Yesterday, a person stopped by my office to ask if there are copies of the NT Daily at the Willis Library because she had a homework assignment to study information in newspapers.  She got very excited when I showed her the North Texas Daily/Campus Chat Newspaper Collection, which is freely available on The Portal to Texas History.  As with all newspapers on the Portal, the NT Daily/Campus Chat issues are fully text-searchable, with highlighting of search terms, and can be zoomed in for closer reading, which you can see in action on this December, 7, 1966, issue of The Campus Chat, which discusses the mascot name selection process for Scrappy. 

UNT’s student newspaper was first published on November 1, 1916, under the title The Campus Chat. The first editor-in-chief was Mary Watlington, and Ira S. Bradshaw was the assistant editor-in-chief. The paper was published once per month during semesters. By the late 1940s, the paper was distributed on a semi-weekly basis, on Wednesdays and Fridays. In 1970, the newspaper’s name was changed to The North Texas Daily, which is now printed four days a week in the Fall and Spring while classes are in session, and once a week during the Summer.

The NT Daily has had a long history of winning awards, starting in 1937-38, when The Campus Chat entered a competition sponsored by the Associated Collegiate Press. In that year the paper received the second highest honor rating, First Class. In April of 1940, The Campus Chat was awarded its first All-American rating by the National Scholastic Press Association. The editor of the Chat at that time was Ray Edwards. By the time of the name change to The North Texas Daily, the paper had won 53 All-American ratings and five Pacemaker awards from the Associated Collegiate Press.

All issues of the NT Daily and Campus Chat are freely available for anyone–historians, genealogists, students, or anyone who loves reading newspapers!