A group of freshmen began publishing a one-page news source called The Daily Dog in early September, intending to offer a quick, printed source for a breadth of news.

The paper, which features headlines about campus, national and world news in one sentence or less, is distributed to four freshman residence halls, the Southwest Quad, Village C East and Copley Hall, as well as the Intercultural Center and the Healey Family Student Center.

The newsletter, created by freshman Luke Gile (SFS ’18), is run by a staff of 26 students and maintains an online presence with a website, Facebook page and Twitter account. The Daily Dog has garnered over 270 Facebook likes and 36 Twitter followers thus far.

“It started off as a really small thing,” Gile said. “We printed 20 copies on the first day, Sept. 9, and it just grew from there. We just kept up with demand.”

Although Gile prints The Daily Dog in his VCW dorm room, he credits the entirety of the newspaper’s staff for its success and expansion to additional residence halls.

“I do what I can, but the team is fantastic,” Gile said. “I couldn’t get this done without them. It would still be 20 pages a day in Village C, just on my floor.”

Gile said that since The Daily Dog is free, student staffers base the development and growth of the paper off student feedback.

The Daily Dog currently staffs four contributing writers and seven columnists. One of the writers is Jeremy Silas (COL ’18), who is responsible for city and campus news, which falls under a “Georgetown” heading. Silas said he was drawn to The Daily Dog because of his love of news and the simplicity of the paper’s format.

“It’s everything you need to know, within a couple of seconds,” Silas said.

The Daily Dog does not currently receive any university funding or support, and is entirely student-produced and printed. According to Gile, Student Activities Commission Gile said Chair Patrick Musgrave (COL ’16) reached out to the paper and offered expedited club status and funding, but the Daily Dog turned down this offer.

“We don’t need that right now,” Gile said. “If it ever becomes unsustainable, that we do need funding, an office and club status, then we might go to that.”
According to Musgrave, though, he only offered advice to Gile, and did not offer access to benefits.
“I told him that if he ever wanted to try and get access to benefits, I could provide advice,” Musgrave wrote in an email. “The Daily Dog wouldn’t be under SAC, it would be under the Media Board. … All new organizations must go through the same new club development.”

The distribution team began by taping the paper to announcement boards on each floor of VCW, but transitioned to sliding copies of each edition underneath students’ doors.

After distribution expanded to Harbin and New South, the team began placing copies of The Daily Dog at each freshman dorm’s front desk, instead of putting them under the doors, due to the increased workload.

Gile said that he has heard supportive feedback from the student body, and that their response has contributed to The Daily Dog’s expansion from VCW to the rest of the campus.

“We wouldn’t be this big, and we wouldn’t have grown this much in such a short time, if people didn’t like it,” Gile said. “When we stopped doing under-the-door delivery every day, people started to ask where it went.”

Marco Cull (SFS ‘18) said that he appreciates the creativity and convenience of The Daily Dog.

“I think it’s a cool concept,” Cull said. “I think a lot of people don’t read it, but it has plenty of potential for spreading information. It’s convenient, more than anything else. Unfortunately, I don’t read it often. But when I have read it, I haven’t regretted it. It’s well-written, relevant and, again, convenient.”