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.
YUSU has not decided to stop communicating with The Yorker. They have simply decided that all communications should go through official channels. They have made their decision clear, although we were not contacted formally. This is in fact not a major change from the previous situation; since its inception, The Yorker has had to work hard for YUSU's cooperation.
We are naturally disappointed by their decision not to be more open to us, especially since despite the fact we are not affiliated we still provide a bridge between YUSU and the student population as valuable as any other media outlet. The benefits of affiliation are, or at least should be, monetary and legal support, not freedom of information.
We are also disappointed that YUSU feel that the affiliated papers should be the only ones to receive press releases. One would think that, should they have an issue they wish to communicate to students, they would distribute it to all media outlets in order to maximise its exposure. However, if their priorities lie elsewhere then it is so.
We are surprised that the Students' Union is not willing to support businesses run by York students for the benefit of York students. The Yorker is a not-for-profit organisation which is run purely to inform and provide services for students.
These setbacks will not stop The Yorker from being the same regular source of campus and York-related news. The Yorker believes its independence is crucial to the long-term accountability of both the university and the Students' Union. The media charter theoretically gives the officers in charge the power to veto any stories, and the fact that recent YUSU teams have used these powers reasonably does in no way change that fact.
The Yorker Directors
Nick Connell, Dominic Freeston, Nadeem Kunwar, Chris Travis
If The Yorker refuse to sign the media charter, why should it still have access to all the privileges the media charter grants? That's hardly fair to the other media societies that have to play by the book. At the end of the day The Yorker is an independent entity, so why should it be treated differently to any other independent entity like The Press?
yet again yusu acting to preserve its own interests and not those of students. when will yusu realise that it exists to promote the interests of students and not its own 'clique?' shameful and immature behavior from 'our' union.
The Yorker is the only daily source of news that is provided to us students, regarding University matters. I think it is a crying shame at the very least, that YUSU is 'playing politics' with such an organisation, undoubtedly to preserve and further it's own means, above the wishes of the students YUSU claims to represent.
In my time at York, The Yorker has been informative, balanced, well written and a source of campus news for students. I applaud The Yorker's mature response to YUSU's politically and self-motivated actions and hope that this new arrangement does not harm the quality of news that The Yorker reports. If this becomes the case, it will be the fault of no-one but YUSU themselves. When will the act for the wishes of the students, and not against, playing ridiculous politics and pettyness instead?
I am a fan of the yorker and what is produces, but I must "side" with YUSU on this matter.
The Yorker attempts to be both an indpendent company and a student news sources, and tries to live in the best of both worlds. It feels it can exist outside of the constraints of Nouse and Vision yet still be access to the same information, that, to me, hardly seems fair.
Surely fair doesn't come into it? Vision and Nouse play 'by the book because' if they don't they get no funding and they stop existing. The Yorker has found a way to survive financially without that help - good for them.
Also, I don't see why being and independent company and a student news source should be mutually exclusive. They are independent from the union, not from students.
The problem is that the Media Charter effectively gives the Student's Union the power to censor any story they like on any grounds.
There was one occasion where a member of university security staff (it was ages ago so this isn't defamation mods) seriously beat up a student. Vision was banned from running it because the person involved who attacked them was a 'member of the union'...and doubtlessly well in with the SU. Legally (and Britain has the tighest laws in the world) running that story would have been fine but the SU banned it. Which is outrageous and was the reason why Daniel Ashby set up The Yorker in the first place.
It might sound a bit pretentious, but the whole point of Journalism is to hold those in power to account. And this agreement between the papers and YUSU is madness.
A bit of background for you all...
York Vision were forced to sign it against there own will about five years ago. They had no say in it at all, despite the lies the SU will tell you.
Vision even ran a front page headline called: "SIGN UP OR BE AXED". So clearly the people who wrote it at the time did not 'agree' to anything at all.
Frank Taylor
@#6 - from my understanding of that situation, it wasn't just YUSU. The member of staff in question told YUSU that they would sue if they allowed the story to run. The University told YUSU that they would support that member of staff in suing YUSU. Yes, YUSU may have won, but they (and neither do Vision, Nouse, URY, YSTV or The Yorker) do not have the finances to fight a legal battle.
Interesting posts guys, however I think the 'beaten up student' story may well be getting confused with a certain Ken Batten, who is alleged to have compiled an "inch thich file" (direct quote to me from him) on ways he could "get the campus press". Since this, from what I understand, the affiliated media sources have been wary to run any story on Ken Batten because of his threats and the personal nature of some previous articles written about him, I assume long before many of our time here.
I think the concept of stories being rejected because they 'could' impinge the welfare of other students is decent. However, there is of course a line and I think there could be many cases where as Frank says, the campus press have been prevented from conducting their 'jobs' by media censorship. It appears to be that YUSU are almost envious (I know it's a childish word; I can't think of anything more appropriate though) of the fact that The Yorker has so effectively managed to financially survive outside their 'bubble' of cosied up campus-press outlets and this comes across as a way of 'getting them back'.
