when bird meets blog 1a

The Great Debate (text post)

On 9 December 2005, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Abolition of Compulsory Up-front Student Union Fees) Bill 2005 was passed through the Australian Senate, and Australian student unions experienced what anti-VSU movements have coined “a dagger through the art." Since 1 July 2006, Voluntary Student Unionism has been in full force, and student guilds have been enforcing strict cost-cutting regimes in order to deal with the decreased income.  In most cases, student newspapers have been amongst the first to suffer. As 2007 editor of the UWA student guild's publication, Pelican, I feel that I am in an appropriate position to comment upon these changes.

Nation wide, student newspaper editors have suffered from lowered wage rates, reduced circulation and/or less favourable working conditions and support.  In some instances, as was the case with UTS’s publication Vertigo, student editors have actually been left solely responsible for extracting their own payment out of the advertising revenue that they personally accrue.  In response, the editors have reduced their paper's size and circulation, and transferred more content online.  Jonathon Brent, one of the 2007 editors of the University of Melbourne’s Farrago, told me, “We’ve had to tighten our belt by about 40% this year, as well as being the only department to experience a pay cut.”* And he is not alone.

Despite loud student protest though, it’s difficult not to wonder whether this reduced investment in student media is perhaps, in fact, actually quite sensible.  If student unions are struggling financially, then perhaps it makes sense for their newspapers to be the first to suffer, as their content can be so easily duplicated through an online blog. Indeed, with the main users of blogs remaining “well-off, well-educated individuals under thirty” (Bruns and Jacobs, 2005), many of student journalists are already online.  I examined the last edition of UWA’s Pelican newspaper, only to find that the origins for three separate articles could be easily traced back to online blogs run by the writers in question.  Furthermore, many student newspapers around Australia, including Vertigo and Farrago, are already running official blogs alongside their printed content. 

The basic ideological underpinnings of blogs and student newspapers are essentially the same, which suggests that the transition would be a flawless one.  While little academic writing touches upon the realm of student media, one book published in 1963 calls upon student journalism to serve as a “bastion of truth” in the “critical times” of the Cold War, when “the ultimate fate of the world rests heavily upon the unhampered interchange of information and opinion in order that truth may be revealed” (Reddick, p. iii). Pelican’s 2006 editor, Laura Miller, echoed these statements in a contemporary Australian context when she claimed, “in this world of multinational owned media monopolies... there has never been a time when independence was more important... without having to compromise for commercial imperatives” (2006. p. 4).  Earlier this year, I also wrote, “Student press has an increasingly important role to play in this turbulent media landscape... This is a space in which those issues that are otherwise overlooked, ignored, excluded and forgotten can be uncovered and explored” (2007, p. 5). Incidentally, this editorial was featured in edition four, themed "The Forgotten," which focused upon recovering issues that the mainstream media had long ago deemed unentertaining or irrelevant (see cover, pictured above).

Internet theorists attach comparable sentiments to their analysis of blogs.  Blog theorist Jay Rosen describes blogs (and the emergent citizen journalism), as the most "democratic form of journalism," basically because they allow for so many voices to be heard simultaneously and because they emerge from the gift economy, rather than the market (2004). Barbara Alyson also argues that blogs should, and do, function as “commentators” on Australian mass media (2006, p. 4). Like student newspapers, blogs seem to function in opposition to what Alger described “the captive, big-bucks-generating organs of a few private empire builders” (1998, p. vii). It would appear that an online blog would therefore be ideally predisposed to support student media. 

Why then, do we still need student newspapers?  Blogs are both a cheaper and more convenient way for students to communicate with one another – and they are already being utilised.  In a post-VSU climate, student media does therefore seem a redundant expense.  It is also worth noting that, in 1963, Reddick urged student reporters to acquaint themselves with the “technologies of their future,” mentioning radiophones, telephotos, scan-o-gravers and teletypewriters (pp. 387-388). Following this logic, it would surely make sense to suggest that today’s student reporters should be acquainting themselves with the technology of our future – namely, the internet.   

Wozniak, Magda (2007) "Ed Says." Pelican June 2007, 5.

* Jonathon Brent interviewed by Magda Wozniak on 10 September 2007.  This interview was made possible by Facebook.