Washington State University has officially ended publication of the Chinook Yearbook, bringing to a close a student tradition that has lasted over a century. 

The decision came after a unanimous vote by the Board of Student Media Oct. 30, following declining sales, low pickup rates and the loss of advertising revenue.

Lorena O’English, chair of the Student Media Board, said the decision was difficult but unavoidable.

“No one on the board was glad to vote yes on this,” O’English said. “Everyone recognized the traditional importance of the Chinook, but times have changed, and it was clear that, for the moment at least, the Chinook had had its time.”

In addition to long-term challenges, O’English said there were immediate issues this year.

“The Chinook editor withdrew from WSU, and while we had two backups, neither was willing to take over,” she said. “At that point, almost nothing had been done, and there was just no way to catch up. This was going to be a year when there probably wouldn’t have been a Chinook anyway.”

According to Student Media Director Richard Miller, only 381 yearbooks were sold this year, representing 2.3% of the WSU Pullman student body, which is a 23% drop from last year.

O’English said even among those who bought a yearbook, very few ever picked it up.

“Last year, a few of the students who bought one actually came to get it,” she said. “It’s just been going down, down, down.”

She said the decline is congruent with national trends.

“Back in the day, there were thousands of yearbooks across the country,” O’English said. “By 2023, the number had dropped from around 2,400 to about 1,000. Most large public universities no longer have them.”

WSU held on longer than many of its peers. The University of Washington ended The Tyee Yearbook in 1994, the University of Idaho’s Gem of the Mountains ended in 2004 and yearbooks disappeared from Central, Eastern and Western Washington universities decades ago.

O’English attributed the decline to changing technology and student habits.

“People are documenting things for themselves now,” she said. “They have Instagram, Facebook, their phones, they take pictures, share them, and those are their memories. They’ll have those group chats for the next 20 or 30 years. That’s just the way it is now.”

Although the Chinook Yearbook is ending, O’English emphasized WSU student media will continue finding ways to preserve student stories. Students who worked on the yearbook have been recruited to a new publication, The Alley Cat, a summer tabloid offering an irreverent look at campus life for incoming students.

O’English said The Daily Evergreen will also play a role in documenting the year. 

“We’re planning for the last print issue of the Evergreen each year to be a 16-page overview of campus life, a kind of year-in-review,” she said. “It won’t be a yearbook, but it will tell the story of WSU from the student perspective.”

Despite the tough decision, O’English said she remains hopeful the Chinook Yearbook could one day return.

“This isn’t necessarily goodbye forever,” she said. “If student interest shifts, if campus life changes, maybe five or ten years from now we’ll bring it back. We haven’t put the stake in the heart of the Chinook. It’s still there if it wants to come back.”

Transparency: The Daily Evergreen editors are voting members of the Student Media Board