Disclaimer: article full of doom, gloom and ranty quotes
An OUSA panel set up to review the future of its media company Planet Media took submissions last week, and will report to the OUSA executive on the 3rd of May with their findings.
OUSA has been reviewing all its assets and departments as the association prepares to deal with voluntary student membership (VSM), which is expected to come into effect in 2012. The Planet Media review was the last of these reviews to take place. Submissions to the Planet Media review panel were due on Friday April 8, oral submissions were heard the following Monday and Tuesday, and by Wednesday the findings were presented to Planet Media Managers.
OUSA President Harriet Geoghegan told Critic that the review panel will report formally to the Board of Planet Media Dunedin Ltd and to the OUSA Executive when they have written a formal report of the recommendations. The Executive and the Board will then decide whether or not to accept the recommendations.
OUSA Events Manager Vanessa Reddy convened the review panel. It is understood that Reddy pulled all advertising from Critic earlier this year, unhappy at the tone of coverage of Orientation Week in the magazine. Critic Editor Julia Hollingsworth refused to comment on this, saying that commercial relationships with advertisers are confidential.
The panel’s findings are still confidential, but there is some speculation that the panel will recommend that Planet Media be merged with OUSA, much like how the events department and recreation department currently operate.
Former Salient Editor Sarah Robson says that as student magazines move into a VSM environment, it is even more important that they do not become editorially beholden to students' associations. “While magazines like Critic and Salient currently have charters that guarantee their editorial independence, this could be under threat as students' associations move to protect their interests,” she says. “Subsuming Planet Media into OUSA is one step towards this. What makes Critic one of New Zealand's best student magazines is the fact it can, and does, challenge and critique OUSA. If Critic's independence from OUSA is compromised, the magazine loses its reason for existing, and it won't be worth picking up on a Monday morning.”
Former Critic Editor Ben Thomson, speaking to Critic from his base in Devonport, said that any recommendations from the panel that involved subsuming Planet Media into OUSA would be very troubling, and would indicate a significant attack on the magazine’s independence. “The process stinks,” he says, with reference to the timeline of the review. Critic understands that the panel had established its findings and was ready to make preliminary recommendations merely a day after hearing the submissions. “This suggests to me that they went into this process knowing exactly what the outcome would be.” Thomson also said Reddy’s presence on the panel was a “clear conflict of interest.”
“It looks to me that Critic may become a victim of its own success,” Thomson says. “Critic is undisputedly the best student magazine in New Zealand – both editorially and commercially. The magazine has flourished since it was spun off into a separate company, and now it’s possible OUSA may want it back.”
“Critic needs to be sympathetic to the fact that it is owned by OUSA and is there to serve its members, but equally OUSA needs to see that the value of the Planet Media brands lie in the fact they aren’t seen to be directly provided by OUSA. To do that is likely to be detrimental to brand value,” Thomson says. “I think OUSA needs to consider Critic’s readership and think about its member’s wishes are too – would they really listen to Radio OUSA or read OUSA Magazine?”
“What the fuck is going on down there?” he added.
Apocalypse Now. Possibly.
