I really don't think many newbies have even heard of usenet, these days, let alone are all that likely to turn to comp.lang.lisp for help.

A college kid looking for assistance with lisp these days is likely to hit up StackOverflow or /r/lisp or /r/scheme or one of the clojure communities depending on what they're using. Any of these are less 'hidden' than usenet, which happily has fallen into enough obscurity that c.l.l.'s toxicity will slowly die for lack of new blood.