Alex Harries's diary

Hot off the press from the BBC:

(Bored at work - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it...!) 

This week I read with interest a letter printed in Nottingham Students' Union's "Impact" magazine by their Students' Union Community Officer, Lou Green. Mr Green wrote how the first issue of the magazine that year had run with the headline "Shottingham", referring to a shooting which had taken place in the city, and how he felt the headline gave a "false negative stereotype" of the city. What I think Mr Green's article boiled down to was that he felt that, given all the positive aspects of student life in Nottingham to shout about, surely the choice of a story about a shooting in the city was a purposefully negative one, given the wealth of positive articles the paper might have run instead.

This issue will no doubt have been debated internally, both before and after publication, and while I'm certain that Impact's editorial took reasonable care to ensure their content was fair and balanced, I can't and won't try to add my tuppence-worth to an issue I know virtually nothing about. That said, a sad fact of any media-led culture seems to be that "bad news sells". Instead, I want to relate Mr Green's letter to an issue which arose on the day of distribution of issue 4 of Pugwash News - Wednesday 14th November - which carried the headline "Student murdered in Hilsea".

On the morning we were due to start handing out the newspaper, I received a completely unexpected request from the University's marketing department requesting that the newspaper not be handed out in the Union until the end of a University open day which was taking place there. Given that the Union building is owned by the University, and after some considerable debate, I agreed to temporarily hold the newspaper.

To the best of my knowledge, the University's reason for asking that the paper not go out in the Union was that they didn't wish to project a negative image of the city to prospective students. While I can appreciate this motivation, and am as keen as the next person to see Portsmouth University's student numbers continue to grow over the next few years, I can't help questioning whether their request was appropriate.

Somewhat ironically, anyone wandering next door into Balfour's on that or any other day could have picked up a copy of the Portsmouth News, complete with stories of good and bad happenings around the city. Although I haven't asked their manager, I doubt a similar request to hide any newspapers which may have suggested anything bad ever happens in Portsmouth was received...

In deciding whether or not to pull the paper, I had a fairly heated discussion with our Chief Exec. In it, I was reminded that I wear "two hats" as Media & Publications Officer; one as an editor figure for the Union's student publications, and the other as a trustee of the charity. Frustratingly for me in this situation, those two hats brought with them diametrically-opposed viewpoints; with one, I felt compelled to fight for the rights of the publication to be distributed freely amongst the student population.

Meanwhile, the other "hat" - as a trustee of the Union's charity and therefore tasked with ensuring the Union continues to provide for its future students - required me to think long-term and ask myself whether it was right to risk scaring off large numbers of potential students for the benefit of one newspaper article. On the balance of this argument, I think the right course of action was the one taken; to hold the paper, and then to whinge to anyone and everyone who'd listen about it afterwards... ;o)

Still, it's important to remain philosophical at times like these: while the principle of embargoing a newspaper which is perfectly within its rights to print what it did makes the blood boil, and results in arguments which include phrases like "freedom of speech", "hypocrisy" and "megalomaniacs"...

Tapping away on the laptop to create an online listing of vintage Pugwash magazines this evening, I noticed in the "State Of The Art" section - Pugwash's long-since-gone reviews and culture section - a heading dedicated to "Internet", and it got me thinking...

Back in 2000, when students were still coming to Uni in Portsmouth and experiencing the same things we do today - late nights, house parties, fraught coursework deadlines and uncomfortably long hours in the library - were their lives any richer from the daily interactions we experience online, through our obsessively-checked Facebook notifications and e-mail inboxes, which they had to experience in person in coffee shops and bars, with housemates, in library meetings after lectures, and countless other real, physical places which aren't just a collection of lifeless binary information stored on the hard disk of a server somewhere in the USA?

That's not to say that the same thing doesn't happen today of course, but I think the balance of the information we receive has shifted massively in favour of the internet.

