Meet Luke Gile, a Dallas, Texas native and freshman in the SFS. Luke is the founder and executive of a new publication that is exploding across campus: The Daily Dog. The Daily Dog is a daily newspaper that summarizes world, national, and local news into a single page with a clever, distinctive voice. We here at Her Campus are incredibly impressed by Luke’s drive, involvement on campus, and ingenuity, earning him the title of Campus Celebrity.
The Basics
Tentative Major? Possibly STIA, but I’m also looking into the dual engineering degree with Columbia.
Campus Clubs, other than the Daily Dog? 1634 Society, where we contact alumni and encourage giving. I host a WGTB with my friend Andrew. We play music and talk about anything that comes to mind. We take a lot of calls and discuss current news and politics. The Daily Dog is very time consuming so I devote a lot of time to our day to day operations.
Favorite Food? Hummus.
Music? U2
What you’re most looking forward to for the Spring Semester? The weather getting nicer and nicer each day.
About The Daily Dog
Where did the idea come from? The thought of a daily newspaper had been bouncing around in my head from a conversation I had with my roommate: his mom went to Northwestern and his dad went to GU, and apparently they often fought about which school was better. A key argument my roommate’s mom would make, apparently, is that Northwestern had a daily newspaper.
What led you to decide to go through with it? When Georgetown was bumped down on the Newsweek college ranking list from 20th to 21st I realized that many of the schools above us had daily newspapers. I typed up a first copy, showed it to my friend Andrew—who I do the radio station with, and who is an executive for The Daily Dog—and we distributed copies at 1am that day.
How many copies do you distribute? At this point it has grown to 1000 copies being distributed under doors every friday, and then a stack being left on guard desks the rest of the week. We publish it online every day as well. We send out emails which has been really interesting—we have subscribers from crazy places like Dubai and Russia. We also have chaplains, professors, and parents subscribed, and people who read us on Facebook. [check them out, and like the page, here: https://www.facebook.com/georgetowndailydog !!!]
How do you manage to distribute so many copies? We have a staff of about 26 people, divided into 4 branches: executives, news writers, columnists, and about 18 distribution members. Some people perform jobs in multiple categories. Everyone is very dedicated and works completely voluntarily, I value them so much because I’m sure the Daily Dog isn’t really seen as a great resume padder!
Where do you see the future of the daily dog? SAC offered us club status, but we turned it down because we want to cut out bureaucracy and publish whatever we want with no oversight—we want the Daily Dog to exist simply student to student. Our overheads are very small, about $5 a week, so we aren’t concerned about costs for the time being. We want to increase readership and visibility simply because we know that students love easy, accessible news!
What shoes do you wear while distributing? None. Going barefoot is the best part, especially in my own dorm—VCW!