College paper trumps administration, puts whole front page 'below fold'

The staff of the Collegian, the daily student newspaper of Philadelphia's La Salle University, outwitted their school's administration with a clever design choice.

Told to keep a scandalous story involving a professor using an exotic dancer for a business seminar below the fold of the front page — after fighting for the right to print the story at all — the student-run, school-funded paper decided to put the entire front page of the paper below the fold, leaving the top half completely blank, save for the words "see below the fold" printed in tiny font just above the fold.

A topless paper: Appropriate for a topless dancer scandal.

Vinny Vella, 20, the paper's executive editor, said that they had been negotiation with the private Catholic university's administration for a week just to be able to print the story, and the Philladelphia City Paper ended up breaking the story while the Collegian grappled.

"You need to stand up for yourself every once in a while," Vella told the Philadelphia Inquirer of the handling of the below-the-fold caveat. "You can't let authorities intimidate you."

The Collegian staff also published an editorial explaining the incident.

"The La Salle Collegian is not a real newspaper. It is a student newspaper, more specifically, a student newspaper at a private university. As you may infer, the differences are astronomical," the editorial reads.

See pictures of the "topless paper" at the Inquirer.

Creative Commons image via flickr user Zingaro.