The Vanderbilt Hustler began as a weekly campus newspaper in 1888. “Published without faculty approval or review, the newspaper was sharp, critical, deliberately controversial,” Paul Conkin said of the paper in his 1985 Gone With the Ivy: A Biography of Vanderbilt University. “It aired issues on all sides, freely criticized faculty and the board, entered enthusiastically the debate over McTyeire’s successor, and was a sounding board for student complaints.” The paper came under control of Vanderbilt Student Communications in 1967. In 1998, The Hustler became financially independent by declining activities fee subsidies.

InsideVandy was founded in March 2006 when the Vanderbilt Student Communications (VSC) Board of Directors unanimously voted to create the site following a semester-long study performed by student media leaders. The study centered around technological changes and shifts in consumer preferences in the media both nationally and at Vanderbilt.

The student leaders’ findings indicate that consumers, particularly college-age and younger, rely primarily on the Internet and other digital forms for news, commentary and entertainment. As a way to ensure that Vanderbilt was not only on top of the shift, but remained a leader in the student media industry, VSC decided in 2006 that it was necessary to move student media at Vanderbilt toward a model that has digital delivery at its center. The result was InsideVandy.com. InsideVandy and its various staffs made efforts to ensure that the site was on the forefront of digital media presentation.

Since 2006, InsideVandy and its various staffs have made efforts to ensure that the site is on the forefront of digital media presentation. The InsideVandy staff works alongside other student media leaders in Suite 130 of Sarratt Student Center on the Vanderbilt campus.

In 2014, leaders of The Vanderbilt Hustler and InsideVandy came together and decided that merging the separate divisions was in the best interest of student media at Vanderbilt. The VSC Board approved the proposal, and InsideVandy.com became  vanderbilthustler.com at the start of the 2014-2015 school year. The editor-in-chief of The Hustler now oversees both the print and online versions.

Following the 2015-2016 school year, the VSC Board, with support from The Hustler staff, voted to move The Hustler solely online. The move sought to allow for a greater focus on content production and technological advancements, while looking to get ahead in a direction the rest of the field seems headed.

The Vanderbilt Hustler staff works alongside other student media leaders in Suite 130 of Sarratt Student Center on the Vanderbilt campus.