JSTOR’s Campus Underground series consists of seventy-five print publications that originate from college and university campuses and surrounding communities, from Ann Arbor to Berkeley. During the 1960s, a period which saw the rise of overlapping and intersecting social movements, many of these student-run papers emerged as uncensored alternatives to traditional outlets such as the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. In order to critique mainstream reporting, amplify marginalized voices, and directly challenge dominant narratives about the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, it was necessary for the students running their school papers to have a fluency with the reportage and perspectives of their mainstream cousins. In effect, these undergraduates undertook the initiative in making sure they were media literate in order to create media of their own.
Many of these publications are available through JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services, which has enabled university libraries from around the globe to share their student newspapers dating back to the early 1900s. The Hustler, for example, was the first student newspaper of Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia; its earliest editions—available on JSTOR—date from 1908. The Hustler and similar publications offer institutional, regional, and global perspectives on a range of historical events directly from student journalists. As opposed to a critique of mainstream newspapers, this particular collection reflects students’ attempts to mimic mainstream newspapers, from their choice of typography to the layout and design to editorial tone. Many of these papers included advertisements and charged a subscription fee. For two cents, a student at Normal College (now known as Eastern Michigan University) could read a copy of the Normal College News in 1905.
In 2024, according to the Pew Research Center, just over a quarter of adults aged eighteen to sixty-five in the United States reported getting their news in print some of the time. That was the lowest share Pew ever recorded. By contrast, about a third of US adults say they regularly get their news from Facebook or YouTube. TikTok, not surprisingly, is the dominant source of news for those ages eighteen to twenty-nine. From my vantage point in the University Libraries at Colgate University, I can confirm these data, at least anecdotally. En route to my office, I walk past stacks of perfectly folded and untouched editions of the New York Times every day.
Weekly Newsletter
Last year, Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab polled 1,026 students at 181 colleges and universities to assess their media literacy skills. In the survey, media literacy was defined as “the ability or skills to critically analyze for accuracy, credibility, or evidence of bias in the content created and consumed in sources including radio, television, the internet, and social media.” Though few students report newspapers as part of their media diet, a large majority believe that form of legacy media to be the most trustworthy. Our university, like many in the United States, provides digital versions of a range of newspapers from around the globe, but usage statistics remain low—especially among undergraduates.
Spurred by college students’ declining engagement with professional journalism, apps specifically designed for the college-aged demographic have attempted to stymy the growing phenomenon of news avoidance. Democracy relies on an informed citizenry, yet staying informed now requires overcoming constant distractions and the overwhelmingly fast pace of the modern news cycle. Kathryn Bowd, associate professor of media at the University of Adelaide, speaks to this dilemma in a chapter of her book, Making Publics, Making Places, writing, “All of these factors point to a media environment facing ongoing financial pressure, competition from non-traditional providers, shifting and fragmenting audience demand and upheaval of professional practice.”
In the summer of 2024, I had the opportunity to consult with a team of developers creating a news app designed specifically for college students to increase their media literacy skills as part of Colgate’s Thought into Action Summer Accelerator, an entrepreneurial bootcamp for recent alums to launch business ventures. This collaboration spurred me to reflect on college newspapers and my own pedagogical approach as a librarian to media literacy. I was surprised that I never investigated why the physical version of the student paper was so enduringly popular.
Though available online, The Colgate Maroon-News still publishes a physical newspaper every week and staff distribute it around campus. Unlike the physical New York Times, students pick up and read the school paper, as evidenced by the individual copies left on tables and chairs throughout the library. Student newspapers represent an intentional and active mode of media literacy among the college-age demographic; this is the exact opposite of news avoidance. The physical paper also functions as a nostalgic tether for this generation to the golden age of print journalism and its perceived power, according to Olivia Cohen, editor for the student-run Columbia Chronicle at Columbia College Chicago.
The Columbia Journalism Review underscored this point in a 2024 article entitled “How Print Got Cool Again,” which detailed the surge in papers resurfacing in high schools across the US. Of course, most archives of student newspapers are digital. The Colgate University Libraries has a digital archive of The Colgate Maroon-News, which has cycled through various iterations and names since starting out as the Hamilton Student in 1846; I occasionally receive reference requests for this collection from alums looking up an old football score or from a graduate’s grandchild conducting genealogical research. During reunion weekend, former editors and writers also like to see their youthful work through a lens of nostalgia, (sometimes) embarrassment, and joy. Every now and again, a current student researching an issue related to campus culture wants a historical perspective, which they gain by accessing archived copies of the school newspaper.
