Imprint is a publication created by Imprint Publications, Waterloo and is the official student newspaper of the University of Waterloo

University of Waterloo

The University of Waterloo is a comprehensive public university in the city of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The school was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles, and has since grown to an institution of more than 30,000 students, faculty, and staff...

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Printing

Imprint prints weekly during the fall and winter semesters, and bi-weekly during the spring semester. Imprint publishes 30 issues a year and is paid for mostly by advertising, but is also supplemented with a $3.30 refundable fee paid per semester by students enrolled at the university.

First Waterloo paper

A student-run newspaper at the campus of Waterloo began in the late 1950s when the campus was still called the Waterloo College Associate Faculties and was affiliated with Waterloo College, which is now known as Wilfrid Laurier University. The Engineering students of the Associated Faculties started their own newsletter in early 1959, shortly after the formation of the Engineering society. The newsletter was called Enginews and was published as a mimeographed sheet of foolscap

Foolscap

Foolscap may refer to:* Foolscap folio, a paper size of 8½ × 13½ inches * A paper size of 17 × 13½ inches * A book by Michael Malone-See also:*Jester, an entertainer employed by a European monarch, often wearing a fool's cap...

. By late 1959, Enginews had joined The Cord Weekly and was its own special section with its own masthead in the newspaper.

Coryphaeus

The federation of Waterloo College and the Associated Faculties (which had now been renamed the University of Waterloo) failed in the spring of 1960. The Cord Weekly and Enginews stopped their relationship and so students were forced to create a new student paper in the fall semester of 1960. The first issue of this newspaper was unnamed, but by the second issue they had was officially called it The Coryphaeus, the Greek word for leader.

In this second issue, The Coryphaeus stated: "From the Engineering Students 'Enginews' of last year we have developed into a University-wide publication from Arts, Science and Engineering".

The Chevron

The Coryphaeus was heavily focused on covering mainly Engineering news which bothered students in other faculties. It sparked one Arts student to submit an editorial that he wished to write about "the monetary policy of the Canadian government, but I thought it might send the vast majority of engineers running for a dictionary." The Arts students slowly got themselves organized and took over the newspaper. The Coryphaeus was renamed The Chevron

The Chevron

The Chevron was the official newspaper published the Federation of Students at the University of Waterloo for approximately two decades....

in 1966, and began to take a more radical editorial slant as the activist student movement of the 1960s got underway, dealing with issues such as the Vietnam War and civil rights.

The Chevron ran into trouble. Through the late 1960s and into the 1970s, the radical left-wing agenda of the newspaper's cliquish staff became apparent and it began losing the students' confidence. The Chevron was disenfranchised by students and expelled from the Canadian University Press for its adoption of Communist ideologies.
In November 1978, after a long battle with the Feds Executive that had involved the freezing of the newspaper's budget (to which its staff responded by publishing The Free Chevron), The Chevron was overwhelmingly rejected by students in a referendum and removed as the University’s official student newspaper.

Imprint

In the spring of 1978, the UW Journalism Club, made up of former Chevron staffers and other students, started its own weekly publication called Imprint, funded solely by advertising. After winning the support of the students in a March 1979 referendum (including Engineering students, who voted over 10-1 in favour of recognizing the newspaper and establishing a refundable fee), Imprint was installed as the official student newspaper of the University of Waterloo.

Since its modest beginnings as an independent newspaper published by a Federation of Students club, Imprint has now become an award-winning newspaper with a circulation of 11,000 in Kitchener-Waterloo and a six-figure operating budget.

Mission statement

Imprint has two equally important and complementary missions:

1. To publish a newspaper that provides the University of Waterloo community with information, entertainment and a forum for the discussion of issues that affect the community; and
2. To provide University of Waterloo students with the opportunity to learn and gain practical experience in an open and rewarding journalistic environment.