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Polytechnic Reporter is the student-run school newspaper established at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn from 1914 to 2014. The school newspaper includes all sorts of student-related events, news, student life updates, and advertisements. By collecting various pictures of advertisements and tracking the changes and evolution of them in the student newspaper, the mainstream campus advertisements during certain periods can be analyzed to measure their development in different aspects. The time period is deliberately confined to 30 years starting from the early 1940s to the late 1960s. Two major wars were going on and impacting the whole world: World War II and the Vietnam War. Under the political and commercial unrest, merchants needed to find various ways to promote their products to survive and in turn boost the economy. Students as a stable consumer group are the targeted audience for the advertisements, making campus advertisements prevalent.

Under the context of pervasive campus advertising, Polytechnic Reporter offers a primary and intuitionistic insight into the regime and economic and aesthetic background during that specific time boundary. It serves as a vital factor for us to understand the student body of the time and the campus environment. After the 1970s, advertising content in Polytechnic Reporter reduced gradually, which might be due to the increased funding or school support. Until the 2000s, the advertising component almost disappeared owing to the Journalism classes, where student newspapers were no longer a voluntary task in need of sponsors.