Let's fix The Spoke

heartwork93 wrote: »

I'd like to see more of a political input into the spoke. The articles on the US presidential election is all good on a global scale but I'd like to see more Irish issues in there.

And I'd like to see both sides of the story. Might I suggest recruiting two political analysts, one left wing, one right wing, each with a broad understanding of the spectrum.
Each month they would write small, easy to read, debate inspired articles on their opposing opinions on topics like the recession, government corruption, Northern Ireland, etc. Each topic would be chosen in light of recent events, so as to draw more attention.
A poll can be held online (bebo) over which article people preferred, and the results are displayed in the next month's newspaper.
And it can be given a real hardcore debating theme, like a head-to-head boxing match poster. Both of the writers would have their own visual banner or something. I dunno. Could give in a bit of an exciting feel to it, even if it's just to draw people's heads away from mind-numbing reality television.
During the boom, people's belly's were full, but their minds were empty. Now the recession has arrived people might actually take an interest in this government again.

All good ideas. If I win, it's in.

How do, LittleKitty If elected, I will see to it that you will no longer have to sleep in a drawer.

You've raised some good points, and I'm only to happen to address them.

LittleKitty wrote: »

what about class reps? class rep attendance is at an all time low, You will probably have noticed that if your a rep yourself. what are you going to do about it?

Straightforward issues are the biggest problems tbh. BMus has no class rep, for example, because no one ever came to our class and said 'There's such things as class reps, you need one, who's up for it?'

We also need to ask why it's at an all time low. I think it's at an all time low for the same reason The Spoke is - because of how little we've come to expect. My little brother is first year rep in DIT, and they had a rep party weekend down in Galway last October. Think he'll ever miss a meeting?

LittleKitty wrote: »

I dont see why it is a good idea to put down the person you are running against ether. Its not a very fair thing. afaik, the current vp comms is the editor of the spoke and eoin byrne is finance officer, so i dont think it is his "turd".

Because I don't think he'll fix The Spoke, or the class rep system, or run a campaign that really explores what students want and need. Simple as that. From what I hear he's been a first class ents officer, and I respect him for it. But it wasn't until I read his manifesto that I decided to run for the position.

In his manifesto he cites his recent experience as an editor for The Spoke as what he 'brings to the table', so to speak.

By 'can't polish a turd' I meant that the fundamentals of The Spoke have to change, and that it won't become a decent publication with tweaks and small changes my opponent proposes. And if someone is running with a lightweight manifesto - short on details and lacking all ambition for the university - then I honestly think it's perfectly fair to call them on it.

He's not a bad guy, I don't mean to put him down. If it appears that way then I'll certainly remove that line from the manifesto.

LittleKitty wrote: »

As for the campaign on suicide, I think thats a brilliant idea, its really something that needs to talked about and services provided for. Dont know how you can sell it to the student body, but fair play to you for tackleing it.

I'm working on the male side of things. If you would like to help out in a big way then I'm open to ideas about how to address depression and suicide amongst girls and women. I think it'd be irresponsible for me (a male) to do it.

Finally, the reason that the manifesto is all about The Spoke is because it's the main area where my opponent and I differ. Whoever is elected will have to spend loads of time attending gigs and events, etc, but we have radical differences in policy when it comes to ambition for The Spoke and how seriously we take the campaigns.

For development, we need to fix some of the stupid things:

*SU events will be advertised 2 weeks in advance, minimum - not a week late, as with the Comedy Soc fiasco.
*Revamp the noticeboard system, and install more noticeboards.
*Lobby to be able to print from your own laptops in the library
*Lobby for the PACR and ARTS block PCs to turn off at 10:50pm instead of just ten.
*Lobby for normal plugins and updated browsers (I'm an Iron user myself) on all college computers.
*Instead of having 3 cards (student and 2 types of printing cards), I'll lobby for a single student card that can be used for printing in library and arts block.

In the interest of fairness, the other guy's full manifesto is HERE

I've been too busy in the past to go out as much as I - or my girlfriend, also in college here - would have liked to. And if we're going to really push for these and other changes then then we need every single vote we can get.

