Honors and history

OU Student Media is the only media outlet dedicated to serving OU students, faculty, staff, alumni and the city of Norman for more than 100 years. We are the steward of independent student-run enterprises that are among the most acclaimed in college media.

Top organizational honors

College Media Association Pinnacle Awards

2024
Media outlet of the year — 3rd place
2023
Media outlet of the year — finalist
Website of the year — finalist
2022
Media outlet of the year — 2nd place
4-year website of the year — 1st place
4-year feature magazine of the year — 1st place
2020
Media outlet of the year — finalist
2019
Media outlet of the year — 1st place
4-year website of the year — 1st place
2018
Media outlet of the year — 2nd place
4-year website of the year — 2nd place
2017
Media outlet of the year — 1st place

Associated Collegiate Press Pacemakers

OU Daily
8 wins
11 finalists
Sooner
12 wins
10 finalists

Columbia Scholastic Press Association Crown Awards

OU Daily
18 Gold Crowns
11 Silver Crowns
Sooner
12 Gold Crowns
6 Silver Crowns

Hearst Journalism Awards placements

2023-24
Investigative reporting
2022-23
Sports reporting
Explanatory reporting
2021-22
Multimedia digital news/enterprise
Sports reporting
2020-21
Investigative reporting
Personality profile
Explanatory reporting
Feature writing
News/feature photography
Narrative video storytelling
2019-20
Runner-up and 3rd place in writing national championships
Breaking news reporting (2x)
Personality profile
Sports reporting
News/feature photography (2x)
Narrative video storytelling
2018-19
Multimedia team storytelling
Breaking news
Personality profile
Feature writing
Multimedia news
2016-17
Personality profile (2x)
2014-15
Feature writing
2008-09
Editorial writing (2x)
2006-07
Editorial writing

Associated Press Sports Editors student contest

2023-24
Louis Raser — 8th
2022-23
Mason Young — 4nd
Jason Batacao — 6th
Nick Coppola — 7th
2021-22
Mason Young — 2nd
Austin Curtright — 4th
Nick Coppola — 8th
2019-20
George Stoia — 1st
Caleb McCourry — 10th
2018-19
George Stoia — 1st
2017-18
Kelli Stacy — 1st
George Stoia — 4th
Joe Buettner — 9th
2016-17
Jesse Pound — 9th

OU Daily

The independent student voice of the University of Oklahoma since 1916.

OU Daily timeline

2024: The Daily is named one of the nation's top three college media organizations in the College Media Association's Pinnacles Awards, marking the seventh time in eight years it was named a finalist for media outlet of the year.
2023: The Daily is one of 12 state news organizations, and the only college media organization, selected to be part of a $100,000 project organized by the Oklahoma Media Center to improve trust in local journalism.
2022: The Daily, in competition against the state's professionals, wins the Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists' top overall honor, the Carter Bradley First Amendment Award, for work produced in 2021 that aimed to reset norms around transparency at OU and in Norman. Also in 2022, the Daily shifted print publication to themed, tabloid-size special sections during the academic year in addition to its quarterly magazine.
2021: The Daily's news and advertisting operations, after temporarily vacating their respective spaces in Copeland Hall, move back into a fully remodeled, converged space for all operations.
2020: The Daily shifted print publication to Tuesdays only, with some special editions, during the academic year.
2019: The Daily shifted print publication to Mondays only, with some special editions, during the academic year.
2016: The Daily ramped up its digital presence and shifted print publication to Mondays and Thursdays during the academic year.
2008: The HUB was redesigned into OUDaily.com.
2006: The Daily's website merged with the Sooner Information Network and formed a student portal, changing its name to the HUB. The thought behind that move was to make a "hub" of all campus information for students.
2003: The Daily dropped The Associated Press wire service for a year after a contract dispute. Service was resumed in 2004 after the AP began charging an educational rate to all colleges and universities.
1997: The newsroom moved into its current location ins Copeland Hall where the backshop used to be. (The Daily had been down the hall, around the corner.)
1995: The Daily's coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing was recognized nationally, as media from all over the world contacted its reporters for information. The Daily's website was launched April 19 — the same day as the bombing — when a Daily columnist from the Middle East started a website so his friends and family back home could find out information about the bombing. The Daily staff subsequently put on a disaster-coverage workshop at the CMA/ACP convention in Washington, D.C.
1977: The paper was switched to broadsheet format.
1976: The Daily entered the computer age with a system that used video display terminals and a scanner to read typed copy.
1958: The Daily moved into Copeland Hall — its current location. The building didn’t get that name for three more years.
1956: A libel suit was filed against editor George Gravely and faculty supervisor Louise B. Moore. The suit was dismissed as groundless, but it marked the first time The Daily had been sued for libel.
1946: A poll showed that 72 percent of the student body read the Daily.
1926: Circulation had reached 6,000 and the Daily became a member of The Associated Press — the only college paper at that time with full voting and membership rights.
1921: Circulation for the Daily was 700, plus 200 mail subscribers.
1919: Publication resumed on Jan. 31 as a semi-weekly and went back to five days a week the next fall. On-campus publishing began, using the university's flat bed cylinder press.
1916: Began publication on Sept. 18 as The Oklahoma Daily, a successor to The University Oklahoman, with Willard H. Campbell serving as the first editor. The newspaper was published five mornings a week, but publication was suspended in the fall of 1918 because of World War I.

