The Chronicle’s Annual Impact Report

July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026

Message from recent editor Ana Despa

Friends of The Chronicle,

One of Vol. 121’s editors called its news cycle the most thrilling thing they would never want to repeat. And that’s a good way to put it. 

Since the volume began in April 2025, higher education has been subject to substantial federal changes from cuts to research funding to caps on international students to scrutiny over diversity initiatives. In response, Duke launched a quarter-billion-dollar cost cutting initiative and slowly changed its internal policies. The Chronicle wrote it as it happened. 

It was busy on the sports front, too. Duke football won its first outright ACC championship since 1962, and top-ranked men’s and women’s basketball teams won conference championships. The Chronicle wrote unique features (spotlighting Duke basketball moms, new soccer coaches and every tent in K-Ville) and gamers with enticing ledes. They were on-site for dozens of other big moments, including fencing wins in Cameron and rowing regattas at Lake Wheeler. 

Every day, the office started buzzing around 6 p.m., with staff filling the walls with laughter after a day of classes. There’s no selection process or experience needed to join The Chronicle, outside from our opinion section, so our senior editors were hard at work training junior editors to fix a lede and nutgraf and flag gaps in reporting. Our new writers watched their draft go through rounds of editing and make its way to the website for thousands to see. Upperclassmen photographers taught first-years how to use new software and work a camera. Sometimes the office stayed busy until 1 a.m. 

What kept us coming back each night was each other. In Vol. 121 we launched our first multimedia department that almost doubled Instagram engagement by translating written stories to short video format (#roadto20K). We scooped stories that got picked up by national outlets and shaped campus discourse. Our photography and Recess sections grew their staff size, and our opinion section gave voice to those affected by Duke’s restructuring and stood for freedom of expression during a period of increasing scrutiny of the press.

But it wasn’t all serious. We had late-night handstand contests in 301 Flowers. We welcomed our new writers with an inaugural Chronsgiving. The walls in the office became filled with post-it notes of phrases we said during production that made the room erupt in laughter but wouldn’t make sense to anyone outside the office. 

Thank you for making this all possible. Keep reading!

Ana Despa
Volume 121 Editor-in-Chief, The Chronicle

Lucas Lin, Ana Despa, and Claire Cranford at the 2026 Sclafani Banquet.

IMPACT by the Numbers

48,000

Daily Rundown email newsletter readers.
Up from 29,000 last year!

155,000

X followers @DukeBasketball

350,000

dukechronicle.com monthly users

16

engaged board members helping us navigate big changes in our industry

8

print editions for special content

6 of last 7 years

winner of the Online Pacemaker Award, for one of the best student news websites in the country

20,000

Instagram Followers and growing!

6th year of the
Karen Blumenthal Internship

650+

alumni and friends who made a donation, attended an event or mentored our staff

3

alumni gatherings in NYC, DC and Durham

200+

students working on editorial staff: editors, reporters and photographers

20+

students on business staff: ad sales, ad agency and fundraising

The competitive Chronicle funded internship experience at Dallas Morning News in business journalism. Zoe Kolenovsky had a great summer on the business desk.

Chronicle Impact Stories

  • The last school year was full of challenges for The Chronicle’s staff, from reporting on the severe impacts on Duke from the current administration’s actions against higher education to investigations of faculty members to everyday life on campus. They rose to the challenge in every way. As you’ll see in this report, The Chronicle’s website traffic and engagement across multiple platforms increased substantially.

    As part of ensuring that The Chronicle remains a campus must-read, the staff has been actively planning for its election coverage, which this year includes a collaboration with nine other North Carolina universities. We are looking forward to seeing the insights their coverage provides.

    Your support—a record of $286,000 in 2025-26--has been critical to the staff’s success. We’ve been able to provide training, equipment and technical support, and far-flung travel to follow the Blue Devils wherever they may be competing. We are so grateful that you have made continuing our mission possible.

    We are excited to announce some changes to the DSPC Board. Claire Ballentine’ 18, is our new DSPC Board Chair. She provides strong leadership and students appreciate her insights as a working journalist.  She’s joined by Vice Chairs Gautam Hathi ’17 and Nicole Kyle ’13, both of whom bring their extensive experience in incorporating technology into journalism. We are also pleased to welcome our newest Board member, Steven Petrow ’78. Steven is an award-winning journalist, book author, essayist, and contributing writer for The Washington Post and The New York Times as well as a columnist for USA Today.

    We look forward to seeing you this coming year at one of our on-campus or out-of-town events.  We’ll keep you posted!

  • Nicole Kyle, Duke Student Publishing Company Board Co-Chair:

    Thank you for all of your help in making The Annual Chronicle vs. Daily Tar Heel (Duke vs. UNC) Rivalry Fundraising Challenge #8 the most successful to date! Yes, we now decisively hold the lead over the DTH - 5 wins to their 3. Go Chron! We raised $79,734 against our goal of $55,000.

    The tickets to the second (winning!) Duke vs. UNC game proved to be a terrific fundraising motivator, our number of donors increased as did our gift size. We also attracted several new significant donors from both Chron alumni and the broader community. 

    Also, the new videos from Carlos Boozer and Ken Jeong were hugely popular.