Thanks LittleKitty

*Rob Munnelly

Interenet Explorer 6 is not the latest version, and both it and Firefox are way too slow sending PDFs to the printer. So we can install Chrome, which in my experience is lightning fast at it.

Regarding the printing cards, I know for a fact that the cards with the chip are costing the college money because people don't hang on to them. It's dead easy to put a printing chip into a student card.

Regarding naivete, I'm aware of what the job entails - especially after spending an afternoon with Leona Nally. I'm an inDesign and typography nerd, so I won't need any on the job training.

I agree with you Cython that some of these things will be difficult to achieve. But challenging as these things are it's the smallness of our expectations that bothers me the most.

And regarding things having been 'promised to death,' - if you want to see them, come help us out. Because it's the only way it's gonna happen.

And we're off!

r3nu4l wrote: »

Link.
As for your ideas for the Spoke. They do sound very promising. I like them. The problem is that I heard some very similar ideas every year between 1992 and 2004. I spent many years at NUIM (student and staff) and as long as there has been a student rag (there was once two competing newspapers!!), there have been people saying they could do it better. When they took over, they did make some changes but nothing amazing.

The biggest problem is the lack of involvement from students. I'll tell you the stories of two of my friends.

One has been writing for a Dublin based music magasine for over a year, and is a sub-editor of the interviews section of www.cluas.com. The other has worked for the sports section of The Western People (writing weekly and sub-editing) for over two years. Both aspire to succeed as journalists, but neither will write for The Spoke. "I wouldn't write for that piece of crap", said one, and "take no steps backwards" cautioned the other. Their words, not mine.

It seems we both want students to get involved in their university newspaper. Let's make ethos the incentive. How? I believe the best start is with a professional look.

As sans said to serif, "Evolve already" - I make no apologies for being a typophile

We'll also get students involved by turning it into a newspaper that makes students say 'That's really useful, I didn't know that', and look forward to the next issue.

r3nu4l wrote: »

Link.
What funding is in place to make these changes?
You mentioned using InDesign, how familiar are you or the production staff with the software?
How familiar are you and your staff with design and layout?
Who is doing the printing?
What will it cost?
What are the timelines for each issue?
Are they realistic?

1) Funding

Almost none of the changes requires extra cash. The only part that might cost anything extra is outsourcing the website (I have some skills, as you can tell from my blog), but it wouldn't hurt to get someone real in.

That's the main reason I said I'll give my first month's wages back. I don't really need the cash from this job, I earn plenty already between teaching advanced music theory and writing.

Also, it'll be a newspaper, which is cheaper again. Furthermore, it'll be monthly instead of fortnightly. With a fortnightly paper, it gets filled up with crap IMHO.

2) I don't know how familiar the production staff are, but I know my way around it very well.

3) Design and Layout.

For The Spoke, I'm dabbling with the idea of using News 702 as the main body text, and a decent gutter and leading. Der Frankfurter Allemaigne uses a similar layout and it is a gorgeous newspaper. Even if (like me) you don't speak German, it's still a pleasure to look at.

r3nu4l wrote: »

Link.
I ask because I'm an Editorial Director at a MedCmms agency and I know that it takes talent to make a newsletter/newspaper come good. It can be done but on a part-time basis it can be very time consuming and costly.

And a part time basis is what this job is. You spend so much of your time running around looking after ents that you don't get nearly as much time as you'd like to work on the Mag. But because I'm a bit of an inDesign wiz/nerd it won'y be nearly as compromising for me to put it together in a practical, commonsense way as it would for somebody learning as they go along. Hit the ground running, as they say.

When I started with the MMG it was a new fortnightly magazine, and the deadlines were murder but we always got it out on time. It now has a circulation of nearly 30,000.

r3nu4l wrote: »

Link.
Most of my questions are rhetorical but you do need to make sure you have those basic answers and some back-up plans for when things go badly wrong...as they often do

Oh, things can go very wrong. We hired this sub editor for MMG who would just delete all surplus submissions when it went to print, even if they could have been used in the next issue. *Rage*

r3nu4l wrote: »

Link.
Either way good luck with:
a) explaining why you should be elected when you hate NUIM
b) making real and effective change

I don't hate everything, just the Music Department for its painfully low expectations. I would call almost every student I know here my friend, but friends are honest with each other. I've been a student here for three years and I've found something I can fix.

