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The Michigan Daily is the daily student newspaper of the University of Michigan. Its first edition was published on September 29, 1890. It was founded to establish a counterweight to the university's fraternity culture. The newspaper is financially and editorially independent of the school's administration and other student groups, but shares a university building with other student publications on 420 Maynard Street, north of the Michigan Union and Huetwell Student Activities Center. The paper is currently housed in temporary quarters while the historic building at 420 Maynard undergoes renovations.

Currently, The Michigan Daily is published five days a week, Monday through Friday, during the Fall and Winter semesters. It is published weekly as a summer edition from May to August. Mondays generally contain a lengthy SportsMonday Sports section (reminiscent of, and probably derived from, The New York Times). On Thursdays, the paper publishes an arts section called "The B-side." Wednesdays signal the release of a magazine, originally titled Weekend Magazine. In fall 2005 renamed the magazine The Statement, in reference to Tom Hayden's Port Huron Statement. Daily print circulation is currently over 18,000 copies, with over 230,000 unique visitors per month to its website.

In 1952, the Soviet delegate to the United Nations, F.A. Novikov, singled out the newspaper as emblematic of American warmongering. On April 12, 1955, when the success of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was announced at the University of Michigan the Daily was the first newspaper to report it. In 1957, the Daily sent a staff member to Little Rock, Arkansas who, pretending to be a student, attended classes on the first day of integration.

Activist and politician Tom Hayden, a former Daily editor-in-chief who helped found Students for a Democratic Society while editing the Daily, came to personify the publication's editorial philosophy during the 1960s. The paper was the subject of national press coverage when, in 1967, it urged the legalization of marijuana.

In addition to Hayden, other notable alumni of the Michigan Daily include two-time Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey, Pulitzer prize winning playwright Arthur Miller, the New York Times' first public editor Daniel Okrent and investment banker Bruce Wasserstein.

The first woman editor-in-chief of the Daily was Harriett Woods, who later served in Missouri State government, ran for the Senate twice in the 1980s nearly beating John Danforth the first time, and led the National Women's Political Caucus through its Year of the Woman in 1992.

Alumni of the publication include editors and reporters at newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Associated Press, Roll Call, and Detroit Free Press.

• The Michigan Daily website.