The University Times

The print edition of The University Times was redesigned in 2014 by the paper's then-Creative Director, Edmund Heaphy, and under the editorship of Leanna Byrne. [16] The paper's nameplate, which had been set in the Utopia typeface since the paper's founding, was redrawn. Headlines and body text were set in the Coranto 2 family, while LFT Etica features as a sans-serif counterpart. In two consecutive years, the design won "Best Overall Newspaper Design" in the Society for News Design's College News Design contest, with one of the judges, San Francisco Chronicle designer Luis Rendon, calling the paper a "powerhouse" for design.[17][18] In 2015, Heaphy redesigned the paper's website. It subsequently won a similar award from the Society for News Design.[18]

Students in Trinity have progressively voted to give the paper more independence from Trinity College Dublin Students' Union. Within several years of the founding of The University Times, the union's constitution was amended to guarantee the paper's editorial independence, even though the union's Communications Officer had also always served as its editor. In a 2014 constitutional change, students voted to make the position of editor separate from that of the Communications Officer.[19][20] The editor is now specifically elected by Trinity students annually, alongside the officers of Trinity College Dublin Students' Union.

In January 2015, the newspaper printed details of confidential correspondence that had been supplied to Samuel Riggs, who was then the editor of The University Times, by the University Philosophical Society on the condition that it would not be referred to in an article. Controversially, members of the society were asked by its president to confiscate copies of the paper from Trinity's campus. The University Times, however, acknowledged the error and subsequently agreed to withdraw the edition of the paper in question from circulation.

Members of the society's council discussed calling a motion to impeach the president as a result of the society's actions in collecting the newspapers, and it was later forced to pass a motion of confidence in the president.[23][24]

The incident was cited as one of the factors leading to Riggs agreeing to take a permanent leave of absence from his position in March 2015.[25]

A 2016 report prepared by a committee of senior members of Trinity College Dublin Students' Union alleged that staff of the newspaper, including then-editor Edmund Heaphy, had engaged in what rival newspaper Trinity News described as "serious breaches of journalistic conduct", including fabrication of evidence, mistreatment of staff, and biased and unfair reporting.

While the union chose not to publish the report itself, Trinity News reported that "undue stress" had been placed on staff and that "mistreatment was common".[26]

The newspaper's senior editors rejected the report's findings.[27] The union's president, Lynn Ruane, described the report as "an account of some hearsay and rumours", while its Education Officer Molly Kenny described the report as "piles of rumours".[26] The Board of Trustees of the union rejected the report's recommendations and chose not to convene the newspaper's oversight board.

In March 2019, reporting conducted by the newspaper about hazing in a secret society known as the Knights of the Campanile aroused controversy due to the paper's use of a covert recording device during its investigations. The device had been placed near an apartment door where the society was holding its initiation evening. Rival student newspaper Trinity News suggested that the use of a recording device amounted to a "bugging" and called on the editor of The University Times, Eleanor O'Mahony, to step down.[28][29][30][31]

The University Times defended the secret recording, suggesting that its reporting was in the public interest and thus that the practice was protected by law.[32] Three Trinity law professors subsequently criticised The University Times, calling the suggestion "a misunderstanding of the law".[33] Former Attorney General Michael McDowell, however, defended The University Times, calling their conclusion "clearly wrong", and noting that the situation was "inherently more complex than their analysis suggests".[34] Andrea Martin, a solicitor who had previously led the in-house legal team at RTÉ, similarly defended the reporting.[34]

In the immediate aftermath of the controversy, more than 500 students signed a petition in order to hold a referendum on a proposal to slash the funding of The University Times and make the position of editor unpaid.[13]

Chris Frost, the chair of the ethics council of the National Union of Journalists, called the referendum an "appalling attempt to curtail a free press" and said that the reporting and methods used in the Knights of the Campanile story were "beyond reproach and consistent with the highest professional standards of public interest, investigative journalism."[35][36]

The referendum attracted national attention, including from columnist Gene Kerrigan, who said that a vote to cut the paper's funding would be an endorsement of the "sordid behaviour" exposed by the newspaper's journalists.[37] More than 3,000 students voted in the April 2019 referendum, with 74% rejecting the proposal to cut the paper's funding.[38][39]