I think it's a shame that these promises and promises like them have been made so many times before to no avail. I have no illusions about this. Implementing this manifesto is not difficult when you know what you're doing. I'm not promising these things in an armchair "I could do that better" kinda way.

So if you think that the job should go to someone who:

A) Knows the software
Does it professionally in a real-world-knows-they-can't-be-lazy-not-Eircom way
c) Has listed all the realistic changes they and others think students deserve after paying for it

Then I ask for your vote.

In the interest of balance, the other guy's manifesto is here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=47111332171&ref=mf

And thanks for the encouragement

cython wrote: »

Ok, I have a big problem with this! I personally know 2 people very well who have done this job in the past (lived with one of them while he was in office), and they barely had the time to get all of the VP duties covered, never mind trying to do more on the side as an extra earner.

I see what your saying about not being dedicated, but I work one just day a week and it pays my rent, food and hobbies.

If it did begin to interfere with the job, then I'd drop it and pick it up again when out of office.

I won't be writing for anyone else if I get it either.

Pen1987 wrote:

to produce something monthly with a skeleton staff and 0 actual pure journalism students

Better than a fortnightly paper with a skeleton staff from someone with no real world experience (that I know of) IMHO

Also, even though we don't have a journalism course, we do have some serious journalists who happen to be students here who'd love to work with The Spoke but won't touch it as it is. And that's what we have to change first.

At the very least, we're going to try. It takes only an afternoon to stroll around the different businesses in Maynooth to get the info on jobs and sales. The Buy-and-Sell section will be an online entity and we'll print it as-is on the day every month.

And though the job is not just 'Editor of The Spoke', it's one of the few points where my opponent and I differ. Most of the time we'll be running around attending events. For the development side of things, I've outlined some of the things we'll try to fix.

twigster wrote:

That's a very big turnaround from "I hate this place" and also "I wouldn't take a shortcut through the place".

Even if it is only the music department you detest, how can you justify people voting for you as VP communications when you are basicly saying that you did not communicate your sentiments accurately, I just think that would be an interesting concept, a VP communications who can't communicate.

Just in case you think this is a personal vendetta against yourself, I do think you have the better manifesto than the other dude, but I didn't catch him on the internet broadcasting that he hated the place.

Talk about an old general fighting yesterday's war.

You know what I hated about the place Twigster? Low expectations.

You think if I really hated this place that I'd be running under the banner of ""Let's Fix"? I've got a pretty good CV as it is.

I had to pay for first year (e7,200) and food and rent every year since. That meant working full time 35 hours a week (5 days) in Tesco, and saturdays teaching and sundays playing piano in churches. Because I couldn't hand up that many assignments, I had to pass most of my 1st and 2nd year modules by exam only. For this reason I couldn't take as big a role in SU politics as I would have liked but still in three years I've taken every opportunity I had to fix things. Maybe you've seen my thread on moodle: https://moodle.nuim.ie/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=15474

What have you done? Point out to me one achievement or one good idea. What do you think could be improved? How would you do it?

But those questions are irrelevant, because it seems to me that you would rather argue on the internet than share an idea. Maybe you think our 7,000+ students will somehow benefit when nobody even tries to improve things. You can try as hard as you like to make a better past but in the end that's just nostalgia, not foresight.

And as much as I'd love to spend time responding to a poster who appeared on boards.ie 21 days before the election and spent half his time digging up my old posts, and who's first post was one attacking me - the offending one has since also been posted on my facebook page within minutes of being posted here, nice agenda dude - and try to bring these ideas down rather than lifting the college up, I have a newspaper to make decent for those who pay for it, a class rep system to fix, and a campaign to win to make sure it all happens.

So if you want to help, come help.