Twitter and 1900 followers on Facebook. www.martlet.ca receives an annual average of 30,000 audience members via organic web search, and 17,000 audience members via social media channels. Martlet stories are regularly picked up by larger publications including the CBC, CTV News, the Times Colonist, and Chek News. History The Martlet was founded when UVic was Victoria College, and the original name was the Microscope. The paper takes its name from a heraldic bird with no feet. Three martlet birds appear on the crest of McGill University, and the University of Victoria grew out of the McGill University College of British Columbia. For a brief period in the early 1970s, the Martlet was renamed the 'Cougar City Gazette' after an armed takeover by a loose coalition of disgruntled former students and at least one former(?) professor who were dissatisfied with the perceived blandness of the newspaper - perusal of the content of the Cougar City Gazette clearly reflects the change of editorial direction. The Cougar City Gazette was often quite controversial, and its existence came to an abrupt end after it published a captioned photograph that prompted Playboy magazine to threaten the paper with legal action. In 1971, the Martlet was partly responsible for bringing about the resignation of the university's president, Bruce J. Partridge, when it erroneously reported that he had obtained his law degree from a correspondence school under investigation as a "degree mill." In 2001, the Martlet Publishing Society issued an apology to Partridge for publishing articles that made reference to these events in an anniversary book. A 2003 Martlet article by Patrick White stated that, though Partridge legitimately acquired his degree by correspondence, rumours about Partridge's qualifications spread throughout the university. He resigned in November 1971. An article with a statement from Partridge can be found in an archived 1971 issue of the University of British Columbia's paper the Ubyssey. Until 2004 the Martlet had an "advertising boycott list", which has been dropped to allow for an assessment of each individual advertisement. The Martlet has received criticism for running advertisements that some readers have interpreted as sexist, notably in fall 2004 when they ran ads for "Canada's Search for the Coors Light Maxim Girl." At a 2013 general meeting, the Martlet Publishing Society voted not to retain membership in Canadian University Press. See also List of student newspapers in Canada List of newspapers in Canada The Ring