The Florida Flambeau (Group 6)

The Florida Flambeau has over a century of history as the first paper was published on Janurary 23, 1915. It is the newspaper for all things happening on Florida State campus as well as the city of Tallahassee. Curently it covers art exhibits such as at the exhibits at the Tallahassee Museum, poetry readings, movies, and other events like concerts, but in its early years it covered topics like, the development and history of the college and the impact it was having not only locally but globally as well.

Unfortuneatley the paper would never have existed if it weren't for Ruby leach, a student at the time at Florida State College for Women. She met with the editor of the paper the Tallahassee democrat and pleaded her case that there just simply wasn't enough coverage of the college. So, the editor let her have two columns in the paper and would pay her $1. Soon after, the President of the university at the time, Edward Conradi, saw the signfigance of the columns and the effect it had on campus life and the surrounding communites and decided to allow and help start up the Florida Flmabeau.

For the first few years the paper mainly just critisized the administration if so allowed though. Alas, as times changed and society evolved, so did the paper partially due to the addition of cigarette advertisements that were originally vetoed but by 1935 Chesters and Lucky Strike cigarettes were both common ads in the paper. The next 38 years leading up to 1972 were relatively quiet for the paper. There weren't any major changes beyond the changing society around them causing the paper to adapt to the time as well until Vice President of Student Affairs for the university, Dr. Stephen McClellan, proposed that the newspaper become a separate entity from the univerity. The proposition was prompted soon after the incident at the University of Florida in which a student paper was pushed to publish abortion refferals in their univeristy paper by the university's President. That July the Florida Flambeau Foundation was started and to manys surprise the paper did exceptionally well for the next two decades until in 1992 it had some money issues with the Tallahassee Democrat. 1992 is also the same year that FSView was started and it was everything the Florida Flambeau was not which ultimately forced a merger between the two. In 1998 the first FSView and Florida Flambeau was published. The paper is now owned by Gannett Co. and is now the 6th top circulated college newspaper in the nation.

What started out as one student's idea to bring interest and attention to the Florida State College for Women grew to be the backbone of not only the university's news output, but the city of Tallahassee as well, for decades. Though at one point it was is massive debt to the Tallahassee Democrat, it was saved by what some considered a "rival" newspaper in the FSView. The Florida Flambeau still lives on in partnership with FSView and is overseen, written and published by 50 current students and alumni of both the former Florida State College for Women and the current Florida State University.