Fonds F1612 - Queen's Journal fonds

The Journal has been Queen's main student newspaper since it was founded in 1873. It appears twice a week on campus with a mix of news, sports, and entertainment stories, editorials, letters to the editor, and photographs. The paper is students' most important source of news and general information and has been a training ground for scores of Canadian journalists.

The Journal first appeared on campus on October 25, 1873 as the Queen's College Journal, a fortnightly magazine whose avowed object was to "foster a literary taste among students." It published a great deal of verse in its early years, and its prevailing tone was earnest and evangelical: typical articles were "Longevity and Work," "What is Preaching?" and "The Formation of Habits." There were also numerous verbatim reports of sermons and speeches.

By the mid-1880s, however, debates on purely college issues and columns of college jokes were creeping in. And by the early years of this century, the familiar news, sports, and entertainment sections were emerging.

During the golden years of Queen's football in the 1920s, when the team won three straight Grey Cups, the paper cheerfully turned itself into a sports sheet and other sections were relegated to the inside pages.

The Queen's Journal has existed in roughly its present format since the 1930s. There were a few departures from format in the late 1960s and the 1970s, however, when the paper reflected the change in times; it was not unusual at that time to see the photograph of a nude or a piece of psychedelic art taking up the entire front page.

In the mid-1980s, the paper introduced computers for writing and layout. The Journal is partly funded by the Alma Mater Society but run by an independent editorial board.