    Many thanks to our fearless Rivalry mastermind and board member Phil Poley ‘91, we couldn’t do this without your enthusiasm and leadership. Additionally, many thanks to everyone who reached out to friends, family, and classmates to make this such a wild success. It’s hard to believe that the Chron and DTH jointly have raised $760,000 over the 8 years of this challenge.

    The real winners are, of course, Chron students. Once again, we can fully fund their news gathering and leadership experience even without any financial assistance from Duke. 

  • Carol Morgan ‘64, Liz Morgan ‘90 and Tom Morgan ‘63.

    Both Liz Morgan and her dad, Tom Morgan, are proud Chronicle alumni. While in the newsroom, Tom served as business manager and Liz was the editorial page editor. Today, they both support The Chronicle by using appreciated securities to make their gifts. 

    "We both want to support the next generation of Chronicle students with our giving. The tax advantages of using appreciated securities make it a win-win," says Liz.

    Donating appreciated stock directly to The Chronicle allows donors to avoid capital gains tax while still receiving a tax deduction for the full fair market value. If you would like to learn more about how to gift appreciated securities, please visit our website or contact Chrissy Murray at chrissy.murray@duke.edu.

  • Lucas, Ana and Claire at the annual Sclafani banquet, The four Chronicle female sports editors at the NYC Alumni Event at MLB Headquarters in April, Chron Class of 2026, Megan Haven with our senior ad staff, Duke Student Publishing Company Board of Directors at our April meeting. 


    Last but not least, we capped off the semester with an event in Washington, DC featuring recent editor, Abby Spiller, current editor Dylan Halper, and news editor Claire Cranford in conversation with Michael Schoenfled, currently at Brunswick Group, about the state of higher education. 

  • The Chronicle will lead the North Carolina College Media Elections Network this fall, a first-of-its-kind effort to unite college newsrooms across the state to produce robust, trustworthy elections journalism ahead of the 2026 North Carolina midterms.

    The initiative will connect nine partner student news organizations across the state with shared editorial infrastructure, training, reporting support, and access to reporting tools designed to strengthen local elections coverage for the state's nearly 600,000 individuals enrolled in postsecondary education.

    “The North Carolina College Media Elections Network is a collaboration among college media organizations to better inform college students about candidates, issues and voting practices this election season,” Claire Cranford, news editor, said. “By sharing resources, amplifying our peers’ reporting, and creating stronger statewide elections coverage together, college-aged voters will feel more informed and empowered to exercise their right to vote.”

    Participating newsrooms include The Daily Tar Heel at UNC Chapel Hill; The Seahawk at UNC Wilmington; The Technician at NC State; The Campus Echo at NCCU; The Old Gold & Black at Wake Forest University; The View Point at High Point University; The Appalachian at Appalachian State University; and The East Carolinian at East Carolina University.

    The 2026 North Carolina midterms include one U.S. Senate seat, 14 U.S. House seats, a N.C. Supreme Court Justice seat, and all 120 state House and 50 state Senate seats. Multiple North Carolina counties have recently voted to remove early voting sites at college campuses, including Western Carolina University, N.C. A&T, and UNC-Greensboro — changes that advocates say could suppress student voter turnout and that make trusted student news coverage more essential than ever.

    Currently, the partnership spans nine newsrooms across eight counties. Partner newsrooms will receive access to a shared suite of editorial tools developed by The Chronicle, including voter guide templates, candidate questionnaire banks, issue explainer frameworks, milestone-based coverage checklists, and training in elections reporting best practices. Newsrooms will also have access to Branch Politics, a nonpartisan tool that will help readers identify candidates and issues that will appear on their ballot. The Network will also provide participating newsrooms with guidance on audience engagement, newsletter and digital product development, and sustainable revenue strategies.

    The Chronicle is looking forward to working with partners across the state.

Financial Update from CEO Chrissy Murray

As I reflect on how far Duke Student Publishing Company has come, I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to the vision and dedication of alumni like you. Your contributions, both personal and collective, have built the extraordinary reputation that The Chronicle enjoys today, and I’m proud to play a role in carrying our 122 year legacy forward.

Over the past two decades, Duke Student Publishing Company, Inc. (The Chronicle) has pivoted from a story of crisis to one of resilience, innovation and growth, but at the heart of it all is our unwavering mission: to amplify and support student voices.

Of the hundreds of college news organizations across the country, we are in a small group (less than 50) that are completely financially independent from their university. We pay our way because we decided 32 years ago that was the best way to do this work - unfettered by as little conflict of interest as possible. 

On the one hand, this makes the work harder. On the other hand, we are free to chart our own course in good times and in bad. 

As you can see below the revenue side of our organization is healthy. Our overall revenue and expenses have stabilized over the last seven years (after a decade of previous steady revenue declines due to print advertising losses), primarily due to the growth of donor revenue and strong local sales efforts. We also developed agency services and wrote, published and sold Coach K: The King of Cameron to help support the bottom line. We’ve held expenses in line with revenue every year since 2009 enabling us to continue break-even operations.

In the coming years, we hope to steady our primary revenue sources and make plans for whatever is coming next. The Chronicle is completely financially dependent upon our own ability to generate revenue (and control expenses) because of our full independence from Duke.

We would like to thank our current donors for making the work of The Chronicle possible.

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