Decomposing State of Student Media and The Death of Obscene

Straight out of the gate, I do this blog because I love blogging, and I see the need for a focussed blog about Brookes campus. There is a discerrnible lack round here of causual, non-formal independent flavour. Oh sure, theres the irregular sparse livejournal community for Oxford Brookes. I guess its the negative imprinting experience of having to wait for enrolement before being issued with a library card number that allows proper access to Brookes Virtual, and the mad rush on in the following week to research and register for modules. Even joining the Oxford Brookes network on Facebook is a closed door system. Not locked totally, select 'No Network' but you're closed to groups. The social networking site delivers with a bimbo virtue, though take the time to get to know it. i estimate about 70% of Brookes staff and students are on there, essential for the community participant. My Facebook profile is here - Won't you be add friend ?

Theres also the terribly mothballed www.thesu.com and the just launched Groupspaces. Founders David and Andy have set up a site which links to BBC news feeds, contains browser tabs for Google, YouTube and Wikipedia, and allows you to log into your Facebook account from there. Furthermore, its a local creation. It contains an events calendar and has an almost complete society listing with contact details and an option to store society archived emails (public holding space). Their pitch is that it would make a good home page, and to be honest its not a bad choice.

Brookes TV isn't as bad as I'd been led to believe either, some lovely riverflowing content, just some dodgy vomit backgrounds to get rid of, and learn to use autocue, luv.

Back to me. My aim at Brookeswatch is to provide a sociable but honest entry point for freshers and online readers. Tricks and tips to help navigate round Brookes, things that aren't out in the open. I'll also be casting a critical eye over the University, as an independent voice, I'd be a fool not to use that. What I won't be doing is going looking for trouble.. I know enough about the uni and how the media works to have its scandal emblazoned over the tabloids if I wanted to. Wheres the fun in that though ? Heck, can you picture SWAT teams and Sun reporters tramping over the flowerbeds and lighting up the dark Wheatley skies with a barrage of their flashbulbs ?


Obscene is Dead

Obscene, the monthly newspaper free to Oxofrd Brookes students passed away sometime between late July and Early August of this year. At the grand old age of 70 issues, 8 a year, putting Obscene at around 9 yrs old. It was loved by a few, many were indifferent to it. At least one former editor developed negative physical associative memories with the paper. Others tried to change it, and failed. When I last performed a medical on the paper, its circulatory system was found to suffer from poor structure in design. With two, sometimes one person controlling the layout, an imbalance in the edit occurred. The design editor was also divorced from the processes of the section editors. Even with the best intentioned editors, writers frequently felt short-changed.

"they totally butchered it. I specified that I wanted to be told of major changes, or not have it published at all. looks more like a spacefiller for the paper than any sort of analysis, with a total lack of understanding what the article has said. I understood the provivisection guy would be submitting something but I was under the impression this would be a separate article or that I'd be told about the need to space save. As I said, I won't be writing for it again."

- David Johnson, 1 May 2007

Over the last year talk among Obscene staffers and the Students Union had spread to considering running the paper as a society. Each member would pay a fee and thus contribute to the printing bill. Membership would entitle them to a say in agenda and structure of the paper and to contribute within the pages, a process mirroring that of the old Amateur Press Associations. In this way Obscene may still yet return.

In June of 2007, then News Editor Andrew Luke drafted a twelve-page document whoch he sent to VP Jason Manning. Many of the changes are structural from the top down., radical and commonsense enough to facilitate the conveyance of information between journalist and audience. Any ressurection of Obscene might benefit from taking a look at this document. Its available to download from here.

What removed Obscene from circulation as I understood it from my source was the printing bill and the drain on finance that it represented to the Students Union. However, it was already crippled by an over-excess of in-house ads, poorly thought-out design and the relegation of newsworthy leads to lie under sensationalist bullshit. (A one page lead in the last issue was titled "Virginia Shooting...Will We Follow Suit ?") It was commonplace for Obscene to build stories around nothing, and to regularly piss off contributors, it had been poorly for a long, long time. The paper occassionally confirmed the charges some students level at the SU Officers of cliqueishness. Though claiming to not be the voice of the SU, a fair percentage of content did come from the HK-10 hallway. As such, policy was sometimes the result of paranoia, doublethink and just plain stupidness*.

To the best of my knowledge Jason Manning or the Students Union have yet made no official announcement about the end of Obscene.

If you're a Brookes student and you run a blog or a website why not get in touch with your details and I'll see about getting you a plug ? It'll be nice to build a links list of Brookes folk with online presences.

Blogwise, I'll be back on Monday or thereabouts with the first of a previously promised two-part article.



*Obscene_extra was a community group started on Livejournal by Luke, to contain articles cut for length, or bumped from the paper. Luke posted a link on the Obscene Facebook group clearly stating its non-affiliation with the University. Several days later he found worried Facebook messages between editors Murray and Manning, and the Obscene Facebook wall suddenly non-existent. The decision had been taken to remove all students comments on account of Luke's posting a link, until the upcoming editorial meeting when the matter would be discussed. For two weeks there was no Obscene Facebook community. The story goes that Luke meanwhile, had been blogging about Operation Bite, a US Army plan to surprise bomb Iran. Several American teenage psycho-fanatics had begun to follow Luke around Facebook, and he began to worry they had followed him to Brookes and spammed the Facebook wall. Over those two weeks Murray and Manning's act to not return his frequent calls increased the anxiety. A week later a wrist slap at an editorial meeting persuaded Luke to private the community for the sake of peace-of-mind, which has been friends-only until fairly recently. I'm half tempted to post a link to this story on the Obscene Facebook wall to find out if gagging the free press is still policy or if nobody really cares that much. For a rough unedited but entertaining blog from last year Luke's posts on Obscene_Extra can be found at http://community.livejournal.com/obscene_extra/