by Jess Kirby & Mason Godek
0:00
Jess: Hey there. Welcome to Chapter Three of a three-part series where we talk about the history of UMW's student newspaper, the 2014 renaming campaign from The Bullet to The Blue & Gray Press and the current renaming process from The Blue & Gray to The Weekly Ringer. I'm Jess Kirby, I'm the editor-in-chief of the Blue & Gray Press/Weekly Ringer. And here for you all is Chapter Three.
So to start off, I want to play an excerpt from The Blue & Gray Podcast, which is the podcast that our faculty advisor Sushma Subramanian records every Monday that we meet as a class. So this was the day that all of our staff writers and photographers found out about the renaming.
0:48
Sushma: Next, the newspaper staff's decision to change the name of our newspaper. So let's hear what the new name is.
0:59
Jess: So starting January of 2022, The Blue & Gray Press will now be called The Weekly Ringer. And it's named after our school's bell tower, which is a big landmark for the University of Mary Washington. And we've been wanting to rename for a few years now because of the history of the colors blue and gray tied to the Civil War. And we just thought that with our centennial edition coming up in January, now is the perfect time to rename and come out as a brand new paper, but also tied to our 100 year history at UMW.
The “Wall of Wonders” holds quotes that have graced our ears in the Clubhouse over the past few years.
1:38
Sushma: That's interesting. So how long has The Blue & Gray Press been the name of the newspaper?
1:45
Jess: We renamed from The Bullet to The Blue & Gray Press in 2014 after there were some shaky relations between the student body and the newspaper. So they came out wanting to rebrand and they said that they chose the name for three reasons. One is that blue and gray are the colors of UMW. The second reason is our proximity to the Blue and Gray Parkway. And the third reason is to pay homage to the Civil War history of Fredericksburg. And we while we acknowledge that Fredericksburg does have a Civil War history, we kind of want to move away from that.
2:26
Sushma: And so you've been talking about doing this for a couple years. So what kind of held things off until now?
2:32
Jess: I think that with COVID, we were kind of, I wouldn't say struggling as a paper. But it was really hard to keep the newspaper up and running during the COVID pandemic, there were a lot of factors like for two semesters, we were pretty much completely online. And then we issued or we ushered in a new staff. And we were kind of scrambling to try and learn the ropes and get back into a print edition for the spring of 2021. And then we kind of had a staff meeting earlier this fall 2021 semester, and we were like, well, I think there's a lot of interest in renaming. So we are kind of motivated by the centennial edition coming up.
3:22
Sushma: And what exactly goes into a renaming, like what are all the things that will change? Like will there be a new logo?
3:30
Jess: So I wanted to actually talk a little bit about this. Because The Weekly Ringer is kind of a vague, or it can be a vague name, we want to include a logo of the bell tower on our masthead of the front page of the newspaper. So we're actually going to be talking about a graphic design contest. And I hope that a lot of our staff writers and photographers and club writers will participate in that so that we can choose like a new logo for our newspaper. But we'll also be we have to redesign our website, we have to redesign our entire print edition. And we just have to get the word out that we're not The Blue & Gray Press anymore. And we have to accomplish this all between November and January.
Sometimes the editors take a break at layout or hang out in the Clubhouse and draw with crayons, as any adult naturally would.
4:22
Sushma: Well, still that's exciting. What are the other names that you were tossing around?
4:29
Jess: We ended up voting between The Mary Wash Post and The Weekly Ringer. And there were some other names like The Tower Times or ... The Bird's Eye, The Eagle's Wing, stuff like that. But I I felt particularly passionate about The Weekly Ringer because of the history of the name. Because the history of bell towers is that you would ring the bell when there was news, so I think that that has a special tie to not only history but UMW as well.
5:09
Sushma: And was this a unanimous decision? Do other editors want to say something about it?
5:14
Jess: So this is Bernadette D'Auria, one of our associate editors.
