If you are like me and spend an extensive amount of time in Anderson Academic Commons, you would probably know there is a secret room on the bottom floor full of DU history. 

The DU Special Collections & Archives hosts thousands of archival documents ranging from photographs to papers to most importantly, old DU Clarion newspapers. The archives hold editions of the Clarion from as old as 1905. Most of the newspapers have been digitized, but it’s not a perfect collection as some gaps exist in certain years and decades. 

Each week, in celebration of our 125th anniversary, I will be siphoning through the archives to showcase the great history of our newspaper. This week’s topic dives into how the Clarion has done advertising throughout our long and extensive history.

October 5, 1905 (vol. 9, no. 3)

This advertisement comes from an edition in October 1905 and I believe it to be the first advertisement to appear in the Clarion. It comes from multiple businesses that don’t have any internet history behind them and are hard to do any research about. There are no real taglines or messages involved in the ads, just simple logo/service placements for the DU community to see and read. Ads in the 1900s were not large or grand and were just simple business placements for the community to see. 

February 5, 1925 (vol. 29, no.18) 

As years and publication cycles passed, the advertising in the Clarion started to become more extravagant. Businesses started to take out larger portions of the newspapers to sell their products and drawings/pictures started to become a recurring thing in advertisements. This advertisement in particular comes from an old clothing store and the ad takes up almost half of the page.

October 8, 1936 (vol. 41, no.4)

Student newspapers were also not immune to the advertising of the tobacco industry. Lucky Strikes took a large portion of a page to advertise their cigarettes and included a “news flash” sub-article within their advertisement. Advertisements with tobacco products were super common during this time; it wasn’t until 1999 that a real push for newspapers to ban tobacco advertisements occurred. 

May 7, 1965 (vol. 69, no. 50)

The Clarion has also had a history of advertising movies. This ad comes from a 1965 edition and is advertising the movie Cat Ballou, a western comedy starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin. The ad takes up half a page and tries to get readers to come see the movie with words that try to show how funny the movie is. It was fairly common during this time for movie companies to advertise to the public via newspaper ads. 

September 17, 1992 (vol. 100, no. 1) 

This advertisement takes up about half of a page and includes coupons for their furniture. The coupon was not a new item in the 1990s, nor was it a new item in newspapers, but it has been a common occurrence in newspapers throughout history. Coca-Cola was the company credited with inventing the coupon in 1887, but newspapers really did not start including them until the Great Depression. 

We are still doing advertising with our print edition and website here at the DU Clarion. If you are interested in advertising with the Clarion, please reach out to our Business Manager Maddux Peterson at business.duclarion@gmail.com.