By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / February 14, 2025
This article was originally posted to Alice Embree’s Substack.
“UT-Dallas students launch alternative newspaper after class with administration,” was the headline above a Texas Tribune article on February 7, 2025, by Jessica Priest. The subhead continued, “Students at the university created their own news organization — The Retrograde — after they reached an impasse with administrators regarding oversight and the firing of the campus newspaper’s editor-in-chief.”
The Texas Tribune tells the origin story of The Retrograde,
In late January, the University of Texas at Dallas removed most newspaper stands that once held its official student publication: The Mercury.
The student-produced newspaper hadn’t published a physical edition since last fall after students went on strike over the firing of its editor, Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, who defended the organization’s coverage of pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
In the following months, Olivares Gutierrez and his colleagues launched an alternative news organization The Retrograde. The students published the first hardcopy edition Jan. 23, one day after the newsstands were removed from campus.
Congratulations to The Retrograde from those of us who worked on The Rag, and kudos to the person or persons who thought up The Retrograde as a replacement for The Mercury.”
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