Homeless tourism
I've just come back from Ravelin Park, where SADO Ben Norman and RAG bods Jenny Leggott and Sarah Blatchford have been bedding down for the night with only cardboard, damp sleeping bags and tarpaulins (err, and each other…) for warmth.
No, they're not trying to recreate a summer picnic atmosphere - not at this time of year, anyway. The event is the University-organised “Sleepout”, which has been planned to raise awareness for the homeless population of Portsmouth.
There were around 25 bods milling around when I left, including three Purple Door staff (one of which is Alice Hickman, the University's Volunteer and Work Experience Officer and Ben Norman's oppo, who I may have met before…), two security guards, and a full tea urn.
It looks like the choice spot for the night will be under a pair of large tarpaulins which have been erected between two trees in a loose-but-functional impersonation of a giant tent. The area surrounding the shelter was intertwined with the string holding the shelter up, leaving the whole area slightly resembling a giant spider's lair… Ewww, spiders…
Hopefully everyone will have a fun - if chilly - night and get some sleep into the bargain. This kind of event is good (as long as it serves its purpose to raise awareness for the homeless, naturally) and it would be great to see the University collaborating with the Union more often to publicise such events. Pugwash News is always available to help, of course.
Ms Blatchford has my camera at the moment, so once it's back I'll get some photos online. In the meantime, look out for pics and even (possibly) some footage on BBC South Today and in the Times Higher Education supplement - when the Uni want to promote something, they don't 'arf go for it… :o)
Find out more on the University's website.
Posted by Alex on Wed 30th January 2008
St. Paul’s Cathedral at night
Guess I got lucky with this pic - St. Paul's by night from Southbank:
:o)
Posted by Alex on Mon 28th January 2008
Churn
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…!
Posted by Alex on Fri 25th January 2008
Bit of a reshuffle…
I'm just grabbing two minutes' free time between meetings, so I thought I'd put a quick update on here about UPSU.net, which has seen a lot of new things going on over the last month or so, not least the new JobShop (which I'm going to do a full write-up about shortly).
The UPSU.net homepage has had a bit of a reshuffle; UPSU and BBC news headlines have been condensed into column 3, and column 4 has been freed up to make way for the forthcoming “latest photo galleries”, reprioritised “forthcoming events listing”
Posted by Alex on Thu 24th January 2008
Where does UPSU Media stand?
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, there has been little if any culture of news journalism at the Union, so this issue hasn't been covered before (as far as I know!).
The way the Union and its student media teams work together to judge what is and isn't ok to publish - based on whether a story is fair and balanced, and not on whether the story will make the Union look bad - will probably need a little more fine-tuning over time, but I'm confident that the foundations are well in place now, so that when Pugwash News decides to publish a story calling me all the names under the sun (and I have no doubt they will at some point… ;o), I can't pull the story just because I don't want the world to know I'm a numpty!
What it boils down to is this: unless the students of Portsmouth can be confident that UPSU Media isn't just a propaganda dissemination service for the students' union - and, no, I'm not saying it currently is - then it can never be taken seriously by the students it targets.
So much of UPSU Media is brand-new that everyone involved knows that we have a long way to go in many areas, but the one thing I'm confident of is that we have some of the best student journalists and one of the strongest voices Portsmouth has seen in many years. Let's keep it up!
Posted by Alex on Mon 7th January 2008
Happy New Year, JobShops, elections, sabbs, media, and other ramblings…
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: they’re all prepared to put in a bit more effort and spend a bit more time learning how the Union works, to pick up the skills they needed to get done whatever job needed doing, and to pitch in and take on as much of the work necessary to get “the job” done, whether the job in question was producing an issue of Pugwash or Purple Wednesdays, wading through endless paperwork to organise a charity fund-raiser, or running a campaign, to name a few.
That’s no insult to individual abilities, though: after a year working hard in office, every UPSU Media Officer walks away with a vastly-improved understanding of radio, print and web media production. Their people and management skills have developed, and they’ve gained a better understanding of the yawn-inducing intricacies of budgeting, learnt a chunk of DTP and design skills, and probably come close to the occasional nervous breakdown from sitting through seemingly endless meetings ;o)
This isn’t a recruitment speech, and it isn’t a 1,000-word propaganda broadcast… Ok, it is a bit: if you’re interested in media, and you’re thinking of the “next big step” after University, running for the position of UPSU Media Officer in the coming Sabb Elections might not be the worst career decision you’ll ever make.
Likewise, if you’re already thinking about running for the position, please go back and re-read the last few paragraphs. Being a Media Officer isn’t just about designing websites, writing in the student newspaper or learning to play touch-cup (grin); like every other Sabb officer, you have to take responsibility for the day-to-day running and long-term planning of the Students’ Union first, and only then are you “free” to make sure student media is doing what it should be - communicating with as many students as will listen to you!
I hope this year’s elections see some of the largest numbers of candidates in recent history, especially for the traditionally most-contested position of Media Officer. I also hope that every student takes ten minutes to read the candidate manifestos and to place their vote.
If you’re thinking of running for election, take a look at upsu.net/elections to see what happened last year, or you can drop into the Sabb office at the Union and ask us all sorts of awkward question if you’d prefer!
Until next time, c ya! :o) /al
Posted by Alex on Sun 6th January 2008