Campus news now reaches students through newspapers, social platforms, conversations, online feeds, and university reporting programs. The figures below combine Student Monitor findings from Spring 2022, The News Study from October 2018, and a 2024 Center for Community News impact study, so each measurement period and geography should be kept in view.
Contents
- Campus newspaper readership
- Online news sources and national newspapers
- How students receive news
- What students consider important
- Sharing news and following stories
- Mobile access and everyday media
- Student journalism output and reach
Campus newspaper readership
Student Monitor’s Spring 2022 Lifestyle & Media Snapshot measured how college students interacted with campus newspapers. Nine percent said they had read at least one of the last five print issues of their campus newspaper. The comparable prior-year figure in the same tracking series was 11%. These are readership measures for the survey period, not circulation counts or estimates of total campus readership.
Digital readership was higher among students whose campus newspaper was available online. Thirty-five percent said they had read the online campus newspaper during the past month. The prior-year comparison point was 37%. The difference between those two tracking points is small, but the measures cover different years and should not be treated as a long-term trend without additional observations.
The same Spring 2022 snapshot found that 18% of students had read the print version of at least one national newspaper during the past week. Among named print publications, USA Today reached 10%, The Wall Street Journal reached 8%, and The New York Times reached 6%.
Those results show a clear distinction between campus-newspaper readership measures and broader newspaper readership. A student could be counted in both groups, and the supplied figures do not provide a combined unique readership total.
Online news sources and national newspapers
Digital national-news readership was measured separately in the Spring 2022 Lifestyle & Media Snapshot. Fifteen percent reported reading the digital edition of The New York Times, making it the leading digital national newspaper in that survey. The Wall Street Journal’s digital edition reached 9%, while USA Today’s digital edition reached 8%.
Fifty-two percent of students used at least one online news source during the past month. CNN was named by 20%, the highest share among the listed online sources. Apple News was named by 14%, and The Washington Post by 13%.
At the same time, 49% said they had used none of the listed online news sources during the past month. That result is a reminder that the source list and question wording matter: “none of the listed sources” does not mean that those respondents received no information anywhere.
| Spring 2022 measure | Share of students |
|---|---|
| Used at least one online news source in the past month | 52% |
| Named CNN | 20% |
| Named Apple News | 14% |
| Named The Washington Post | 13% |
| Used none of the listed online sources | 49% |
The digital and print figures also describe different behaviors. Print newspaper readership was measured for the past week, while online-source use and campus online-newspaper readership were measured for the past month. Those time windows should not be directly ranked as if they were identical metrics.
How students receive news
The News Study Report, dated October 16, 2018, recorded several pathways through which students received news during the previous week. Ninety-three percent got news from discussions with peers, and 70% got news from discussions with professors. Social media reached 89% during the previous week, including 72% who encountered news through social media at least once a day.
Facebook accounted for 71% of previous-week news exposure and 45% of daily exposure. Online newspapers reached 76% during the previous week, while news feeds reached 55%, according to The News Study Executive Summary from October 2018.
The study also reported that 67% received news through five pathways in the previous week. The supplied finding identifies this as a count of pathways, but it does not define the five pathways in the statistic itself. It therefore works best as a measure of multi-pathway news use rather than as a ranking of specific channels.
Taken together, the 2018 measures place interpersonal communication alongside digital media. Peer discussions had the highest reported reach among the named pathways, followed by social media, online newspapers, and professor discussions. Because the study predates the Spring 2022 Student Monitor snapshot, the two sets of figures should be read as separate time points.
What students consider important
The News Study Executive Summary reported that 51% of students found it difficult to tell which news stories were most important on a given day. That finding describes a problem of prioritization rather than a lack of access.
Ninety percent said topics directly affecting them, such as traffic and weather, were important to follow. National politics was identified as a directly affecting news topic by 89%. The supplied figures do not state that every respondent followed these topics daily; they measure the reported importance of following them.