In all honestly, I think it's pretty stupid of YUSU at best, to take this out on a popular and informative news outlet, run by the students, not cosied up to a YUSU that continually fails to act in the interests of students, for the students and at the same time being both balanced and informative.
I have also heard rumours that Tom Scott is considering resigning. True.
Regarding Mr Batten, it is established that there is a fine line between "in the public interest" and student welfare. However if someone is in a position of power essentially paid for by students, then I would say that students have a right to know of any factual stories that would be "in the public interest".
tbh the reason The Yorker is more financially viable than Nouse/Vision is simple. Webhosting costs about £50 year. Nouse/Vision also have printing costs of about £10,000 each on top of that... Running a "financially viable" website without any staff/office/equipment costs (let's not forget that The Yorker is also getting their office and equipment free from CETLE, a luxury Nouse and Vision don't have) isn't exactly taxing.
@#10 web-hosting of The Yorker costs significantly more than £50. Although hosting is available at that sort of price it tends to be much less reliable and much less flexible than we require.
Great point number 5. And to number 10: whilst you are right that Vision and Nouse have larger costs, it doesn't affect the point. The newspapaers sign into the Media Charter for financial reasons. I am sure that if they, like the Yorker, could survive without YUSU they would not sign it.
@#11, #10 has a point - it would appear that The Yorker is hosted at the same place as my personal server (BlueSquare in Maidenhead) - £504/yr for a standard server at Poundhost comes nowhere close to the £10k expenditure of Nouse/Vision for printing. Plus, Poundhost isn't exactly the world's most reliable host (having being hosted with them for 3.5 years, I can vouch for this - the only reason I'm with them is because they're so cheap).
@#12, there are more than financial reasons for signing the Media Charter. Dedicated access to sabbs is one.
What concerns me the most about this is despite being classed as news, it's decidedly one sided. For example, there's not a single mention of the fact that YUSU attempted to negotiate with The Yorker into a "fair practice agreement" to formalise their previous relationship (according to the Nouse article, at least).
The Yorker may claim to be independent, but I've seen comments on here attacking Ken Batten that have swiftly been removed when I checked back later. It's the same with the numerous comments at time attacking me and Mitch for "having no life" and commenting on here all the time - they get removed (some more swiftly than others). Censorship for welfare reasons, whether it's done by YUSU or internally by The Yorker isn't a problem to me.
I'm just concerned at the reasons behind YUSU's decision. It just seems that they are attempting to 'throw their weight around'; it actually seems pretty silly of them 'falling out' with such a popular student source of news.
Post 12, as far as I understand it, Vision and Nouse could in no way survive without YUSU affiliation and the quirks that come with this. This reliance has ben exacerbated more by the production costs rising as much as they did in the previous year. There was talk of whether they could survive with current print-costs.
From what I've heard, part of the reason YUSU are so pissed off with The Yorker are due to their behaviour at events over Freshers' week when they were given press passes (e.g., claiming the roof in Derwent collapsed when it didn't, and something that happened at Freshers' ball). That's just a rumour, however. (anonymous coward, because I was told some of these details in confidence).
#15, if this is indeed the case, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to further limit their contact and correspondence with YUSU. If they want more accurate reporting (YUSU that is) then they should voluntarily bring The Yorker into the fold.
As far as conduct during Freshers week goes, YUSU has very little alowing it to take a 'moral high ground'. Freshers have complained of over-priced tickets (AAA is always a complete flop with empty venues minus Derwent from midnight onwards and £30 for Fresh is frankly taking the p**s). I digress, but this seems a pretty poor excuse (if it's true) for limiting the information given by YUSU to York's only daily news outlet.
#15, the article you are referring to clearly says "according to some reports" - it was never stated as fact that the roof had collapsed.
#17 - The Yorker edited the article after someone posted a comment pointing out the mistakes.
I have to say after spending a year working within YUSU that I can fully understand the decision that the Co-ordination Committee have taken - in fact as a strong advocate for the newspapers last year I worked with a similar policy with The Yorker.
Rory has a difficult job managing the York media's constant demands for money, resources and information and his time and the Union's finances should rightly be focussed towards the Union's media - the media charter and YUSU constitution, among other things, lay down regulations for fair elections and budgeting. Most importantly of all, YUSU have a responsibility for the welfare of all of their students and this is something that the YUSU Media Charter covers in some detail. It is incorrect to say that YUSU can "censor" stories for any reason - in fact, they can only pull stories for potential libel claims or student welfare issues. That always seemed pretty sensible to me.
Why should the newspapers follow such an (incredibly important) policy if 24-hour online outlets can trample roughshod over it? Even Nouse's website follows the online guidelines agreed by us last year and its journalism has been consistently excellent over the last twelve months.
I hope the Yorker can work with YUSU to resolve these issues and might reconsider signing the media charter so that ultimately, York students will win.
Dan: is this true about Tom? Who did you here this from?
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