Apologies for the 50-in-1 update, but I've got loads of equally important (or, if you're a normal human being, equally boring) things to ramble on about...

Gamel - Pugwash mag editor and graphic designer extraordinaire - has finished the image which will adorn the back of the Pugwash hoodies this year:

I particularly love the dig at my Mac "obsession" - the monkey is typing away on a Banana laptop. In my defence, and as far as I'm concerned, I spend a lot of time on my laptop because I'm doing work - everyone else, however, has christened my laptop "Alex's girlfriend" (much to my better half's amusement) because of the amount of time I spend on it... Cheers... Gits the lot of you! ;o)

It's been a bit cold lately, and I grabbed a shot of the sunset over Biggin Hill while I was home visiting the 'rents. Apologies for the quality of the shot - I blame the camera - but the sky was like cut glass and I could see clearly right across London (about 40 miles) from the back window of the house...

Talking of photos, on my way back to Portsmouth, my carriage stopped next to this frankly ridiculous waste of a sign yesterday:

On the subject of bitching, I don't think I'll ever understand why some people feel the need to rip other people's work apart in a public forum just because they don't understand its purpose; it's like me accusing Aston Martin of selling overpriced rubbish just because their cars cost more than a Ford Fiesta... Meh... Sorry for the oblique rant, but it's frustrating when you pretty much live and breathe your media presence and sometimes the only feedback you receive is complaints!! Still, it could be worse... ;o)

In webgeekery, I've been tweaking our "news wizard" - a (very) basic wizard-style web tool we use to create news articles:

Where we used to be quite limited in terms of what we could do with the images in news articles - you got a 200x150 pixel image in your news article, with or without a caption, and that was it - you had to know a bit of HTML if you wanted to tweak it - now our online news editors have the ability to create news articles which have a widescreen image right across the article:

The main application for this will, I hope, be when we start putting more of Pugwash magazine's features online, as it will allow us to make a bigger feature of the article image, since the magazine is very much a visually-led medium. Unfortunately, with only two more issues of the mag left this year, I can't help feeling time's running out very quickly already!

A quick stop press: Digitially Imported 'net radio - I've been listening to...

The Union Council report of a Media & Publifications Numpty, aged 19 and 36/4...

This month, UPSU’s media bods have mainly been focusing their attention on…

Pure FM

• The 24-hour broadcast is looming - as February’s Union Council happens, the broadcast will be underway, with charity fund-raising eBay auctions taking place every hour throughout the day. Tune in! www.purefm.com
• The Pure FM Masterclass - with radio professionals including Radio 1’s BB Aled - is pretty much booked up now, and everyone’s getting ridiculously excited at the prospect of seeing Real Live Celebridees talking radio… ;o) Well done, Pure!

Pugwash magazine

• Issue 3 is out - well done to the team for working so hard on this issue, especially as the end-of-semester period is horribly packed with exams and coursework deadlines, so huuuuge thanks go to everyone who worked so hard. You can pick up a copy around campus now, visit www.pugwashmag.com to download it, or drop into the Union to get yours!
• Distribution of the magazine has been good again, although I think there is a general awareness that we can be more proactive in getting the magazine to a wider audience - watch this space!
• Thanks go to the Pugwash team for their extra hard work in re-jigging the magazine to take into account the change in space availability due to advertising.

Pugwash News & PWs newspaper

• Issues 9 and 10 came out on deadline (although issue 10 then went back in, had a think about it, took off its front cover and came out again…) and both issues received widespread distribution.
• Issue 9 was also a first as we had advertising for the first time - woohoo!
• Sadly, issue 9 fell victim to a very unfortunately-worded article, which resulted in us having to print a full apology and retraction to the University. Here’s what I had to say about this matter in my editorial in issue 10 of the newspaper:“You may have spotted that the front covers from the last issue were conspicuously absent. As you may also have spotted, this issue carries a sincere apology to the University from the Union, relating to the article printed in the last issue which we had to cut out. The last two weeks have been very stressful for a number of the newspaper team and Union staff, as we worked hard to put new systems in place to try to prevent any reoccurrences of the problems which beset that issue.

• “As Media & Publications Officer I want to extend my thanks to all the staff and students involved with the Union, and the staff at the University, who have shown a great deal of patience and understanding while we worked to fix our mistakes, and I am happy that we can now move on with a lot more confidence problems like this one should be avoidable in the future.
  “Once again, many thanks to everyone involved for working so hard this issue, and I hope you as our readership haven't lost any faith in the Union's youngest publication just yet.”

