UCL Pi Media
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Pi is the student magazine of the University College London Union.
History
The publication was originally launched as a newspaper. In the aftermath of World War II, there was strong popular support amongst college and UCL Union officials for some sort of community project that would bind together the rapidly expanding campus. Pi was conceived as a fortnightly news-sheet, written and published internally by UCL students.
The paper was extremely popular, even charging a small fee for each issue. Though the initial focus was on student politics, as the paper recruited a more diverse base of writers and journalists, new areas began to receive attention - sports became a prominently featured section, as well as academic discourse and regular interviews with London celebrities. Pi drew favourable comparisons with other heavyweight student newspapers, such as The Oxford Student and the LSE Beaver. British journalist and TV personality Jonathan Dimbleby was once the editor.
Today
A typical issue of Pi Magazine contains a wide variety of sections of supposed interest to UCL students, such as special features, an opinion section covering current student and general issues, and other sections such as arts, music and fashion.
Alongside the magazine, Pi Squared has launched - it's Pi reincarnated as a newspaper. Its second issue made it well-read around the university with an article describing toilets in the main building of UCL as a 'cruising zone' for men looking for sex with students.
Editorial structure
The magazine and newspaper are published separately by the society and have separate editorial structures. The newspaper has the following editorial structure (as of December 2006):
Editor: Bryony Taylor
Deputy Editor: Josh Blacker
News Editors: Michael Wilkinson and Grace Barnett
The magazine is currently edited by Oliver Smith. Joseph Wass is the incumbent deputy editor.
Editorial positions are elected to once a year at the Annual General Meeting.
Criticism
- Pi's current incarnation has yielded criticism from some sections of the UCL student community.
- Critics, such as staff of Rare FM and London Student and the writers and editors of Pi itself, have claimed that an increasing number of high-quality student journalists have elected to write for London Student, the fortnightly newspaper of the University of London Union, instead of Pi, though the former does have the appeal of a far higher readership.
-Writers and editors of Pi have also declared that their magazine was of poor quality. "Pi is shit," declared a former news editor in 2004. Successive staff have lamented the quality while continuing to write for Pi.
- The photo page entitled 'Scrapbook' at the rear of Pi Magazine has also been criticised for its display of students inside the Union's bars. It was alleged as part of a UCL Union council motion that the page promotes binge drinking and an unrepresentative, anti-intellectual image of UCL students and that it should be removed. However, during the meeting in which the aforementioned motion was to be debated, the instigator resigned before it could be proposed. Defenders point to the page's popularity among students, and Pi claims it has conducted surveys that demonstrate this, though these are yet to be published.
- The magazine's popularity is also brought into question by the fact that some recent issues have clearly had part of their print run thrown away or not publicly distributed.
- In March 2006, the then (and current) editor, Simon Dedman, was revealed by another UCL magazine, The Cheese Grater, to have used the magazine's editorial mailing list to cheat in the elections of UCL Union. Dedman's preferred candidate, Nick Barnard, also a contributor to Pi, was elected and no significant action was taken. The incident was cited by some students, such as an executive officer of UCL Union, as evidence of a unfair influence on student politics by Pi magazine's staff.
Pi Magazine and UCL Union
- There is some dissatisfaction at the level of control UCL Union has over the magazine. Whilst the publication claims to be a society and recruits members as normal, it regularly receives an annual grant of £10,000, a far greater amount than other UCLU media societies such as Rare FM and BTV, and its chief editor is the elected Media & Communications (M&C) Officer (also a Sabbatical Executive Officer).
- Those involved with the magazine argue that that although this is a large amount of money it is justified by Pi's 60 year history, and the services it offers to UCL societies, whose activities can be advertised in the magazine. Other arguments for this kind of investment are its large membership numbers (albeit that this bears little relation to the number of people involved in publication or the typical grant allocated to a society based on revenue from membership) and the fact that it raises another £10,000 for itself annually through advertising.