2 Million Student Newspaper Subscribers?

It might seem far-fetched. But, the head of the one of the nation's leading grant-making corporations thinks we could see two million students subscribing to local and national newspapers.

This week in a lecture at Howard University, Dr. Vartan Gregorian suggested that in any School of Journalism, every teacher should have one local and one national paper and students should have one local and one national paper subscription that is included in their student activities fee.

Would that actually work?

As journalism instructors, we work hard to get our students interested in reading the newspaper, any newspaper instead of relying only on what they can find in the online environment.

Some have argued that educational strategy of forcing readership of the print edition is "old school" or a lost cause?

Apparently Gregorian doesn't think so.

Gregorian was the first distinguished lecturer in the distinguished lecturer series hosted by the Howard University Johnson H. Johnson School of Communication's Preparing Future Journalism faculty program.


Full disclosure: I am a proud 1992 graduate of the Howard School of Communications!

Go Bison!