5:19
Bernadette: Hi, I know that I voted for The Weekly Ringer as well. I don't think everybody but I believe most people on the staff decided on The Weekly Ringer and we went through like different rounds of picking out the names and like narrowing it down to the ones that we wanted the most. So it just came down to those final two and a majority of the staff pick The Weekly Ringer.
5:41
Jess: This is Scotti Mullen, one of our news editors.
5:44
Scotti: I think it's a good idea to rebrand, especially based on what the name means and everything. So I'm for it, I think it has a lot of potential and it will be cute. And it's something that can stay and seems far more unproblematic than The Bullet or The Blue & Gray. So hopefully that stays.
6:06
Jess: And this is Norah Walsh, our viewpoints editor.
6:09
Norah: Our process of renaming, we also looked at different school newspapers at other schools. And so like William and Mary, for example, has The Flat Hat. And that has some historical connotation; they're very colonial at their school. So because of like, it's Williamsburg. So when I was we were thinking about renaming and stuff, it was like, okay, so what represents our school the best. And so we looked at landmarks on campus, you know, different names of influential people. And so that's what ultimately led to looking at the Bell Tower and seeing like, what names we could we have that kind of includes the imagery of a bell tower.
6:44
Jess: I also think that seeing names like The Flat Hat kind of gave us permission to be a little bit more creative than like, you have like the Yale Daily News, which is, I mean, obviously, that's an amazing newspaper. But we kind of wanted to do something a little bit different, but also very representative of our school and of our newspaper. And here's our copy editor, Abigail Slaughter.
7:11
Abigail: Yeah, and one thing that was kind of funny with this naming process was that I remember distinctly in one of the meetings we had, there was a name, I think it was one of the name suggestions, it was The Eagle Eye or something along the lines of that. And I what popped in my head was the tuna brand, like Bird's Eye. So we were also trying to think about like, what, what pops into people's heads when they hear this. And I feel like with The Weekly Ringer, the either the bell tower will pop into someone's head or campus walk or, you know, they afternoon chime that people hear so we wanted to keep that in mind as well.
An endearing yet slightly creepy collection of Jess portraits that some of the editors drew without Jess’ knowledge hangs in the Clubhouse.
7:50
Jess: So right now I'm sitting in the clubhouse with our lovely copy editor, Abigail Slaughter, who wrote chapter two for you. So Abby, I first brought up the hypothetical possibility of renaming at one of our weekly meetings at the beginning of the fall semester. And we had a discussion about it, and about what the name The Blue & Gray means and how that comes across. And then I asked everyone offhandedly, how many people would be interested in renaming and at least half of our staff raise their hand. So what was your initial reaction when we brought that up?
8:32
Abigail: So it was kind of I was curious at first. When it was first brought up, I was a little bit surprised, I hadn't really thought about the history of the name, because I had just started writing for the paper as copy editor. And then when I had learned kind of just not only hanging around the other newspaper staff, but kind of just exploring a little bit of the clubhouse where we do layout and looking through some of the old papers and photos, that there was a recent a pretty recent rebranding campaign as well. We like to call a renaming due to the kind of semi bad reputation that the word rebranding has on campus nowadays.
9:15
Jess: So in case you don't go to UMW, or you do and you just live under a rock, UMW just spent about $500,000 to rebrand the university, but it was not very well received by the student body.
9:32
Abigail: But yeah, I learned that in 2014, the former staff of the newspaper had changed the name from The Bullet to The Blue & Gray Press. So that kind of got some gears turning and me thinking, oh, well, I'm kind of curious about what we did before just to see kind of how this process goes. And just, you know, learn a little bit more. So Jess tell me about how you came up with this idea to rename the newspaper?
