From our doors to the world

It's strange how the smallest things can have the largest impacts.

When Leo Steinem and Samuel Shinbach formed the Toledo Universi-Teaser in 1919, little did the two know they were laying the groundwork for history.

From a tiny building on Illinois Street, to the third floor of the Student Union Building, to what now sits quietly tucked away behind the campus bookstore; since its humble beginnings in 1919, this newspaper has been the stomping grounds for an impressive roster of alumni. From a nationally acclaimed cartoonist to a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, to war veterans and CEOs, the IC's impact extends far beyond the manicured lawns of the UT campus.

From 1919-20, Steinem served as the newspaper's editor in chief, where he met his future wife and the publication's second editor in chief Ruth Nuneviller. The two married, later divorced and are the parents of feminist, journalist and Toledo native Gloria Steinem.

Leo Steinem went on to become a traveling antiques dealer and owned a small resort in Clark Lake, Mich. Around 1944, he left his family to find work in California.

Ruth Steinem attended Oberlin College and later transferred to UT. While at the Teaser, she wrote several investigative pieces and had a humor column called "Answers by Miss Anne Circe." She also wrote briefly for the Toledo Blade. After her divorce, Ruth Steinem and Gloria lived in Massachusetts then New York, and eventually settled in Toledo where Ruth battled depression and was in-and-out of mental facilities.

While Steinem and Ruth moved forward with their lives, the paper continued to thrive. Seymour Rothman, 94, a sports editor who wrote for The Campus Collegian (the name changed in 1924) from 1932-36, described the paper as "rather loose" at the time.

"We did pretty much what had to be done and what we felt like doing — it was more of a student effort," Rothman said. "It was fun, and it was great to hang around at the paper back then."

Rothman graduated from UT in 1936 and worked at The Toledo Times, which later became the Toledo Blade, as a high school correspondent. He spent the remainder of his career at The Blade and took a leave of absence to serve in the U.S. Army during World War II. Today he is retired and still lives in Toledo.

Best-known for his "Jeff Cobb" comic strips, based on a fictional journalist, Peter Hoffman was a staff cartoonist for The Campus Collegian from 1937-41 and art director for "The Blockhouse," the university yearbook. After graduating in 1941, Hoffman enlisted in the military three weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack and served in the U.S. Army during WWII. He later became a ghost-drawer for Blade cartoonists Allen Saunders and Elmer Woggon. After the "Jeff Cobb" strip ended in 1975, Hoffman worked on several freelance projects for UT and still lives in Toledo.

Perhaps no Collegian editor experienced more turbulent times than Mark Luetke who served as editor in chief from 1969-70. During Luetke's time at the newspaper, The Collegian went from one issue per week to two. Luetke and his staff covered the first Earth Day in 1970, Vietnam protests, the Black Power and Black Student Movements, campus riots, teach-ins and more.

"Those were transitional years for the University and America," Luetke said. "We went from covering Greek Life and athletics to focusing more on social activism and issues that were happening in the broader scene. All the things that were happening across the country played out on the UT campus."

After graduating in 1970, Luetke taught journalism at a public high school and briefly became a writer for a concert promoter. Today he is the president and co-founder of FLS Marketing, a public relations and marketing firm in Toledo.

"Working at The Collegian was the best classroom I ever had, and I learned as much there as I did anywhere else at the university," Luetke said. "All around the country, university administrations were trying to control the newspapers, and we were allowed to practice real journalism."

While several Collegian editors in chief have gone on to achieve tremendous success, Jackie Calmes and Michael Sallah prove one doesn't have to be in charge to have a successful career. Despite being staff writers and writing for the paper part-time, both Calmes and Sallah went on to have remarkable careers in journalism.

Calmes wrote for The Collegian during the 1975-76 school year and is now a national correspondent for The New York Times. Prior to that, she was a chief political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau. Her career in journalism spans more than 18 years and includes covering the George Bush campaigns and the 2008 election, which she called "the election of a lifetime."

"I've covered things I never would have imagined," she said. "I really enjoyed the people and friends I worked with [at The Collegian], and I learned as much from the limited amount of time I spent there as I did in my journalism classes."

Sallah wrote for The Collegian in 1977 and was a part-time news writer.

"I was one of the kids who the professors were always on me to write me more," Sallah said. "I probably should have spent more time writing so I could have gotten more clips, but I concentrated mostly on my academics."

Since graduating from UT in 1977, Sallah worked as a reporter for The Blade, where he, along with Mitch Weiss and Joe Mah, won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for their "Tiger Force" series, which detailed war crimes by Tiger Force, a U.S. Army platoon during the Vietnam War. Sallah is now the investigations editor for The Miami Herald and in 2007 edited a Pulitzer Prize-winning series that exposed corruption in the Miami, Fla. public housing system.