Hello friends of OU Student Media and the OU Daily,
We’re sharing a short message ahead of Giving Tuesday, Nov. 28.
First, in the spirit of year-end charitable giving, we hope you will consider supporting OU Student Media. Gifts made via the OU Foundation are tax deductible and help enrich the public service Daily students provide as the largest reporting staff in the state’s third-largest city while building their careers. Learn more and give via our donations page.
Second, we are excited to launch an OU Daily merchandise store offering various items — T-shirts, sweatshirts, polos, quarter-zips and more — profits from which will support Student Media. This collection, for which we’ll accept orders through Dec. 5, features the Daily logo used since 2016 and the 1937-42 logo that depicts Oklahoma Memorial Union’s clock tower. The vintage treatment has a brief backstory you’ll enjoy. But first, here’s a preview of the merchandise.
OU Daily merchandise for sale through Dec. 5 in our pop-up online store.
The union opened in late 1928 with original plans for the building’s clock tower shelved amid Great Depression budget constraints. The same year Pleasant Jefferson (P.J.) Conkwright joined the newly launched OU Press. His boss, Joseph Brandt, had been the Daily’s editor as an undergraduate and later would become OU’s sixth president. Early in his time on campus, Conkwright regularly appeared in Daily coverage for his tennis exploits and once for his “sassy talk.”
In 1936, a Works Progress Administration project finally constructed the clock tower atop the union. To mark the occasion, Conkwright was commissioned to craft a new Daily logo that debuted atop the first edition the next year (albeit with his name misspelled in the headline). By 1939 he followed Brandt to Princeton, where he would serve as chief designer and typographer through 1970, forging an illustrious career that included his induction in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as an artist and educator.
But he first made his mark at OU and on the Daily.
We hope you’ll find these pieces — like the Conkwright commissioned logo, the Daily and OU itself — timeless yet modern. Depending on the success of this campaign, we may offer items featuring other Student Media logos from throughout our history, which traces to 1905. Have favorites you’d love to see in future opportunities to support our students and their work? Let us know at studentmedia@ou.edu.
Warmly,
Seth Prince
OU Student Media director
OU Daily newsroom adviser
Class of 2000