Every year I field a version of the reference question, “What’s the oldest student newspaper in the country?” Our own paper claims to be the “Oldest College Weekly,” though I’ve been unable to verify this assertion, and many student papers make similar claims. The Dartmouth student paper proclaims itself to be the oldest; the paper uses the fact that Daniel Webster wrote for the local community paper, The Dartmouth Gazette, while studying there in 1799 to buttress this claim.
But student newspapers are more than objects of curiosity. They’re excellent pedagogical resources to engage students in myriad frames of media literacy. Drawing on these digitized materials, instructors can build an array of historical, contemporary, and geographic pedagogical frames for first-year seminar lesson plans. For example, an instructor could assign students the task of reading the most current edition of the student newspaper on their campus. If it’s a weekly, let them choose any issue from the last month. Ask students to write a brief one- or two-paragraph reflection on the topics covered in that issue (op-eds, student concerns, local or national news coverage, international perspectives) and have a class discussion about their findings and their own perspective with the topics covered.
Instructors could also break the class into three groups based on decade (1930, 1960, 1980) and ask each group to find, read, and write a brief reflection on the topics covered in a student newspaper from that era. For example, students could search the Chatham University Student Newspapers Collection, Bradley University Student Newspapers, or Brooklyn College Student Newspapers. Use classroom discussion to examine similarities or differences between the concerns of college students then and today, and ask students to consider historical and geographical context and how it manifested in the news coverage or op-eds. This metacognitive pedagogical approach is an effective way to engage students in archival research and reflect on their own news consumption and attention as first-year college students.
More to Explore
Muhammad Speaks for Freedom, Justice, and Equality
Utilizing this comparative student newspaper approach, any number of assignments could ask students the same questions by exploring:
● Student newspapers from a small liberal arts college (Middlebury College) vs. a regional public university (Eastern Michigan University);
● Student newspapers from different geographical regions (Campbell University in North Carolina vs. Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York);
● Student newspapers from denominational institutions (The Catholic University of America) vs. secular schools (Goucher College)
Exploring a historical event or issue is another effective way to analyze the “student voice” across geographic boundaries or juxtaposed against national media coverage. An instructor could choose any number of events, ranging from campus unrest in the 1960s to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
To facilitate a broader reflective conversation about student journalism, media literacy, and the function of the media as the Fourth Estate in a democracy, an instructor might ask what the role of a student paper should be? Is it a platform for student voice and dissent or a PR vehicle for the larger institution? Professors might assign readings from “The College Newspaper,” published in The Journal of Higher Education in 1939 just before the start of World War II, and “The Campus Newspaper: Public Relations Arm or Laboratory of Life?” published in The Phi Delta Kappan during the 1965 escalation of the Vietnam War, to ground the classroom conversation in historical context. Students could then be tasked with locating examples of their argument in The Campus Underground collection or student newspapers in JSTOR’s Open Community Collections.
To help students reflect on their own media diet, Lanethea Mathews-Schultz, professor of political science at Muhlenberg College, and Jennie Sweet-Cushman, professor of political science at Chatham University, outline several teaching strategies to enhance students’ media literacy skills focused on civic engagement. Because most college students report receiving their news from some form of social media, one could recreate the aforementioned Pew Research Center report and ask each student in a class to survey at least ten friends on news consumption habits, using the following questions:
● How often do you seek out information about local, national, or international news?
● What platform do you use most?
● What platform do you trust the most?
● What platform do you trust the least?
● Do you read the student newspaper?
● Do you read any local, national or international newspapers?
The students in the class would then function as a street team and compile their responses into a collaborative report and then compare their local findings with national trends. Additionally, students can compare and contrast the results of their campus survey with this 1941 article, “Newspaper Reading Interests of High School Students and College Students,” published in the The Journal of Educational Research.
From teaching algorithmic bias to podcasting, there are many effective ways to engage students in the pedagogy of media literacy. However, don’t overlook the physical, legacy media that’s already produced by students on campus. While there’s a good chance a given school paper is riddled with the cliches, misspellings, and formatting issues one might expect from student journalism, it’ll also contain a pedagogically rich perspective from eager minds yearning to understand the world unfolding around them.
Support JSTOR Daily! Join our membership program on Patreon today.
