A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
At an emergency meeting on Monday local business Newsquest ended a decades-old agreement to print the papers at cost price, after finding itself in financial difficulties.
The company increased charges from £500 per issue to almost £1500 – half the annual grant of each paper.
Vision Editor Iain Withers said: “It’s deeply worrying for us, because at the moment the cash just isn’t there to pay the new prices.
“We’re all working to try and find an alternative but as the situation stands, the paper won’t survive to the end of the year.”
Newsquest, which also publishes local newspaper The Press, has been forced to lay off a number of employees over the Christmas period.
Yesterday they agreed to a new lower printing price of just over £1000 per issue. But this is still well out of the reach of the two campus newspapers, which already raise more than half their annual budget from advertising.
Colin Hindson, Chair of the York University Media Committee (YUM), said: “It came as a bit of a shock but the only thing we can do is to work together to find a sensible solution.
“The papers have been allowed one more issue each at current prices, so we’ve got about two more weeks to sort this out.”
Possible solutions mooted in the meeting included looking for other printing companies further afield in Manchester or Newcastle or reducing the frequency of the publications down to just one per term.
Nouse Editor Raf Sanchez said: “The Press are a business and they’ve just started charging us at market prices, which aren’t unrealistic. Unfortunately it means that the two student papers can’t afford it any more."
Hmm... two papers can't afford to pay printing costs that have doubled. I have a solution; lets get rid of one of the papers.
or print half the number of papers printed per issue? or, up advertising within the papers? regardless, there are a number of solutions. i doubt that this will be the death knell for the papers.
Just to clarify: the decades-old agreement is actually 4 years old, and the contract had expired.
YUSU are now looking into the implications to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. The next issue of each paper won't be affected.
Which paper would you get rid of though? Now there's a question.
The Press have been printing the papers at cost price for decades. The current prices have been in place since 2004.
I think this is a brilliant opportunity to get rid of Vision, it's complete rubbish anyway!
A loss of any of the news papers will be a major loss, the fact there is more then one keeps up competition and makes news services better. Keep them both
Serious point here, wouldnt one/two issues a term be a great idea? There is barely enough campus news to fill the three they pump out already?
Having three issues a term isn't enough in my opinion. Most of the other big student newspapers are at least fortnightly, and many of them are weekly. Dropping any lower means there's less opportunities for people to get involved.
Or they merge? Nouse with the news, Vision with the pull-out gossip section in the middle. Combine the budgets and they could probably afford it...
York has an outstanding reputation for print media nationally, as it demonstrated when it swept the floor at The Guardian student media awards. Nouse and Vision alumni go on to work on quality national newspapers, and students with an interest in journalism come here specifically to be a part of that effort. They are clearly a huge asset to our University.
Everybody is coming together on this to find a solution - both papers, YUSU, the university - but that cannot include reducing circulation, merging or compromising on the quality of the papers.
The challenges the papers now face are daunting, but not insurmountable. We should not be looking to lower the bar, but rather rising to meet it.
Hurray! Let's scrap Vision!
2 issues a term would be fine and possibly leave their editors with time to engage with their degrees
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