Obviously, newspapers are important outside of the academic setting as well, but at a university a newspaper's role becomes even more meaningful. A college newspaper serves not just as the first draft of a school's history from its students' point of view, but as the only such history that gets written down. There was a Georgetown before The Hoya, but its hard to know what went on here since there was no twice-weekly newspaper of record. In a sense, though the school has been here for more than two centuries, Georgetown's recorded history begins in 1920. A college newspaper, however, is more than a chronicle.
College newspapers help promote a diverse, active campus culture.
The Washington Post does a great job of covering presidential campaigns, but The Hoya blows the Post out of the water on campus governement, GUSA, election coverage, not to mention burying it on women's volleyball or scooping it with the latest on the Red Square menorah incident. Without a newspaper, students might find out, eventually, what was going on at their school, but The Hoya helps Georgetown's student body maintain its reputation as a highly informed, plugged-in group of individuals. Even more concretely, The Hoya helps ensure that the Georgetown experience keeps getting better, by keeping both administrators and student leaders accountable to their constituents, so to speak. Like national politicians, Georgetown's governing elite has to keep in mind that its missteps will probably be on the front page of its college newspaper within a few days. The Hoya, again, is a student newspaper, and as such its relationship to Georgetown isn't limited to providing information and promoting educated debate.