Солтүстік Каролина Университетінің студенттік газетінің тарихы

Student newspaper of UNC Chapel Hill
The student journalists are solely responsible for all content under the direction of the student editor in chief. The 2023 2024 editor in chief is Emmy Martin. A new editor is selected each spring and serves for one year. The editor is the public face of the paper and hires the rest of the editorial staff, which includes a managing editor and editors for each of the newsroom's sections desk. The paper employs two full time professionals, about 80 paid part time students, and more than 150 student volunteer writers.

The newspaper was first published on February 23, 1893, as a four page weekly tabloid called The Tar Heel. It aimed to promote "the thorough discussion of all points pertaining to the advancement and growth of the University." Funded by the campus athletic association, it placed much of its emphasis on campus sports and Greek life and boasted of 250 subscribers. In 1923, it came out from under the auspices of the athletic association and became governed by the Student Publications Union Board, which at the time was in charge of all campus publications. Students paid a fee of $5.50 to fund the publications. The paper changed its name to The Daily Tar Heel. In 1943, the paper scaled back publication to twice weekly.

In the 1970s and 1980s, student editors used the paper's front page quote to agitate many on campus; selections included Nietzsche's "God is dead." The students objected to the use of student fees used to publish articles they did not agree with. The DTH collected donations to pay for its legal defense, and ultimately won an assurance of at least 16 percent of all student fees in 1977. The state Supreme Court's 1998 ruling established the Honor Court as a public body. The column made national headlines and ultimately led to the columnist's dismissal, but officially only for her quoting a source in a manner considered out of context. During the summer of 2010, the newsroom moved out of the student union and into a office a block away from campus, at 151 E. Rosemary Street. The move doubled the amount of office space available to staff and placed the paper one tenth of a mile away from its original 1893 office. The lawsuit concerns records related to UNC's investigation into alleged improper relationships with athletic agents and academic misconduct surrounding the football team. In September 2016, The Daily Tar Heel filed the lawsuit against UNC to obtain access to public records concerning the identification of students or employees who have committed rape or sexual assault. The lawsuit was on behalf of itself, the Capital Broadcasting Company, the Charlotte Observer Publishing Company and The Durham Herald Company. On May 3, 2017, Judge Allen Baddour, a Superior Court Judge in Wake and Orange County, ruled that UNC is not required to provide those public records. He stated that Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the State Human Resources Act protects students and employees, respectively. The DTH has a long standing bet with editors of The Chronicle, Duke University's student newspaper. When the two schools' men's basketball teams first play, the losing school's paper must run its masthead in the other school's color. The losing school's paper must also place the winning school's logo on their editorial page and declare the winning school is "still the best" on the front page. In conjuncture with the Daily Tar Heel financial struggles, in February 2018 the newsroom was moved from the large Rosemary Street office to a smaller, more consolidated space at 210 E. Franklin Street in Suite 210. Though the move has strong ties to the fiscal state of The Daily Tar Heel, their newer office is closer to UNC's central campus, and is in the midst of action on Franklin Street.

Since 2011, The Daily Tar Heel has been losing money. In recent years, the 124 year old newspaper has had an annual deficit of about $200,000. The Tar Heel has also cut the number of days in print to three. In March 2017, Donovan said the University of North Carolina's 2017 men's basketball national championship reduced the Tar Heels deficit from about $100,000 to less than $50,000 for the fiscal year. The organization's annual revenue at the time was just under $900,000 per year.

The DTH's front page following a shooting on campus in August 2023 was widely praised.