10:00
Jess: Well, I didn't exactly come up with the idea. Our former editor-in-chief Kate Seltzer had offhandedly mentioned it to us at one of our layout nights. Then over the summer, I was interviewing one of my former high school teachers for a story I was doing for my local newspaper. And I was telling him about my life and what I do at The Blue & Gray and he, he said, wait, your name is The Blue & Gray Press? And I said, Yes. And he just kind of shook his head. We represent a pretty liberal university. So it's just this disconnect, I think between kind of representing a history that we're all very uncomfortable with and don't want to celebrate. And just what message are we sending? So that kind of put the idea in my head, like, I'm ashamed of our name, and I wanted to do something about it.
So I'm also here with our news editor, Josephine Johnson. And she was also at that meeting, when I first brought up the possibility of renaming. So Josie, what were your initial thoughts about that?
11:15
Josephine: Well, originally, I thought I liked the name we had until I found out what it actually represented. I remember before you were even editor-in-chief, we had talked about it. And we even talked about how we liked this name, or until we realized, so I really like the idea of changing it. I want us to be able to report on all sorts of things representing all sorts of people without any ties to the Civil War, or anything like that, even if it's representing both sides, because, well, it's the Civil War.
11:48
Jess: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I'm so sad because I've written for The Blue & Gray Press almost every semester that I've been here at UMW. I love the name, I was planning on getting B&G tattooed on my body. I just am so proud of this newspaper. But our name does not reflect what we do here. And I want to move us forward into a name that we can be proud of as much as we're proud of the work we do and our newspaper.
12:27
Jess: So now that we've gone over a little bit of the whats and the whys of the renaming, I want to take you to the staff meeting where we officially decided to become The Weekly Ringer. So here's our staff meeting from Sunday, Nov. 7.
So right now, we have a few different name options. But does anybody have any that they did not put in the Google Form that I should include on here?
So just to kind of set the scene for you all, pretty much all of the editors came to the clubhouse that night. Our clubhouse is this very old, brick house-looking building located in the middle of the UMW Apartments off William Street. And even though there's some questionable water coming out of our fountain, and there's just so many bugs and spider webs, we've really tried to make it our own. There are 13 of us officially. So I think 11 of us were in person, and two of us were on Zoom. And normally we are never ever all in the same room together just because of COVID. And it was a really incredible night at least for me just to kind of see everybody together and to have a lot of laughs and of course make this really important decision.
So the options that we have are The Eagle's Wing, The Bird's Eye, The Mary Wash Post, The Weekly Ringer, The Tower Chimes, and The Afternoon Chime. I'm sending the link ...
14:17
Jo: You got it girl.
14:17
Jess: But basically just vote for all of the names that you like this time. So here I just gave everyone a few minutes to fill out the Google Form and pick their favorite names. Alright, so tied for first place with 10 votes is The Mary Wash Post and The Weekly Ringer. So for whoever suggested The Mary Wash Post, would that be The Mary Washington Post or The Mary Wash Post? Our sports editor Tori ended up being the one who suggested that name and she said it would be The Mary Wash Post instead of The Mary Washington Post. Okay, sounds good.
(Background chatter)
15:03
Jess: So then in second place with seven votes, we have The Bird's Eye, everything else got five votes or less, so I'm just going to put those three on the next round. You all are going to vote for your one option.
So at this point, I was getting a little bit nervous because for about a month, I was absolutely set on The Weekly Ringer before we even voted for it. I came up with the name, I was in love with the name. And I was getting a little nervous that it was tied with The Mary Wash Post. So I had a little interruption before we voted the last time to just explain my thought process behind the name.
So before we go through with this, I just want to say that if we do The Weekly Ringer, we can have a bell tower logo in the middle of weekly and ringer. And that's when the original history of bell towers is that they were made to notify people when there was news. So it has that extra meaning.
16:15
Abigail: Wait which one do you like best? I can't tell.
16:17
Jess: Which one do I like best? ... But also we have The Bird's Eye and The Mary Wash Post. Those are also good options.
16:27
Tori: So what you're saying is that you came up with that one.
