UCL Pi Media
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Pi is the student magazine of UCL Union.
History
The publication was originally launched as a newspaper. In the aftermath of World War Two, 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
The Pi Magazine of today bears little resemblence to its ancestor. Instead of a newspaper, there is a free glossy magazine which has a montly print-run of 3000 copies. But the chief differences lie in content and editorial structure.
A typical issue of Pi Magazine contains only a few pages of news; the features section has grown to occupy the majority of the magazine, covering a wide array of topics including science, environmental issues, fashion, travel, computer games, music and sport.
Editorial structure
The magazine is put together by the members of its UCL Union society, and they elect a student editor each year, though the Media & Communications Officer (a position elected annually in elections open to all UCL students) of the union is ex-offico editor. The current student editor is Holly Falconer, the current Media & Communications Officer is Alex Walsh (with Alan Gardner set to succeed her in the 2005-6 academic year).
Criticism
Pi's current incarnation has yielded strong criticism from some sections of the UCL student community.
Critics claim that an increasing number of high-quality student journalists have elected to write for London Student newspaper, the fortnightly publication of the University of London Union, instead of Pi. They argue that Pi does not provide enough opportunities for the kind of 'serious' journalism necessary for professional or academic improvement, and that Pi should return its concentration to news reporting, with much more of a focus on stories related to students. It is also argued that the current monthly publication schedule makes news coverage more difficult, though the magazine has attempted to rectify this with the launch of an accompanying website. (See External Links]
As well as the content, critics have disparaged what they describe as "amateurish layout", this despite sustained investment in the latest software packages. The photo page or 'Scrapbook' at the rear of Pi Magazine has also been heavily criticised for its constant display of pictures of drunken students inside the Union's numerous bars, which it is alleged promote binge drinking and an unrepresentative, anti-intellectual image of UCL students.
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 in excess of £10,000 (though not as is often claimed by critics, automatically) 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). Other UCL Union media societies are seen to be firmly subordinate to Pi in financial and political attention.
This control by the union has some supporters, and it is noted that a good M&C Officer has the scope to wield unprecedented power over the improvement of Pi's quality - the magazine was commended with runner-up position in the 2004 NUS-Daily Mirror student media awards, which has been attributed to the enthusiastic leadership of Andreas Von Maltzahn (M&C, 2003-4). Critics have suggested that his successor Alex Walsh (M&C, 2004-5) has contributed to the decline.
A number of extremely high-profile members of the Pi team have resigned in recent months in protest at the current leadership and the routinely 'cutting' of articles deemed to be too controversial or outside of the political priorities of the UCL Union Executive Committee. A visible spat opened in the Union in late 2004, when three renegade union officers proposed a motion to disaffiliate the society, and re-establish an editorially independent and "more professional" publication. After the failure of this proposal, the officers in question resigned.