BETHLEHEM, Pa. (WLVT) - On the third floor of Lehigh University’s Coppee Hall, students spend hours designing pages, editing articles and brainstorming.
The Brown and White gets published twice a week. This year, the paper turns 125.
"A tradition of pursuing truth and working together to tell everyone on campus what's going on," said editor-in-chief Marissa McCloy.
"I think it's amazing that we're at 125 years," said news editor Lucy Zhao. "I'm so lucky to just have three years of that."
Since 1894, students haven’t stopped sharing stories, but they have changed how they tell them. The paper is just one of the ways to do that.
"Going from print to digital media, especially because social media is our biggest hit," said community engagement editor Massiel Checo. "That's where we get most of our engagement from."
"We've been working with things like drones and bots, and we're exploring virtual reality and 360 video, because there's just so many different platforms of creativity," added faculty adviser Matt Veto.
"Just kind of pushing the bounds of little bit of journalism," said multimedia editor David Owolabi, "and so, we're kind of like that section on the forefront of technology and things like that."
A staff of 152 students tackles journalism across several platforms. Veto said 60 percent of the staff comes from outside journalism.
"They work sometimes almost 40 hours a week," he said. "I think it becomes a full-time job for them -- all in the spirit of pursuing the truth in journalism."
This week, the university highlighted the paper’s history with a special reception, bringing students and graduates together.
"I still keep in touch with a lot of the people that I worked with on staff, the professors, and kind of seeing everybody afterwards thrive in publication is really awesome," said 2018 graduate Annie Henry, who now works in marketing at the chemical company BASF.
Graduates said their time working for The Brown and White has helped shape their careers, including Marty Baron, a 1976 graduate and executive editor of The Washington Post.
"A lot of the kind of journalism that you do on a campus newspaper turns out to be highly relevant to what you will do in the field," he told PBS39, after an hour-long event at Zoellner Arts Center Thursday, where he answered questions from student journalists about the future of journalism.
Baron was editor-in-chief of The Brown and White when he was a student and went on to lead several major newspapers across the country, including The New York Times and The Boston Globe.
"It's kind of surprising that journalism has survived as long as it has on the news organizations and newspapers that continue to survive, despite all the incredible challenges that they face today, and that's because I think there's a demand for what they do," he said.
It's a demand Baron knows well, especially this week, as his newsroom in Washington reports on a whistleblower complaint and impeachment inquiry about the president.
"Let's be accurate, and let's be fair, but let's also be straightforward with the readers and tell them what we've actually learned and what we can be confident in reporting -- and that's what we try to do," Baron said.
It's the same vision The Brown and White has had from the beginning -- 125 years and counting.
"It's been probably one of the defining moments of the back half of my college experience," Owolabi said.
"I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life," Zhao added. "It's going to impact my future, obviously, because I've learned so many skills as a reporter, as an editor, just as a journalist overall."
"I think it also just made me a better person and person on campus," McCloy said. "I know what's going on. I know more people. I know how to connect with people better than I did before I was involved with this."
"As long as Lehigh is here, The Brown and White will be here," Checo said. "I know that for a fact."