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Daily Titan history and reunion pages 
In 2000 the Daily Titan was more than 30 years old. Counting
its journalistic predecessors, there had been a student newspaper at Cal
State Fullerton for 40 years. These web pages commemorate the
Daily
Titan's early history on the occasion of a staff reunion Nov. 5, 2000,
celebrating the 40th anniversary of journalism at CSUF. Additional
web pages were added after the 45th anniversary reunion in 2005 and the
50th anniversary reunion in 2010.
When "Orange County State College" first offered classes in 1959, the dean of students and student leaders acted quickly to establish a campus paper. They called it the Titan Times, and its first issue appeared Jan. 4, 1960. Dean of Students Ernest A. Becker was the first faculty adviser. The paper was published bi-monthly at first. After the Communications Department was established and assumed responsibility for the paper, James Alexander and J. William Maxwell both served as faculty advisers. The Titan Times was published weekly from 1961 until 1965, when it became a twice-a-week paper under editor Jim Drummond. The issue shown here is notable not only because it was the first published on a twice-weekly schedule but also because it reported the appointment of Miles McCarthy to a deanship. He later served as CSUF president. McCarthy Hall was named in his honor. 
A major transition began in 1968,. The college was rapidly becoming
a university and the Communications Department was growing. Editor
Paul Attner and his staff decided to drop "Times" from the name and publish
the Titan (shown at right) three days a week. A year later,
editor Bill Schreiber and his staff changed the paper's name to the Daily
Titan and adopted a four-day-a-week publication schedule. That
was also the year that the paper moved into the then-new Humanities Building
and settled in H-213--the Daily Titan's home for the next 32 years.
And 1969 marked the beginning of on-campus typesetting and production,
using the system shown in the 1970 technology photos (see links above).
When the Daily Titan was launched in 1969, there was unprecedented turmoil here and at hundreds of other colleges and universities across America. Students protested against the Vietnam war and the military draft, campaigned for justice at home and challenged authority as never before. Although the war eventually ended, the military draft was eliminated and strides were made toward justice at home, one of the most decisive and enduring victories won by the students of that era was greater First Amendment freedom--for students. Even now, in a time when the courts are narrowing the scope of student freedom rather than expanding it further, students enjoy far greater First Amendment protection on campus than they did before the late 1960s. These web pages offer a glimpse of the turmoil of that era in contrast to the business-attired professionalism (well, sometimes!) of the students who pioneered daily newspaper journalism at CSUF. I was in the right place at the right time to be the first faculty adviser of the Daily Titan--I served as the adviser from 1968 until 1973. -Wayne Overbeck
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