These are my people: Fellow staffers from the mid- to late-1960s on The Maneater, the University of Missouri’s independent student newspaper. I wanted to be a newspaper person, and these colleagues of long ago gave me my first glimpse of terminally curious, certifiably passionate journalists.

We all were the same age, mostly freshmen and sophomores. But, compared to me, with my narrow focus on sportswriting, these folks seemed like grownups. They knew stuff. And how to find out what they didn’t know. They informed and entertained, spoke truth to power, revealed the inadequacies of school officials and the racism around town.

They were, as current Maneater staffers remain, descendants of the paper’s 1955 founder, Brooklyn-raised Joel Gold, who spelled out his editorial policy this way:

“If you want to keep us out, better bar the door. And don’t try getting rough or screaming ‘libel’ when a Maneater reporter crashes your meetings. When the Maneater gets mad, all hell is going to break loose. You’ve been warned.”

Gold died last October at 82. But The Maneater lives on. And in celebrating its 60^th anniversary last week, when roughly 150 former and current staffers gathered for an on-campus reunion, we were given T-shirts bearing Gold’s defiant manifesto.

Likely, all of us originally were drawn to Mizzou by its reputation. Its journalism school, opened in 1908, was first in the world. Regularly—and still, according some sources, including NewsPro Magazine—Missouri’s School of Journalism has been ranked first in the nation.

Officially, none of us were in J-School until our junior year, when most of us began working for the university-run city newspaper, The Columbia Missourian. There, professors and graduate assistants made the big decisions; students were the copy editors and reporters, competing head-to-head in the real world—against the local Columbia Tribune, regional and even big-city publications in St. Louis and Kansas City.

This was the so-called “Missouri Method” of journalism instruction, learning by doing, something like the Delbert McClinton lyric: “I learned to swim when Daddy threw me in the river.”

It’s a good system. But for so many of us, before we got to J-School, we needed The Maneater for instant gratification as we went through the two years of arts-and-science boot camp. Plus, The Maneater allowed us to be mugwumps, journalistic sovereigns—completely independent from any student government or student organization, as well as the School of Journalism itself.

A first-semester freshman such as myself could wangle his way onto The Maneater with the submission of a football-related cartoon, a foot-in-the-door toward becoming sports editor. Once there, I was surrounded by the very definition of college: Students trafficking in insight and critical thought. Also, through many intense, late-night sessions, we had a lot of yukks.

By the time we entered J-School, we had enough experience, confidence and swagger that there were some professors reportedly a bit annoyed that involvement in The Maneater had encroached upon their territory of teaching the profession.

Whatever. The machinery of reporting, writing and editing had been oiled.

Things aren’t the way they were 50 years ago, and there was something appropriate about us posing last week for a picture in front of Read Hall, where our newsroom was situated on the top floor back then. The Maneater office long ago relocated to fancier digs on campus, so that these days, Read houses the department of history. Which basically is what me and my peers are now.

Naturally, we veterans spent time during our little homecoming fretting about the future of journalism—and of newsprint in particular—as the digital, social-media revolution plays out. But, judging by a couple of speeches given by this generation of staffers, Joel Gold’s Maneater label still applies—a newspaper that sounds “dangerous—bold, fearsome, watch-your-step-in-my-jungle tough.”

You’ve been warned.