Before we had Dateline, we had Staff News, mimeographed on 8½-by-11-inch paper. Staff News began in 1973, on goldenrod stock, switching to white in 1980.

Faculty had the Campus Record, a listing of seminars and colloquia, and some brief announcements; because of its color, people referred to the Record as the “green sheet.”

Those publications came together on Nov. 6, 1987, as a single campus voice for faculty and staff: the Dateline UC Davis newspaper. It grew to a circulation of 12,000, published about 40 times a year.

Now, as Dateline nears the end of its 23rd academic year, we are switching formats yet again — this time to no paper at all, with today’s (April 30) edition the last one in print.

The online version — dateline.ucdavis.edu — will live on with improvements and more frequent updates. And Dateline will retain its original mission, to be a “town hall” for information, ideas and issues.

"I've always been proud of the fact that we got Dateline started back in the day," said Barbara Anderson, the first editor. "It served and will continue to serve a very important function on the campus.

"Before Dateline, we did not have a single,unifying publication, and I've always been proud to have been the first editor of that."

Budget, layout factors

Eliminating the print edition is partly a budget decision: It frees the editors from hours of electronic layout work and does away with the printing bill.

“But we also are acknowledging that the Web is the fastest way to deliver the news,” said Dave Jones, who joined Dateline nearly five years ago as associate editor and will stay on to edit and write for the online version.

The former editor, Clifton B. Parker, has moved over to UC Davis Magazine and will continue writing occasionally for Dateline.

“While we understand that some may miss their printed Dateline, people will quickly find that the online version is more timely and responsive in serving readers,” Parker said.

Anderson said: "I've seen the newsprint on the wall for a while," referring to the many publications that have been switching from print to Web-only versions around the country, in the mainstream media and at other universities.

The printed Dateline faced several constraints, including a once-a-week publication schedule and a press deadline two days before the paper came out, which meant that we sometimes missed breaking news.

Take the April 16 edition, for example.

When we sent the paper to the printer the morning of April 14, we included a front-page article that said we did not yet know which teams Chancellor Linda Katehi would decide to discontinue from Intercollegiate Athletics.

Two days later, as Dateline arrived in campus mailboxes, the university held a news conference to announce her decision: women’s rowing, men’s wrestling, men’s swimming and diving, and men’s indoor track and field. We posted the story online immediately, but it did not appear in the paper until April 23.

Website improvements

“While we’re doing away with the early deadlines and the hard-copy version of Dateline, we hope the campus community will continue to look to the Web for the most timely news of interest to faculty and staff,” said Mitchel Benson, assistant vice chancellor for University Communications, which produces Dateline.

To go along with the transition to Web-only publication, Jones announced forthcoming improvements to the Dateline website. “It used to be that we would typically post new content once a week, the day the paper came out — and we would batch all the content under a single date,” he explained.

“Now we will put a date on each story, to reflect when we post it, and we will be posting fresh content as often as the news warrants.”

University Communications also is making improvements to the News & Information page — news.ucdavis.edu — adding a Campus News section to highlight some of what you will find on the Dateline site. Look for additional improvements to both sites in the coming months.

So starting next week, you have a couple of options for campus news: Go straight to the Dateline website or stop first at the News & Information page, where you will see a sampling of campus news, as well as stories that the UC Davis News Service has distributed to the news media.

Another way to access campus news is via University Communications’ e-mail newsletter, Friday Update. “Every week it includes links to a variety of Dateline stories, including those that we think staff and faculty will want to read, like anything having to do with retirement contributions,” Jones said.

Anderson, the editor when Dateline began, raised a point that certainly weighed heavily on the people who put out Dateline today: "I wonder about the folks who don't have ready access to computers."

To help address this, University Communications is asking supervisors to post in a public place a printed copy of each week’s Friday Update e-mail for the benefit of employees without computers. Then, if employees want to read a particular story, their supervisor can print it for them.

Award-winning history

As the printed Dateline goes away, there is some irony in the part of the decision being attributed to budget constraints.

It was Dateline, after all, that played an integral role in the budget crisis of the early 1990s — before the Web had so completely transformed the way we receive information.

“Dateline served a very important role during that very difficult period,” Associate Chancellor Maril Revette Stratton commented in a 2006 article when Dateline began its 20th year of publication.

Stratton shepherded Dateline’s creation in 1987, when she served as director of what was then called Public Communications. After a budget committee came out with its proposals, Dateline put them in the paper, then solicited and subsequently published reaction from the campus community. Ultimately, Dateline presented a report on the budget decisions.

For its coverage of that crisis, Dateline received a national award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Fast forward to today’s crisis, when budget data is posted online: (directives from the provost to the deans, and the fallout in the colleges and schools, for example) and provost.ucdavis.edu (budget committee reports, for example).

“Dateline, together with our colleagues in University Communications, remains committed to putting all this budget data in context for faculty and staff,” Jones said.

“We also aim to keep you informed about newsworthy meetings and seminars, health and retirement benefits, and entertainment options for you and your families.”

The only difference, from here on out? You will be clicking instead of turning pages.