The Lantern received attention in 2011 when it reported some members of the school's football team had been selling memorabilia for money and tattoos, violating NCAA rules.

Cox (also owner of the Dayton Daily News) told OSU's president William Oxley Thompson to discipline Mason.

Thompson asked Joseph S. Myers, the alumni secretary and a Pittsburgh journalist, to head a journalism department and to censor The Lantern against criticizing the governor.

[2] In 1965, a riot took place on campus following the arrest of Marjorie Cocoziello, a student fined for jaywalking who had not paid her ticket in time.

Reporters for The Lantern published Cocoziello's accounts of a strip-search, being put in a dark cell, and being watched by a cruel jailer.

After an investigation, The Columbus Dispatch chided the paper for reporting on the issue so prominently, and only with Cocoziello's side of the story, helping spur the riot.

[2] In 1975, student reporters for The Lantern took up investigation of the murder of 14-year-old Christie Lynn Mullins in a wooded area north of campus.

Most newspapers in the city already moved to other stories, but two Lantern journalists, Jim Yavorcik and Rick Kelly, retraced the scene, interviewed key people the police had overlooked, and discovered that the police's suspect, Jack Allen Carmen, could not have reached the crime scene in time.

Another Lantern reporter from the same era, John Oller, performed an investigation and wrote a book about the case almost 40 years later which led to the police naming the true killer.

In addition to the protest, the paper received negative calls and two altercations, including one involving a student arrested after attempting to force his way into the newsroom.

[10] Meisel, Oldham and The Lantern received national attention for their coverage, including appearances on ESPN's Outside the Lines and in The Wall Street Journal,[11] among others.

The current faculty adviser for The Lantern is Spencer Hunt, a former reporter at the Columbus Dispatch and Cincinnati Enquirer.