History

The Lantern is a community newspaper for the OSU campus and surrounding geographic areas. Chartered in 1881, The Lantern is one of the oldest college newspapers in the country. The Lantern became an integral part of the School of Journalism in 1914, serving both as a laboratory for journalism students and the official newspaper for the third-largest single enrollment campus in the country. Today, with a daily circulation of 15,000 papers during the regular school year, as well as a presence on the Internet (~12,000 visitors per day) at www.thelantern.com, The Lantern is the one of the largest college newspapers in the country.

Our Reporters

As a laboratory paper, The Lantern is produced by beginning, intermediate and advanced student journalists who serve as reporters, copy editors and photographers. Most of our staff reporters have never done the job of a journalist before, and they are learning as they go. We hold them to high standards, develop their skills...and then they leave and go off to get good jobs. Some of them even become professional reporters. But none of our reporters are paid, and the vast majority of our reporters are only around the newsroom for twenty weeks at most. We are now in the process of an exciting change at The Lantern: we're letting students into the newsroom earlier in their college careers, and we hope they'll stick around and work for us throughout their time at Ohio State.

Our Mission

The official mission of The Lantern is to help train and give experience to students preparing for careers as independent and responsible journalists, to provide a source of news, opinion and advertising about and for the university community and to offer that community a forum for the exercise of its freedom of expression.

Please visit thelantern.com for more Buckeye coverage.