Hold liberals accountable with your own campus publication

Why do studies show that college seniors are more liberal than college freshmen?  Simply put, campus radicals dominate almost every college campus in America and create a hostile environment for conservatives and libertarians. 

Conservatives rarely have an outlet for their beliefs.  When students get news about their campus, the official student newspaper is, more often than not, simply a tool for spreading leftist propaganda.

However, many conservatives and libertarians now fight back with newspapers of their own. 

Papers such as the Harvard Salient, the Notre Dame Irish Rover, the University of Georgia Arch Conservative, and the California Patriot now shatter the leftist dominance of campus debate with hard-hitting editorials and unique reports of liberal abuses.  

Here are two examples of how one paper fought back against liberals on campus and made national news.  

The Michigan Review, the conservative paper at the University of Michigan, broke national news about liberal bias just this month.  

The university had planned to show American Sniper, the blockbuster war film that depicts the life of Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, but they quietly withdrew the film after a petition tarred the film as “anti-Muslim,” “provocative,” and “unsafe.”

The Michigan Review leaked the story to online conservative media outlets.  The university reversed its position a few hours later, thanks to withering national criticism from online, broadcast, and print media of its absurd political correctness.  

When the university finally showed the film, many students turned out to watch.  

Earlier this year, the staff of the Cornell Review, fresh from training at a Leadership Institute Student Publications Workshop, captured video of a profane lecture on their campus by MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry.

Harris-Perry, who was speaking at the university’s Martin Luther King Commemorative Lecture, declared that she hoped Trayvon Martin “whooped the shit” out of George Zimmerman before he died.

The rest of the lecture, which took place in a chapel, was just as shocking.  She declared that Dr. Martin Luther King was “the one great voice, like Beyoncé,” and cracked jokes about the Tea Party and George W. Bush. 
 
Members of The Cornell Review attended the lecture and filmed Harris-Perry’s outrageous remarks.  After the Review published the video, the story quickly went viral and was featured in outlets such as the Leadership Institute’s Campus Reform, Mediaite, and The Independent Journal Review.  By that evening, the story was trending on Facebook, and the video had received tens of thousands of views.  

Without the Review, her remarks would have gone unnoticed, the latest entry in a long, silent list of outrages at that prestigious Ivy League school.  Instead, Harris-Perry found herself in the center of a national media firestorm, all because the Review did solid journalism.

Exposing examples of liberal bias and abuses like these is why the Leadership Institute launched its Student Publications Workshop in 1983.  The aim:  to teach conservative students how to set up and run independent conservative campus publications of their own.  It was the second type of training the Institute offered and is still going strong today.

The papers this workshop produces are often the only strong conservative voice on college campuses dominated by liberals. On at least 52 campuses across America, independent campus newspapers published by Leadership Institute graduates now give students a point of view they might otherwise never hear.  

When you found a conservative paper on your campus, you'll be following an illustrious group of trailblazers.  Former staffers of conservative campus publications have gone on to become some of the movement's brightest stars.  

Luminaries such as documentarian Dinesh D'Souza, radio host Laura Ingraham, and Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist Joseph Rago all began their careers with The Dartmouth Review at Dartmouth College, the flagship of the conservative campus publications.  Ann Coulter was a founding member of the aforementioned Cornell Review. National Review Editor-in-Chief Rich Lowry cut his teeth as the editor of a conservative student newspaper at the University of Virginia.  

Bernadette Malone, a Leadership Institute graduate who became editor of the Manchester Leader editorial page, says that her campus conservative student newspaper changed her life.

Bernadette realized she was a conservative by reading the Binghamton Review, the conservative newspaper at the State University of New York at Binghamton.  

She joined the staff of the paper, attended the Leadership Institute’s Student Publications Workshop, became the paper’s editor, and decided to pursue journalism as a career.  

Bernadette worked for several years as a political reporter for the late conservative columnist and TV commentator Bob Novak.  

That’s the kind of impact working on a conservative student newspaper can have on your career.

Like Bernadette, Amanda Carpenter, Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s Communications Director, will tell you that the Student Publications Workshop changed her life.

You may have seen Amanda during her primetime appearances on Fox News.  

Amanda was a student at Ball State University when she attended the workshop.  She left the school, in her words, “with a domain name and ideas for 10 stories.”  She began writing and publishing on her campus, and she never looked back.

Since she graduated, Amanda has written for Human Events as a congressional correspondent, for Townhall as a national political reporter, and as a columnist for The Washington Times.  

This pantheon of conservative stars provides great examples of how experience as a student journalist can lead to a career advancing conservative principles and providing balance to the national liberal news media.

Young conservatives who set up and run independent conservative student newspapers learn what it’s like to battle the liberals every day.  They relish it.

By starting your own student publication, you will gain skills that will make you a valued member of any campaign or organization you join.

Successful student editors learn on-the-spot, valuable skills such:

  • how to write, edit, and design a regularly published, effective newspaper
  • how to do investigative journalism
  • how to recruit and train a motivated staff of like-minded students 
  • how to manage a budget
  • how to sell advertising

Are you ready to start your career as a conservative student journalist today?  The Leadership Institute will help you every step of the way.

The first step is scheduling a Student Publications Workshop on your campus. Find a few dedicated, conservative friends and contact Sterling Beard, the head of LI’s Student Publications Department, at SBeard@leadershipinstitute.org. 

After your workshop, which will be held either in-person with visit from an expert member of LI’s faculty or remotely over the Internet, the Leadership Institute will help you fund your first issue through our Balance in Media grant.

That’s right:  My Leadership Institute will actually provide you with up to $750 to aid publication of your first issue. 

Well, what are you waiting for?  Contact my Leadership Institute today and let us help you advance the conservative cause on your campus today.

And one more thing:  Fifty years of personal observation have proved to me that, even if they take a career path outside of journalism, conservative students who publish their own campus papers tend to be much more successful later in life.