We ranked the best college newspapers in 2022 by traffic and engagement

From holding power to account to sharing uplifting stories, journalists play a vital role in informing and educating the public on events locally, nationally, and internationally.

On college campuses, this work is carried out by student journalists, who investigate, report, and publish stories, often in their own time and in addition to academic commitments.

As Alex Yahanda writes in the Johns Hopkins University student newspaper, News-Letter, “A newspaper that diligently and accurately covers school happenings is able to distill down its university’s culture into useful articles and exposés…and, importantly, these are forums where civility, truth and evidence-backed debate are still respected.”

To highlight fantastic college journalism, we’ve analyzed internet search traffic, social shares, and engagement data from every student newspaper in the country. Here are the best college newspapers in 2022 by organic traffic and engagement.

Most organic traffic

On the basis of monthly organic search traffic data from Semrush, The Harvard Crimson leads in organic traffic, with an impressive 303,797 website visits during the 2021-2022 academic year.

Most social engagement

According to social shares and online engagement throughout the 2021-2022 academic year, Penn State’s Onward State, with 810,843 total social engagements, is the clear-cut winner.

Most consistent engagement per article – Individual

Drilling down to the authors with the greatest number of social engagements per article, student journalist Victoria Yin of Brown University’s Brown Daily Herald leads in the most consistent engagement per article category, with an average of 1,792 shares per article published.

Most consistent engagement per article – Publication

Analyzing social shares and engagements per article, University of Florida’s Independent Florida Alligator takes the lead, with an average of 295 shares per article published.

Student journalist with the most individual article shares

Tyrik Hutchinson-Junior of Ohio State’s The Lantern is the student journalist with the most shares for a single article, with an astonishing 170,000+ social shares on his story about 2 childhood friends opening Columbus’ first sober bar.

Most articles written by a student journalist

Tessa Hughes is the most prolific student journalist in the country, having penned a staggering 770 articles over the past 12 months for California Polytechnic State University’s Mustang News.

Most articles produced by a publication

Examining the total number of articles each student newspaper published in the 2021/2022 academic year, Syracuse University’s Daily Orange takes the cake, with 4,969 articles published.

State-level analysis

Diving deeper, below we showcase top student journalists at state level for each of the aforementioned categories.

Methodology

Data for number of articles written and engagement was collected via BuzzSumo in July 2022 and analyzed throughout August 2022. Organic traffic data was taken from Semrush and focused on the 2021-2022 academic year (U.S. only).