Brown Couch
£13,500 - for what?
Brown Couch is a satirical column. names, places and events are purely fictional, any similarity to real events is purely coincidental
This week Brown Couch reviews the rival student newspapers for other London universities. By comparing these with our newspaper, we hope the reader will be filled with renewed appreciation for Felix.
This survey of four student papers covers the main universities in the city. A good paper can entertain and motivate students, being a positive force at a university. A bad paper, on the other hand, can tarnish and blacken the students' reputations.
To begin, let's look at the student paper for the elite Chattham College - The GazetteGazette. Despite being a world-class institution, Chattham College suffers from terribly boring news stories. The lead articles often deal with trivial matters that occur around campus. An attempt to deal with more grand issues is made in the Politics and Business section. These articles invariably try to tackle important issues in less than half a page - rendering the attempt worthless. "The students who write for the Politics and Business section in the GazetteGazette are just wanna-be journalists." said Peter Jenkins, studying political science at Chattham. "The main writer is only 20 years old. He's just doing it for his CV, I'm sure."
Next, we look at Feel It - the paper for the London Media Institute (LMI). This is a new publication, started only 4 years ago with an annual budget of over £30,000. This money is lavished on huge colourful multipage "features" with titles like "LMI Reveals All" and "Your favourite Big Brother housemate". The Brown Couch interviewed the paper's head-journalist. He summarised his position: "I take my inspiration from The Sun. The students love it, mate." Speaking to students on the LMI campus, we found evidence to the contrary. "When it was launched, its magazine style format was really popular. Since then, it's gone a bit downhill", said one student, who did not want to be named.
The Sword and Shield, from the obscure south-east Dukes College, was brought to our attention after winning the Mine-Staff journalism award. We spoke to the Chancellor of the college to get his views on the paper. "I'm very proud of what the students have achieved here at Dukes, but I'm a bit concerned about their proposals for next year. I've heard talk about the introduction of page 3 style nudity. I don't think that would set the appropriate tone for our student paper. We don't want to become a laughing stock. The Mine-Staff decision council have expressed doubts about giving a LNC-class paper its prestigious award."(LNC is an acronym for "Lewd, Nude and Crude").
Finally, we take a look at High Notes, the paper for Lord St. John's School of Music. Established in 1643, this school has only just run into difficulties with its paper. We were contacted by Reverend Clive Dexter, head Chaplin at St. John's, who said "Whorish. That's the only word that could describe it. The students fill their articles with curse-words and foul language just to grab the reader's attention. I've been campaigning against this "schoolboy journalism" for years, without success. Each year it just gets worse and worse with the introduction of more and more washed up TV-stars. Baywatch, the A-Team and Neighbours are the most frequently peddled, but in my time I've seen EastEnders mentioned."
So, it looks like student newspapers all across London are in a dire state.
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