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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 33 No. 11. 22 July 1970

Community Feeling

Community Feeling

I don't see any riders to this—the more frequently Salient appears the better as far as creating a sense of being part of the campus community goes. Provided, of course, the paper is relevant to the community for which it is published and provided it's good (and therefore gets read).

This discussion of the merits of weekly publication may seem to have been a little tangential to the question of how more frequent publication can be achieved (as opposed to why it should be). But I think we should clearly establish the reasons for feeling one way or another on this issue. In attaching riders to the first two reasons cited above, I have not meant to detract from them in any way; I am merely warning of the dangers that lie in making over-simple statements about this matter.

One final example: weekly publication may bring more pages overall but a weekly newspaper is just as liable to financial mismanagement and extravaganza (and I'm thinking of matters within the Editor's hands and beyond the immediate control of the Publications Board Treasurer) as is a fortnightly one. The remedy in each case seems invariably to be the same—the number of pages per issue is reduced. This last example may not seem a particularly good one—until I point out that it seems at this stage that the total number of pages which will be published in the 15 fortnightly issues of Salient this year will be 328—and this is only 4 pages less than in the 25 issues published last year.

The differences are there, of course—a fortnightly newspaper has more stable advertising base and I have made the cuts (colour and paper quality) already referred to—but I think there is a message in there somewhere. (It would also be reasonable to ask why, if we are to publish as many pages anyway, we haven't reverted to weekly publication. The answer is a difficult one, which I feel the subcommittee should bear in mind. It is this: if the students newspaper is to be edited, as opposed to collated, students must expect that an Editor of Salient will expect to be given the time and resources to 'see each issue whole' as it were. A good student newspaper develops an editorial shape and voice over the year's issues, but each issue is at the same time a distinct and coherent entity. This is what editing is all about, as I understand it: selecting and then shaping written and graphic material into a whole (that is, an individual issue) which makes sense. I think it must be obvious that publication of 25 instead of 15 issues this year would have involved the duplication of many activities which are not relevant to editorial standards—posting out the magazine, for example).