• As a result, a new system for tracking content submissions has been put in place for both publications, and is mentioned below...

Contributor teams - features, news and reviews

• Pugwash and Pugwash News are both supplied by the same three teams of news, features and reviews bods. Due to the newspaper’s issue 9 problems, we have a funky new paper-based tracking system which has - understandably - caused a lot of headaches for the editorial teams as we work together to put theory into practice. However, despite having only three days’ warning and a lunatic sleep-deprived MAPO to guide them, everyone involved in issue 10 of Pugwash News managed to put out a great issue, and one which I intend to be one o...
  
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It's inevitable that any student volunteering organisation will suffer some turnover - churn - among its membership throughout the year. Unfortunately, half way into the year, the Union's contributor teams are going through the stage where the workload is piling on, exam revision is taking over most people's lives, and the thought of having another five to six months of this, and having the responsibility for a newspaper and/or magazine's success, is naturally going to result in some team members realising they're running the risk of damaging their degrees because of the amount of time they spend working on the publications at the Union.

I don't want anyone to fail or even damage their degree mark just so the Union can put out its media, but its not always the case that you can see the error of your ways until the damage is done - this was always my problem and one of the main reasons it took me a whole three attempts to pass my second year...! 

This evening I've sent out a short e-mail to the editorial teams to remind them that they are still massively appreciated, and I've copied and pasted it here, both because it's an open letter, and because I think the message applies not only to our editors, but also to our entire base of contributors, as well as pretty much anyone else who altruistically volunteers their time and skills to make the Union - and through it the Portsmouth student experience - even better.

We've suffered a few losses over the last few weeks, with members realising their coursework load is incompatible with the amount of time they're putting into the Union, and while I'm gutted some have left, I appreciate all the hard efforts and totally understand that no-one wants to risk negatively impacting their coursework.

If you're still in, but you're having second thoughts about staying in, please come and have a chat with me. I'm out of the office until Monday, but will be happy to speak to you any time - my contact details are on the bottom of this e-mail. Most importantly, I urge you not to do anything hasty, but by the same token, please ferpetesake don't let the Union be the reason you have to stay here another year!

I'm aware that Pugwash and Pugwash News involves an awful lot of stick and not a lot of carrot, and I'm trying to think of ways to redress the balance. There's talk of a social event - maybe a pub crawl or paintballing day? - and if you have a suggestion, now's the time to speak!

Finally, I'd just like to repeat my earlier thanks for all your work: I know you all put a lot in to the Union's publications, and I sincerely hope that you will bear with me and the rest of the Union team while we get on top of the workload we're all fighting our various paths through.

Don't let the next few weeks stress you out, and I look forward to seeing you all at the next editorial meeting.

Best regards: Alex Harries, Media & Publications Officer"

For the record, I know this may well come across as a load of old horse s*** - I can't really do anything about that. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my teams, and hate the thought that some of them might be feeling pressurised because of their involvement in the Union.

There aren't any easy answers to the age-old balancing act of University vs. social life vs. work vs. extracurricular, but anything we as a Union can do to help should lie pretty close to the top of our list of priori...

Radio 1's Newsbeat have responded on the BBC's Editors' blog over their coverage - and Radio 1's handling - of the banning and subsequent un-banning of the word "Faggot" from Fairytale Of New York, and how Newsbeat's coverage may have triggered the public backlash against the "overzealously PC" attitude of the radio station.

The interesting aspect for us at the students' union is how Newsbeat works within Radio 1, as well as the BBC's non-profit objectives which aren't entirely dissimilar to the union's.

Newsbeat operates as a news team within Radio 1 - vaguely similar, perhaps, to the way Pugwash News operates within UPSU. Newsbeat's coverage of Radio 1's censorship has been objective and arguably fair - entirely as any quality journalism should be - but the issue here is that, in effect, one part of Radio 1 has caused a backlash against another part of the same organisation for its handling of a potentially sensitive matter.

Within the editorial teams responsible for the Pugwash, Pugwash News and UPSU News output, discussions have often centred around the "what if" scenario of whether and how the Union's media should publicise a story which levels criticism against the Union. Questions have ranged from the broader "can we criticise the Union?", "should we criticise the Union?", and "if we do, how would we go about it?", to some occasionally hilarious potential (and entirely theoretical) scenarios which I obviously can't relate here without libelling myself...

