The Gutsiest Campus Newspapers of 2011

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Whether they were covering the Alabama tornadoes in depth, pissing off James Franco, or exposing undercover drug busts, these campus newspapers boldly broke the news.

Watch This Space: In April, La Salle University in Philadelphia demanded that an embarrassing story about a business prof who’d hired exotic dancers for a class not run above the fold in the Collegian. The paper’s solution? It left the top of its front page blank and ran the story below the fold, gaining national attention. Well played, friends, well played.

Eye on the Storm: The University of Alabama’s Crimson White provided real-time coverage of last spring’s tornadoes, offering eyewitness accounts and a photo slideshow to highlight the destruction.

First Responder: After Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 18 others were shot in January, the University of Arizona’s Daily Wildcat snagged one of the earliest interviews with UA student Daniel Hernandez Jr., the first person on the scene to aid the wounded congresswoman.

Higher Ed: After a TV news outlet exposed an undercover drug bust that snagged frat brothers for dealing on Columbia University’s campus last December, the Blue and White got the full story behind “Operation Ivy League.”

Tweets and Geeks: Actor/writer James Franco usually keeps his cool, but the Yale Daily News succeeded in riling him up. After a columnist mocked his Twitter feed, Franco tweeted a photo of his face covered in red scrawl reading: “Fuck the Yale Daily News.”

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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