Sooner yearbook

The official yearbook of the University of Oklahoma for 110 years, ending in 2019.

Sooner yearbook timeline

2020: Sooner was inducted in the ACP All-American Hall of Fame. Publications qualify for the honor through various methods. Sooner did so by earning nine Pacemakers and eight Pacemaker finalist nods, eclipsing the induction standard of 15 combined honors since 1970.
2019: OU's Publications Board voted to shutter the yearbook due to declining sales after the book's 110th edition. The features-oriented mission of Sooner lives on now in a quarterly magazine.
1997: Sooner, at the wishes of then OU President David Boren, was revived.
1991: Sooner suspended due to declining sales.
1990: Sooner celebrates its centennial and given funding to produce a special edition.
1971: Sooner makes international headlines and is blamed for a loss in state funding for higher education after profanity and controversial photos — including a nude woman, a man smoking marijuana and references to revolution and riots. The university ordered the first 33 pages of the book be removed before copies were mailed to state high schools. Despite the controversy, the 1971 edition, edited by Arney Brown, received an All-American rating as one of the top college yearbooks in the nation.
1959: Sooner moves to Copeland Hall, with a suite of offices and new facilities.
1943: Editor Jules Thompson, fearing for the book's future amid the upheaval of World War II, wrote, "It has been difficult to produce a book that we thought most of the students would enjoy."
1925: Following the 1923 vote against a tax on the student body to help fund the yearbook, editor Laurence Ferguson wrote, "The failure of the student body to adhere to the blanket tax on Sooner sales this year has proven both a disapointment to the publications system and a handicap and hardship to the publication itself. Student publications without student support are as helpless as a constitution without amendments."
1919: OU planned to discontinue publication due to World War I until Sigma Delta Chi, the professional journalism fraternity, offered to publish it. Fayette Copeland — the future namesake of Copeland Hall — who had left school for military service was named editor and returned to campus for three months to edit the publication. Victory Sooner, as it came to be known, included stories about OU students killed and wounded in the war as well as those honored with the Distinguished Service Cross.
1909: The yearbook's name is changed to Sooner.
1905: OU's first yearbook — known as the Mistletoe — was published. The 122-page, chamois-bound book contained pictures and short biographies of the university's 24 faculty members, eight seniors and 23 juniors. OU's 18 sophomores and 41 freshmen were pictured in groups. The book, which also included a literary section, was advised by English professor and football coach V.L. Parrington, namesake of today's North Oval.