Arbor Update

Ann Arbor Area Community News

Daily Building Gets Millions From Alum

9. October 2005 • Ari Paul
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Stan Lipsey, a former Michigan Daily photographer and Pulitzer Prize winning writer, will donate $3 million for renovations of 420 Maynard (Student Publications Building), Daily editor-in-chief Jason Pesick told his staff in an email Thursday.

The Daily also ran a story on the gift.



  1. You don’t suppose this will let the paper improve, do you?
       —David Boyle    Oct. 9 '05 - 11:10PM    #
  2. Oh David, are we really that bad? :(
       —eston    Oct. 10 '05 - 05:44PM    #
  3. It was a joke! We all love the Daily, even those who mock it.

    The ads for “young college girls wanted for nude fotos” still bother me though.
       —David Boyle    Oct. 10 '05 - 09:45PM    #
  4. This is good news. They’ve been working on this campaign (to raise $$$ for renovations) for years—they’re pretty badly needed. The building is a gem, so let’s hope this money helps polish it up.

    As far as improving the quality of the paper, resurrecting the journalism department might help … ;)
       —Scott Trudeau    Oct. 10 '05 - 09:52PM    #
  5. David: Yeah, those ads are really sketchy. I guess business staff just thinks that money’s money, so whatever.

    Scott: Obviously that was here before I got here. I never knew we had one.
       —eston    Oct. 11 '05 - 04:05AM    #
  6. I’m less optimistic than Scott about what renovation will do to the building. Once it’s gutted, the funky character of the place will be gone. It will be just like any other university building, except more boring.
       —Larry Kestenbaum    Oct. 11 '05 - 03:57PM    #
  7. I disagree with Larry a little bit. The building is in such bad shape that computers lose power all the time, the netork goes down, etc. Actually, much of the building’s character is currently hidden underneath bad post-WWII changes like ugly lighting, orange tile floors and ugly carpet. The architects and the Board for Student Publications are definitely committed to making the building look the way it did 75 years ago.

    I also blogged about the j school stuff on my blog at http://apps.michigandaily.com/blogs/editorspage/. I know it’s a shameless promotion, but maybe someone’s interested.
       —Jason Pesick    Oct. 11 '05 - 05:06PM    #
  8. Larry,

    It’s hard to say exactly what this money will ultimately do, but when I was around the conversations there was definitely great interest in preserving things like the original internal windows and some of the wood work and interior details. And as Jason points out, a lot incremental changes over time have wiped out a lot of that character already.
       —Scott Trudeau    Oct. 11 '05 - 06:38PM    #
  9. I should add that it’s not handicap accessible right now. There’s no elevator and no bathrooms on the second floor.
       —Jason Pesick    Oct. 11 '05 - 08:26PM    #
  10. I’ve never actaully seen the Daily offices. Are they open / can people drop in and check them out?
       —Matt Hampel    Oct. 11 '05 - 10:49PM    #
  11. Yeah, you can walk right in, drop off press releases, hassle them, whatever. Except that most of the time it seems that hardly anyone is around, probably because they’re at class.
       —Larry Kestenbaum    Oct. 12 '05 - 01:41AM    #
  12. The business staff is usually upstairs during business hours on weekdays, selling ads. The news staff usually doesn’t show up till late. You can pretty much wander around the building, but I recommend if you want to check it out to go in and go up stairs, which won’t arouse much suspicion since that’s where you have to go to place ads and what not.
       —Scott Trudeau    Oct. 12 '05 - 03:48AM    #
  13. Most of the work gets done at night, from around 5pm to 2am. You can still hassle us during those hours, but the front door is locked, so you have to tell someone you’re coming if you want to be let in.
       —donn    Oct. 12 '05 - 03:49AM    #
  14. Matt, there’s really not much worth seeing. There are just a lot of people working on eMacs.
       —eston    Oct. 13 '05 - 04:35AM    #
  15. okay so three-million dollars is a very large sum of money for “daily folk.” It’s something they (we) have been working towards for years. Whether or not the building becomes less interesting is insubstantial.

    If this were a restoration project we (they) probably would have received money years ago. It’s not. The building is crumbling at it’s foundation and it sure as hell doesn’t pass many current codes.

    Scott was right in saying that they are trying to retain the original outdoor-skeleton. The building, last I remember, will basically be gutted (minus two-million dollars) and embalmed with fancy “journ-ie-glue!”

    anyhow, this is a good thing.

    except, perhaps, for the name:
    the Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building

    this is something I can argue about.

    ..ughh..
    vinh! (ex-(read:)daily)
       —vinh!    Oct. 14 '05 - 09:55AM    #