"'Why is The McGill Daily?'
Asked the pessimist sourly.
'Thank God," said the optimist gaily,
'That it isn't hourly!'"
- A.J.M. Smith, The Blasted Pine, 1967

The McGill Daily, at one time the oldest daily student newspaper in the Commonwealth, has been the training ground for generations of journalists since its inception in 1911.

Currently the second-largest student newspaper in Canada and the most widely read, The Daily has a weekly circulation of 28,000 together with its francophone sister publication, Le Délit. The Daily began as a broadsheet that focused mainly on sports news. Its evolution has taken many directions. It has taken courageous stands over the years, such as publishing a special issue for International Women's Day in the late 1970s, that were ridiculed at the time but later embraced by the mainstream media.

The Daily has been independent from student government since 1980. It is published by the Daily Publications Society, an autonomous body whose membership includes all McGill undergraduate students.

2.1 The fundamental goal of The McGill Daily shall be to serve as a critical and constructive forum for the exchange of ideas and information about McGill University and related communities.

2.2 Within this optic, the staff of The Daily recognizes that all events and issues are inherently political, involving relations of social and economic power. Further, we recognize that at present power is unevenly distributed, especially (but not solely) on the basis of gender, age, social class, race, sexuality, religion, disability, and cultural identity. We also recognize that keeping silent about this situation helps to perpetuate inequality. To help correct these inequities, to the best of its staff’s abilities, The Daily should depict and analyze power relations accurately in its coverage.

2.3 As an autonomous student newspaper, relatively free from commercial and other controls, The Daily can best serve its purposes by examining issues and events most media ignore. In particular, it should deal with the role post-secondary education plays in constructing and maintaining the current order. It should also assist students and other groups working for change in a critical framework, with the aim of empowering and giving a voice to individuals and communities marginalized on the basis of the criteria mentioned in section 2.2. The Daily’s methods should be both educative and active, and determined democratically by its staff.

2.4 Finally, we recognise that The Daily must remain accessible to the student community it comes from, and should abide by an ethic of fairness while maintaining its autonomy.

The Daily's new site allows viewers to post comments in accordance with the following policy.

In allowing comments, The McGill Daily seeks to promote open and sincere debate, and provide readers with an open forum to discuss ideas among themselves, and with the staff and editors of the Daily. In order to promote open debate while acknowledging our responsibility for everything that appears under the McGill Daily name, the following restrictions will be enforced on all comments on this site. Comments in contradiction with these guidelines may be deleted at the sole discretion of the editorial board as represented by the web editor.

The Daily Prohibits:

Any comment not complying with the McGill Daily's code of ethics, which bans (in part) content which expresses "racial, sexual, and socioeconomic bias or prejudice," as well as content which is libelous;

Any comment which contains a link to a site in contravention of the McGill Daily's code of ethics;

Any comment whose primary purpose is commercial;

Any comment which is wholly unrelated to the content of the article or posting to which it is attached;

Any comment which duplicates exactly another comment on mcgilldaily.com, regardless of ownership;

Any comment The McGill Daily knows to be plagiarized.

Any comment the editorial board deems inappropriate, such as comments linking to "shock sites" or comments extolling violence.

Any comment which causes a page on our site to render improperly.