The Lance has a rich history that many of its readers don’t even know exists. Like everything, there have been many changes in the past 53 years that The Lance has been in production.
Evangel started The Lance, then known as The Lancer, the very first year the college was founded. That was very impressive that the journalism program was taken so seriously and a paper formed its very first year, according to Shirley Shedd, the advisor of The Lance for 25 years and now the archivist at Evangel.
In the very first paper that came out on Oct. 21, 1955, the editorial wrote, “The objective of your editor is to act as the voice of the students, presenting problems which are of importance to Evangel College student.” And this is what The Lance has done throughout the years.
The paper had a following seven issues before it dwindled off for the year of 1956-57, but the next year The Lance reappeared for good. During the time that it disappeared, the yearbook took the name The Lancer and so the newspaper was renamed The Lance. This name was the result of a contest and Jeannette Franz from Nevada, Iowa, submitting this winning name that has carried on through the decades.
Back then the first paper was only one page, but the next year it was a bi-weekly (once every two weeks) paper that was 4 pages long. At the end of the year though, the paper would produce a 6-page paper as a tribute to the end of the year.
Now, in 2008, the paper comes out on the first day of the school year, which is a tradition that has happened since Shedd was the advisor. But back on Sept. 16, 1959 that was the earliest issue and was a milestone for The Lance.
With the development of technology and the changing of society, The Lance has developed both electronically and stylistically.
And nobody knows this better than The Lance adviser now, Melinda Booze. She was The Lance editor in chief from the fall semester of 1983 to the fall semester of 1984.
“We published every two weeks, primarily because we did mechanical layouts on boards, had to send the copy out to be typeset and did film photography,” Booze said.
The Lance bought a typesetter when Booze was the editor, which means it used wax, exacto knives/blades, photo film/chemicals, blue pencils, photo croppers and sizing wheels to format the paper and then they would take the paper back and forth to the printer and check proofs before it was printed.
Booze also said that photography was a very time consuming job with a long process. Color photography was rarely, if ever used, and the size of the photo had to fit exactly in the space provided on the page.
And now The Lance mostly produces the paper on Wednesday night and gets done around two or three a.m., and Booze said it was the same back then.
“We were there all hours of the night (sometimes more than one night during production week), we got sick of pizza, we had fun and got cranky with each other, and we benefited from an excellent foundation in journalism. My closest friends in college (and continued friendships) were with fellow Lance staffers,” Booze said.
And pizza is a treat that The Lance has had for a long time, and the 2007-2008 Lance staff says they definitely get sick of it now.
Through the years, The Lance has varied being printed on newsprint paper and white paper, according to Shedd. It is all up to the editor in chief at that time. Some liked the professional look of newsprint, while others liked the cleaner look of the white paper.
And up until a few years ago The Lance editors would have to drive to Marshfield 30 miles away to hand deliver the newspaper for print. Now it is all electronically handled and the staff just drags PDF files into a folder that is connected to Nowatta Printing Company.
“This is not only more convenient, it also ensures that we have no surprises when we get the final copy,” Shedd said.
The Lance got it’s first computer in the fall of 1989 and students started producing the paper on Mac’s and have continued producing the paper on Mac’s ever since.
The Lance and Excalibur now share a publication lab in Trask Hall with 16 Mac computers, and it is a “dream come true for student journalists,” Shedd said.
To view old Lance’s, go to the Library and view a complete collection.