“It is terrible”
“use it to wipe my bum”
“more vaginas lol”
That’s some of the feedback from our mid-year reader survey rearranged into a haiku.
“Atrocious bias against Liberals. Hasn’t been a good year for Honi”
“More articles that dont constantly bash all men.”
And that’s the consequence of sharing the survey on Reddit.
Welcome back to uni. I for one have missed the soulful sounds of drilling on the Redfern run; the needlessly long queue for Taste; and the dogged resolve/pitiful insistence of Socialist Alternative petitioners.
Over the break our feedback survey saw about 100 readers speak honestly and anonymously about the newspaper. For the most part, feedback tended towards one of two opposing directions. 1. You were voted in by hacks, for hacks, so write more about hacks, or 2. Branch out—there’s a whole world outside of the Arts and Law faculties.
Well, we’ve heeded your advice, 1s. If all goes to plan, this semester’s Honi will be like a Facebook trending bar for hackery. It’ll be a who’s who of hacks, a frivolous directory of aspiring Union Board directors; and pages upon pages of unadulterated, unsubstantiated gossip.
Just kidding. We started this year with a game plan to delicately navigate the middle-area between these perpetually at-odds philosophies, and we’ll stick to that. We’ve extended the margins, dropped the kerning and increased the page count because we want to hear as many diverse voices as humanly possible.
That being said, thanks for your advice. Honi, an elected, student-run paper is nothing if not a sum of its readers, and we look ahead with new ideas, new approaches and—lest our callout be ignored—new contributors.
As such, we start off the semester with a 32-page bumper edition. In it, we venture overseas, we talk to a genius cruciverbalist, and, just for the 1s, Peter Walsh rants on forever about StuPol.
Oh and fuck the ALP.