The Spring 2022 Lifestyle & Media Snapshot also measured attitudes connected with remote learning. Sixty-seven percent said they would not return to campus for the spring term if their school stayed remote. Among full or partial remote learners, 71% were at least somewhat satisfied with remote learning, while 12% were dissatisfied.
These measures concern different questions and populations within the survey. Satisfaction with remote learning should not be interpreted as a measure of campus-news satisfaction, but it provides context for why campus information and student-life reporting can matter during periods of changing attendance and instruction.
Sharing news and following stories
News consumption in The News Study included active distribution. Fifty-eight percent of students shared or retweeted news during the preceding week. Twenty-three percent shared news from social media on a daily basis.
The weekly and daily measures are not interchangeable. The first describes whether sharing happened at least once during the preceding week; the second describes a daily behavior. The difference in time frame is important when interpreting how frequently students participate in news circulation.
The study’s other findings help explain the environment in which sharing occurred. Eighty-nine percent received news from social media during the previous week, and 72% received it there at least once a day. Facebook alone reached 71% during the previous week and 45% daily. These numbers describe exposure, while the 58% and 23% figures describe sharing.
Campus news organizations can therefore appear in a student’s information environment without being the original destination. A story may be encountered in a feed, discussed with peers, or shared after the first exposure. The supplied data quantify each behavior separately and do not establish the direction of any individual student’s news journey.
Mobile access and everyday media
The Spring 2022 Lifestyle & Media Snapshot found that 94% of students owned a mobile phone, and 94% of the mobile phones owned by respondents were smartphones. Students reported spending an average of $82 per month on mobile service. Parents paid the mobile bill for 53%, the largest billing source reported in the sample.
Apple iPhone ownership reached 91%. Among students planning to upgrade or purchase a new smartphone, 87% said they would choose an iPhone. These figures describe device ownership and stated purchase intention, not the share of campus-news reading performed on a particular device.
Streaming music was also widespread: 93% listened during the past week. Spotify was used by 60% of streaming-music listeners, Apple Music by 36%, and YouTube by 17%. Smartphones were used for streaming by 73%, laptops by 39%, and car or truck radios by 27%.
Seventy-nine percent were at least somewhat interested in watching television exclusively online, including 42% who were very interested. Twenty percent were not at all interested. These entertainment figures help describe the wider media habits surrounding students, but they are not campus-news readership statistics.
The same Spring 2022 snapshot found that 78% had or used an Amazon Prime or Prime Student account. Sixty percent said they made an average of three Amazon purchases per month, and those Amazon shoppers spent an average of $73 per month on purchases. Seventy-five percent used at least one of nine provided methods to get information about or engage with brands; Instagram was used by 51%, the highest listed method, while brand podcasts were used by 2%, the lowest.
Student journalism output and reach
The Center for Community News’s 2024 impact study measured university-led news-academic reporting programs rather than general student media consumption. Across 73 programs, 2,874 students participated during the study period. Those students produced more than 17,228 pieces of journalism.
The stories were published more than 11,808 times and earned at least 13,654,700 page views. Their potential reach was 23,519,124 readers. “At least” applies to the page-view figure, while “potential reach” describes the reported reach measure; neither should be presented as a count of unique people who read every story.
| CCN 2024 impact-study measure | Reported figure |
|---|---|
| University-led programs studied | 73 |
| Participating students | 2,874 |
| Journalism pieces produced | More than 17,228 |
| Story publications | More than 11,808 |
| Page views | At least 13,654,700 |
| Potential reader reach | 23,519,124 |
The study’s scale places campus reporting in a broader community-news setting. It counts participation, production, publication, page views, and potential reach across the programs studied. It does not provide a direct comparison with the Student Monitor campus-newspaper readership percentages, which use a different design, time period, and unit of measurement.
For readers tracking campus news, the figures point to a mixed information system: print campus newspapers reached 9% on the Spring 2022 measure, online campus newspapers reached 35% among students with access, and student reporting programs generated more than 17,228 journalism pieces in the CCN 2024 study. The surrounding pathways—peer discussion, professors, social media, online newspapers, and news feeds—show why campus reporting can circulate well beyond a single publication format.