UCL Pi Media
 | The neutrality of this article is disputed. |
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 resemblance to its ancestor. Instead of a newspaper, there is a free glossy magazine which has a monthly print-run of approximately 4000 copies. But the chief differences lie in content and editorial structure.
A typical issue of Pi Magazine contains a wide variety of sections of supposed interest to UCL students, such as student news, an opinion section covering current student and general issues, and other sections such as arts, music and fashion. It is generally light in tone, rarely covering issues in any great depth.
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 Iama Deadman; the current Media & Communications Officer is Alan Gardner.
Criticism
Pi's current incarnation has yielded some 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, though the former does have the appeal of a far higher readership.
Some also think that Pi should return to a newspaper format to ensure more news coverage; while it has been argued that there is more to be gained from Pi by its members from the sheer variety of writing styles and themes a Pi writer has the potential to cover - anything from computer games reviews to general opinion pieces, there is a difference of opinion on whether the magazine makes use of this potential.
The photo page or '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 (Though 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 (Pi claims it has conducted surveys that demonstrate this, though these have not been published).
The magazine's popularity is also brought into question by the fact that at least some recent issues have had some of their print run thrown away, or not publicly distributed.
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 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 50+ year history, and the services it offers to UCL societies, who are free to advertise in the magazine's 'Union Societies Page'. 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.