the Florida Alligator after the university's mascot, the Florida Gators.

For the next six decades, the university's Office of Student Publications supervised the paper. The office was also responsible for the university's Seminole yearbook (later renamed The Tower), Florida Magazine, the Orange Peel humor magazine, and other recurring publications. Alligator staffers often worked on several of these at the same time. (None of the other publications still exist.) The Alligator also had a radio news show on campus station WRUF for many years.

Until the 1950s, the university's student body selected the editor-in-chief in campus-wide elections, similar to student government. Candidates slated to political parties, published campaign ads, and debated each other not unlike today. The editor was roughly on the same level of prestige as the student body president, and various fraternities controlled the newspaper at one time or other.

By the early 1960s, the rapid post-World War II growth of the university, which had started with the G.I. Bill and continued with the decision to admit women in 1947 and to admit blacks in 1958 caused The Alligator to grow. The newspaper printed in broadsheet until 1962 (except during World War II, when paper was in short supply). In 1962, the paper switched to the smaller tabloid format, which it still uses today. Around this time, The Alligator was one of the first college newspapers in the nation to switch from hot type printing to the more modern offset standard. That same year, the paper switched from twice-weekly printing to its current daily format.[4]

In 1963, Ed Barber started working at The Alligator, as a student writer. By 1972 he became general manager of the paper.

Barber left the paper in 1973 to become Director of Publications for the university but returned as general manager in 1976 and became president of Campus Communications, Inc. Barber now holds the title of president emeritus of The Alligator and is executive director of the Alligator Alumni Association. Patricia Carey, a veteran manager of the newspaper, succeeded Barber as general manager of The Alligator and president of Campus Communications.

Originally, the Office of Student Publications was located in the basement of the old Florida Union (today Dauer Hall), which was then the student union, in the north part of campus. In 1968, the paper moved into a new suite of offices on the third floor of the new union, the J. Wayne Reitz Union, directly adjacent to Student Government administrative offices. At least one of The Alligator former offices is now occupied by Florida Blue Key.

The tumult of the late 1960s featured the resignation of editors who disagreed with an editorial denouncing the university's public tenure hearing for Marshall Jones, a professor who was accused of being a communist by the university administration. He was forced from the university. The university's crowded public hearing on Jones was denounced in Florida newspapers as reminiscent of the McCarthyist Red Scare of the 1950s. The editorial, written after the first hearing by journalism student and reporter Michael Abrams (who later became a journalism professor), was censored by the University's Board of Student Publications, and a blank space with the word "Censored" run in its place. Several of the student editors of the newspaper resigned over what they saw as the tone of the editorial and its anti-administration bent.

A national controversy ensued. Columnist Drew Pearson came to campus and gave strong support to the remaining staff. Editor Steve Hull, who also remained, assembled a new set of student editors. Throughout this time, the School of Journalism and Communications won a series of Hearst Journalism Awards, and many Alligator reporters and editors ultimately became well known in their professions.

The newspaper continued to do investigative reporting including stories about low wages paid to maintenance employees. It was during this time the newspaper was awarded the Pacemaker award as the best college paper in the nation. Among the key writers of the Alligator at the time were James Cook, later an attorney, who wrote the "Uncle Javerneck" column, and Joe Torchia, later a novelist, who intercepted humorous letters from "God" to various people, sparking an uproar among some religious readers.

Many copies of the final edition of the newspaper, with its somewhat racy collage of farewell pictures including the university president in a less than auspicious pose, were seized by those who supported the university administration.

Controversy ensued with a new set of editors being selected by the board, and an off-campus newspaper, University Report, published by Hull, Abrams, and Scott DeGarmo, a master's student in history. The paper exposed spying on students by government officials and law enforcement agents and was an outspoken critic of the administration of Stephen C. O'Connell, the former Florida Supreme Court justice and University President. One of its stories told of a government agent "Palmer Wee" who was apparently hired to watch radical students. The headline read "Wee is watching you." The paper printed several issues and was typeset on an old typesetting machine that was somewhat larger than a typewriter and sat on a living room floor. It was published out of town, as at least one local printer refused to print it.

The university administration continued to simmer over radical editors. In late 1971, editor Ron Sachs approved an insert to be published in The Alligator that printed the addresses of known abortion clinics. At the time, not only was abortion illegal in Florida, but even the printing of abortion information violated state law. The insert, a deliberate challenge by Sachs in protest of laws against abortion, threw the university into a firestorm. Both Sachs and university president Stephen C. O'Connell faced intense public pressure. When O'Connell discovered that Sachs was protected by federal First Amendment case law, he started working to disavow any connection between the university and The Alligator.

To defuse the hostile situation, Florida Attorney General Robert Shevin ruled that to protect students' First Amendment rights, the university and The Alligator should split. At the time, O'Connell declared that never again would UF sponsor a student newspaper on campus. As a further compromise agreement between the university and the newspaper's staff, the students were allowed to take The Alligator private and off campus. Sachs' challenge of the abortion law was successful; his criminal prosecution ended when the law was declared unconstitutional. Sachs later won an Emmy Award as a television producer in Miami, for his documentary Cocaine: The Lady is a Killer.

The newly independent Alligator

The newspaper changed its name to The Independent Florida Alligator and took several years to find a permanent home. New owners Campus Communications moved in 1982 to the former Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity house two blocks east of campus on University Avenue.

Alligator writers and photographers won a dozen Hearst Awards during the period 1971 to 1979, a period when the paper also won several awards from the Associated Collegiate Press and the Society of Professional Journalists. Until the mid-1990s, Alligator alumni had won more Hearst writing and photo awards than any other student newspaper. (It now ranks second behind the Daily Northwestern of Northwestern University).

The Alligator also was one of the first college papers on the Internet, hosting a bulletin board system as early as 1985 and a website beginning in 1994.

In 1990, Campus Communications bought the High Springs Herald, the weekly newspaper of High Springs, Florida, about 30 miles outside the university. The High Springs Herald was sold in February 2009 to Ronald Dupont Jr.

In May 2016 The Alligator moved operations from its former location on University Avenue, where it had operated for over 30 years, to the Gainesville Sun's building.[5]

The George A. Smathers Libraries currently hold microfilms of the early issues of The Independent Florida Alligator.[6]