News

The Exec meeting was dominated by discussion of the Planet Media Review, which has the potential to heavily impact upon both Radio One and Critic (your fave magazine evah).
A total of 33 recommendations were discussed by the Exec; if you can’t imagine how long that took, imagine nearly four hours sitting in a boardroom (read: watching paint dry). Former Critic editor Ben Thomson even managed a guest appearance; notorious as he is for avoiding these meetings like the plague, shit must be getting serious when he is prepared to sit through one of them.
 

The Review Panel has recommended that Planet Media be dissolved, and that Critic and Radio One come under the immediate ownership and umbrella of OUSA. This recommendation has seen a host of submissions to the Executive opposing it, both from OUSA members and former Critic editors en masse – raising concerns that Critic’s editorial independence would be threatened by essentially becoming an OUSA mouthpiece. Can anyone say Communist China?
 

The more controversial recommendations are to be revisited by the Review Panel, with the wording of certain things to be changed to be more in line with the reality and structure of the student media outlets. Having heard submissions from Planet Media managers at the meeting, the Executive is expected to vote on all the recommendations in the immediate future. Strategic planning will follow to implement the changes.
 

One major change is the recommendation that Radio One take on the booking and running of all music events on campus, a role previously undertaken by OUSA Events.
 

Critic is also being recommended to formulate a set of guidelines, which are to include things such as balanced reporting, and must state editorial independence from OUSA… Postgraduate Rep Thomas summed that one up in a nutshell when he called it an oxymoron (he had one of these himself later), and despite thinking that Critic often “tries too hard to be cool,” in criticising OUSA he’s still backing the magazine to stay free from outside influence. Nice one.
 

Critic’s commendations include being a good-looking magazine – which we have taken to be a personal reflection of the staff - a high level of readership, and that the team is “very happy working together.” They obviously haven’t seen us late on a Thursday night when we are about to go to print, tense times remedied only by Justin Bieber and some highly offensive trollcats.