16:31
Jess: I might've come up with The Weekly Ringer. Okay, but does anybody have anything else to say about The Bird's Eye or The Mary Wash Post? Because those are also great options.
(Background chatter)
16:55
Jess: Yeah, The Eagle Eye is the campus like faculty newsletter.
17:01
Abigail: Isn't that a can of tuna like the tuna brand like the Bird's Eye? So I'm afraid...
(Background chatter)
17:15
Jo: Let's just call it tuna.
7:18
Jess: So Erin said, Should we do a poll where we vote for two of three. And then the last one we vote between the two? Okay, yeah, we can do that. All right. So Erin, I'm going with your suggestion. We this time will be voting for two names out of three.
Again, I just gave them some time to vote and then I revealed the results.
Alright, so The Weekly Ringer is at 12. The Mary Wash Post is at 11 and The Bird's Eye is at three. So it's going to be between The Weekly Ringer and The Mary Wash Post. Once again, I personally was very very nervous about this last vote because I didn't want us to end up The Mary Wash Post because I didn't want people to think that we were trying to be The Washington Post or anything like that. So I was very much holding my breath while everyone was voting. Does anyone want to do a drumroll? I feel like this calls for a drumroll.
Okay, we are officially The Weekly Ringer. Um, sorry if I swayed your vote. Unintentional. But yeah, so we should figure out some plans. Maggie, I need to talk to you after this.
19:02
Maggie: Uh oh.
19:02
Jess: About The Weekly Ringer! No, you're not in trouble. I just need to talk to you about a social media post that we should put out and yeah, this is super exciting. Yay. Thank you guys for keeping an open mind about this. This is something that's really important to me. And I've heard that it's important to other people as well. So thank you all. Okay, I guess now we go with our original meeting.
19:27
Bernadette: Wait Jess I have a question first. If we do t shirts or like the hoodie things or whatever kind of have a bell tower on it?
19:35
Jess: Yes! Absolutely. And we can give whoever designs our little bell tower logo a free shirt as well.
19:46
Emily: Are we doing like a like an opening for that? Like logo design?
19:50
Jess: That's what I need to talk to Maggie about. I want to advertise like a graphic design little contest.
19:58
Abigail: What do we do with our old shirts?
20:00
Jess: I'm still gonna wear mine. It's iconic.
20:04
Maggie: It's now vintage!
20:05
Jess: And then it was just like any other meeting. We went through stories and any concerns we had for the upcoming week, and everything was pretty much normal.
Well, that's all I had for tonight. But does anybody have any questions, comments, concerns? Okay. Sounds good. All right. Thank you guys so much for being here in person. I'm really, really happy with the turnout, it makes me happy. But yeah, that's all I had. So thank you guys so much.
On a chalkboard in the Clubhouse resides this special Ronald Reagan quote that many of the editors live by.
So it's been almost exactly a month since we officially voted at that meeting to become The Weekly Ringer. And right now we're just working on kind of transferring all of our data over to the new website, which will be theweeklyringer.com. And I'm going to be working with our online editors, Maggie and Cameron, to build this new website over winter break. And I'm also going to be working on redesigning the print edition of The Weekly Ringer. But I'll be, of course, checking in with everybody asking their opinions on pages. And we have an ongoing graphic design contest that will end on January 1, so we'll be voting on our new logo then. And that design will go both on our masthead and on our t-shirts. We'll be finalizing everything before our first print edition of the spring 2022 semester comes out on January 20. And that edition will also be the centennial edition of UMW's student newspaper. So big things are coming up. And I'm really looking forward to officially becoming The Weekly Ringer.
Thank you to Abby, Josie and Mason for working with me on this project. I'm really, really pleased that we were able to document this renaming process and even more happy that I was able to work on it with you three. Also some special thanks to our faculty advisor and professor, Sushma. Thank you so much for always pushing us to make our ideas as good as they can be, and just for answering all of my silly questions.