Alexa Schwerha writes for the Daily Caller about an interesting development on American college campuses.
Conservative college students across the country are starting conservative newspapers to challenge the dominant liberal narrative peddled on their campuses, students told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
These student-run newspapers are often dedicated to providing a space for free speech and different perspectives due to overt leftist politics in mainstream campus outlets, the DCNF learned. Legacy student newspapers across the country have run articles committed to anti-racism, argued for limitations on free speech and supported ideas like abolishing the police.
Thomas Stevenson, editor-in-chief of the student-run newspaper The Cougar Chronicle at Brigham Young University, told the DCNF that the publication was founded to give conservative students a larger voice on campus.
“Even though BYU is considered one of the most conservative schools, according to media bias sites, our official school newspaper, the Daily Universe, still leans liberal,” he explained. “An independent, further-left paper also existed at the time of our founding, but there was no independent conservative reporting publication that we knew of. … So we are the only student run publication at this point that is openly conservative or speaks on topics from a conservative perspective.”
Stevenson told the DCNF that the paper has been well-received by students and professors.
“There is a need for the Cougar Chronicle because students are not getting these views from their peers nearly anywhere else. They might see it nationally, but not locally at their own school,” he said. “We want the main takeaway from our articles to be that as a conservative student, at what is supposed to be one of the most conservative schools in the country, you are not alone in what you think even if it seems that way.”
The Capstone Free Press, which reports from a conservative perspective at the University of Alabama and is funded by the nonprofit Intercollegiate Studies Institute, recently announced its first print issue will be published in January and focus on the increase of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) on campus, the College Fix reported.