Rod McKenzie, editor of Radio 1's Newsbeat, writes on the BBC Editors' blog: '[this issue] raises some interesting dilemmas for us though: without Radio 1's 10 million plus audience Newsbeat wouldn't exist. But what happens when the station itself IS the news? Does this cramp our journalistic vigour or make us feel we shouldn't take on "the mother ship”? I don't think it does - nor should it ever do so. If we argue that our job is to report the news without fair or favour for other organisations, why should Radio 1 be exempt from that rule? I think pulling our punches would be failing our listeners - Radio 1's listeners. That's just my view.'

Apologies for the lazy journalism - quoting such a large chunk of Mr McKenzie's words - but that paragraph pretty much summarises the way student media should act towards its parent institutions, at least at Portsmouth, but in the wider context of student journalism as well. Our editorial teams should never feel that can't report on something they feel is in the interest of their readers simply because their story might level criticism at the Union or the University.

The counter to this argument, of course, is that this freedom can only work as long as the student journalists maintain a professional approach. Anyone with common sense might wonder whether, on hearing about a story which might criticise them, the Union might feel compelled to "pull" - cancel - the article, preventing it from being published.

This is where we come to the grey area which I think is somewhat unique to student media: the Union should never be allowed to prevent the publication in its media of an objective, balanced and fair article which levels criticism at the Union, but it would be remiss of the Union to play little or no active role in ensuring the content produced in its student media was legally and morally acceptable.

This balancing act is a relatively new consideration for student media in Portsmouth as, until the start of this year,...

A happy new year to you all out there in readerland. We're in the middle of putting together issue 7 of Pugwash News, the first (hopefully of many!) for 2008.

I hope you all spent at least some of your free time over the holidays taking a break from coursework and/or the obligatory part-time job almost every University student I've ever known has had to take on to pay the bills.

Students are generally regarded as one of the most hard-core groups of job-hunters, accepting offers of employment as diverse as turkey inseminators (eww) and deckchair assistants (a position better suited to the summer months, admittedly), and anything in-between.

I've spent my Christmas taking a good look at what makes student employment tick, looking at students' union "job shop" websites across the country, as well as some of the larger ones including Monster and The Grauniad... sorry, The Guardian.

This hasn't been because I'm getting cold feet in my current position as Media Officer, but because I've been working hard on the new UPSU JobShop website. The old website's done us proud, with thousands of students finding part-time work each year through the Union - and not a single turkey-farm job in sight - but for technical reasons, the old JobShop website hasn't seen any development over the last few years, and has to run on a separate web server away from the rest of the UPSU.net website, making it difficult to really highlight the wide range of part-time jobs our JobShop is so popular for across the rest of the website.

Hopefully it’ll all be done and dusted and ready to turn on (at upsu.net/jobshop) around the third week of January, fingers crossed!

We’ve also got a massive archive of back-issues of Pugwash magazine and Pugwash News online on the Pugwash website - there’s loads of great articles in there from previous years which are still as relevant today as they were when they were published, and are well worth a look (during breaks in revision, of course!).

I've also spent some of my hard-earned on a new pair of DJing headphones, as my last pair fell apart after 12 years' use, so at last I should be able to start putting together some new mixes to listen to, play on Pure FM, and annoy everyone in the Sabb office with ;o)

There’s a point to this rambling stream-of-consciousness, of course: with the Sabb Elections beginning in the next couple of weeks, and voting in the first week of March, I’ve been thinking about what makes a good Media Officer.

I’ve got a bit of a web design background, have a passing acquaintance with DJing and radio production, can use Quark and Photoshop to knock out something approaching a half-decent publication, and even know which way round to hold a camera.

Similarly, previous Media Officers have boasted skills as wide-ranging as video production, radio presenting, news journalism, management experience (and something they call “people skills”, although I’m not convinced they’re any more real than the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus… ;o), artistic flair… the list goes on.

There doesn’t seem to be any particular “theme” here though - UPSU Media Officers don’t seem to have a common interest, hobby, past-time or skill, apart - possibly - from a masochistic streak when it comes to working hard.

Generally speaking, what sets Sabbatical Officers apart from your average student? It’s as simple - and as vague - as this:...