For our predecessors treading the same cash-poor, student lifestyle 7 years ago, did the sum total of their daily interactions with people set a different, more "real" tone to their day, or does the information flood we experience today via the internet, prolific SMS and mobile internet access on our mobile phones, digital TV and more, simply add to our lives without taking anything away?

It seems impossible that all this online interaction - which takes up such a large amount of our daily time - can come at no cost, but is the net result a gain or loss for human interaction and social skills, our emotions and experiences?

These be the ramblings of a sleep-deprived, fuzzy-headed mad-man - please ignore... ;o)

/Al

Ok, this was interesting - Gamel (Pugwash mag editor), Jacob (Pugwash/Pugwash News news editor) and I were squeezed into the Pure FM studios with Pure FM's Fred Bradley to put together our first Pugwash show. Here's what happened...

Tune in live here to see how it all goes...  

Right, here we go...

• 13:05 - Fred's just told me we're not allowed to see how many listeners are listening to the show in case there's no-one listening and we decide to mess about on the air instead. As if we'd ever do that...!
  
• 13:15 - Gamel's just introduced the show on the air - he's spoken for the first time. Wahey!
• 13:18 - Gamel and Jacob are talking about People and Planet running around the University open day with (fake) guns. Everyone's a bit less nervous now - I think the hardest part's over for the newbies...
• 13:20 - Gamel's looking for Ash on Jazler, the jukebox. I'm cringing inside... ;o)
• 13:23 - I've just told Gamel & Jacob about this live blog. Now I'm just waiting to get slapped by them...
• 13:24 - Fred's just said "sweeper" and "jingle", and I'm glad my face isn't the only blank expression on the faces in the room. How's it going over there, Jacob...? ;o)
• 13:25 - Tallie, Pugwash reviews sub-ed, should have been doing the show today, but she's been AWOL all morning. We've just heard that her phone battery died and didn't wake her up. Numpty...!
• 13:27 - we're talking about the Apple iPhone...
• 13:28 - ... and now we're going to work out how many tins of beans you can buy for the cost of the Apple iPhone... (£269)
• 13:28 - Apparently it's 1,494 tins of own-brand baked beans. Bargain-tastic...?
• 13:29 - (Sorry for messing up Gamel and Jacob's chat - turn my microphone on!) We're looking for catering-sized tins of baked beans now. Fred's found a brand of beans that "cause less flatulence than Heinz beans", apparently...
• 13:31 - Hello to Kirsty Mitchell ;o) Kirsty's asking us to clarify the brand of beans, because the number of baked beans you can buy for the cost of an iPhone is much more important than coursework... ;o)
• 13:32 - Gamel: "let's talk about beans..." in his new airline pilot voice...
• 13:35 - we're going to talk about the new Saw movie and try to get more people to enter our beans competition (which definitely isn't a phone-in scam)
• 13:37 - I'm just popping out. Don't break the studio guys! Eww, they're talking about Saw IV - goryness...
• 13:42 - Ok, I'm back. What did I miss?
• 13:43 - Apparently, Gamel's a bit confused by all the whizz-bangery... Still, it's going well I think. How does it sound out there? (Dare I ask? ;o)
• 13:44 - We're looking for an Emo band to play a tune for Tallie. How about My Chemical Romance? ;o)
• 13:45 - Let's talk about the Naked Calendar... <grin>
• 13:46 - "Who's Kate Edmondson" quoth a listener. She's a former presenter of Pure FM, and can be found here on Wikipedia.
• 13:49 - Amy and Matt from the Amy and Matt show have just come into the studio. 'ello! :)
• 13:50 - Little tip: put your phones on "silent" when you're in the studio... Oops...
• 13:51 - Tallie's not happy about being labelled an Emo (sorry - in-joke). Jacob's going to get a kicking from her at the next editorial meeting, we think... ;o)
• 13:52 - ok, the first ever Pugwash show is almost over. It's been... err, emotional... Gamel wants to plan the future Pugwash shows in advance. Nahh, don't be silly...
• 13:54 - we're debating entering...
  
  About 113 more words in this entry