Blogs

Ah, rowing on the OxStu front page. Which reminds Aldate... wasn't it roughly this time last year that a certain OUSU-sponsored paper pissed away a front page with the headline "UFOs give Summer Eights a go"?

  Strange.  They manage not to print the same page twice on the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, People, Daily Record, Sunday Mail, Racing Post, Laif, RecordPM, Sunday Sun, Birmingham Mail, Birmingham Post, Sunday Mercury, Coventry Telegraph, Polish Express, Echo, Daily Post, Examiner, Evening Gazette, Chronicle, Citylife, Newslanka, FTN, Catholic Times, The Nation, Gair Rhydd, The Courier, Islamic Times, The Universe, The Door, East End Life, Eastern Eye or North West Angler.   Conspiracy? 

Only two issues to go...   What did it for you this week?   OxStu: Cheaper teachers don't teach as well; Poorer colleges can't spend as much on teaching. Cherwell: Boatie banter   Update: Apologies if you were expecting the full monty.  Just amuse yourself with more Aldate fallout .

Aldate has been thinking a little more about the podcast thing.   All it takes to get quotes on news stories is a quick phone call, and cutting them into useful chunks doesn't take too long at all.  So maybe the Oxide news team should think about a weekly news podcast, speaking to the people involved in the stories that the papers have covered.   Given that the OxStu are in the room next door, getting the contact details needn't be a huge problem either.   A quick response to a comment in the liveblog post:   Having carefully read Aldate's advice, it seems to me that he'd have us scrap Oxide as a live medium  True.   and use it for podcasting only; Also true.   (although he doesn't think anyone will actually listen to the podcasts Wrong.  Aldate said "not many people would listen to them unless they were rea

Once, twice, three times a fuck up.   Aldate extends his sincere thanks to HK. Michelmas' listings brought back happy memories of when OxStu could observe the basic rule of printing the right things on the right pages..   Still, at least you're not Oxide.

Cherwell talks laundry with the folk-pop star

Aldate liveblogged a day in the life of Oxide radio, angering a lot of people in the process.  It is archived after the jump.    

Aldate intimated in his first post this term that nobody listens to Oxide, the student union's radio station.  OUSU's esteemed VP (Finance) nobly defended his DJs and DJettes in his first week report :   "Oxide is performing well; continuing the strides forward in professionalism and reform of the station. Who knows, perhaps the claims of its irrelevance made by Cherwell's new gossip columnist, Saint Aldate, is actually securing the station's place in the minds of both his readers... "   Continuing the strides forward in professionalism?  Not what Aldate experienced at the time that report was written, but this open-minded saint only thinks it fair that the station be given another chance.   What sort of strides forward could have been taken?  A package of beds, jingles, stagers and sweepers to give the station a strong brand identity, perc

So, it only took five weeks for the two papers to come out with the same front page story.  The Friars/governing-body/license talk may have made the story impenetrable for many beyond the first two paragraphs.  Aldate reckons that Cherwell's timeline and standfirsts represent a better effort to open the article up to the casual reader.  But then maybe I'm biased...   Nonetheless, both here and generally speaking, there's a lot more that both papers should be doing to make stories more enjoyable: infoboxes, definitions, graphs, diagrams, infographics, whatever. The fact is that the traditional combination of picture, copy, headline, standfirst and pullquote is immensely unimaginative and unhelpful in telling the news.   Another good piece by Mr Holehouse on Stu p3 - goes to show that reading dry reports can go a long way.   Gratuitous use of a pretty girl in Cherwell's rent protest coverage.  Anything to do with one e

Last night the Coven was host to a new club night in Oxford: Project Eden. It was a strange amalgamation of drum n bass, electro and house. Thursdays at Filth resident DJs Midas and Ivo kicked off the evening with some funky electro tunes, warming up the night for a round of DnB from Hit&Run resident DJ Fu. As always, Fu played an excellent set of upbeat tracks which were perfect for whipping out those outrageous monkey-arm moves. According to the advertisement it was to be a night of “intense beats and one-off concepts.” Not sure I gathered what these concepts were, but the beats were definitely there. The Coven is a good venue. It’s always a plus having a balcony over the dance-floor, tables in caves in the wall and a well sized courtyard for the socialisers and smoking crowd. It makes the night a little bit more interesting than a large one-roomed club like Filth. There were some very good drinks deals and the entry fee inexpensive. The latter had a qui

So scrumptious you can enjoy it twice... twice. 

So the more observant among you will notice that I'm not liveblogging the West Virginia returns this evening. That's for a very good reason - the Democratic race is over. Stop crying Hillary fans it is over. It's done. Here's your five point guide to why:

Aldate is somewhat averse, in a personal capacity at least, to arty-farty illustrated glossies.  Nonetheless, it would be unfair to leave the new editors' first effort unmarked.   So first, please offer your thoughts on the new issue of Isis in the comments below.  Aldate is sure you will have many enlightening points to make without drawing gratuitous attention to ex-editor/current editor romance.    Second, help keep OSPL afloat by attending the Isis launch party at Baby Love Bar, 9pm.  £1 entry means even the editors of the OUSU Access Guide can get in.   Oh, and there will be music from the Action Station DJs to drown out conversation from Isis types.

Aldate found Nick Davies to be a captivating speaker, even if it took him a while to admit that he really has no plausible solutions to what is a very serious problem. A point that he emphasised was that a journo's most precious possession is time - rehashing a press release or previous reportage (eg. Sufiah Yusof) can be done in a matter of seconds, while a proper investigation can take days, weeks or months. Somewhat appropriate, then, that both papers ran with investigations on the front page this week. Full breakdown after the jump.