Reprint, reuse, recycle: week 4

Reprint, Reuse, Recycle delves into the basement of Fisher to find eclectic Honi articles from years gone by. This article is from issue 27, 1974.

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Dear Sir,

Since I nearly got elected editor I have given a great deal of thought to what role Honi should fill in a university like ours.

Firstly should it be produced with the aim of being overwhelmingly popular? If so, itists and bums and vomit men are the order of the day. The taste of students en masse does not appear to be any less base than that of mass citizens. And one doesn’t need to have much knowledge of the rise and fall of newspapers to realise that the recipe for success is a very crude mixture indeed. The Pulitzers, the Hearsts and the Murdochs made their names and fortunes out of sex and sin…

If one, however, has little feeling for the low tastes of many of our contemporaries, is it then better to attempt to educate, or uplift the students by producing a quality paper dealing with more serious matters without being “heavy” as Arena is and thus turning people off. The choice between the two can be characterised as the ‘73 smut and abuse Honi of those two outstanding businessmen, Peake and Kiely and the more enlightened and serious Honi this year of Margan and Grose.

I certainly believe that Honi ‘75 should follow this year’s tradition, but should also follow the liberal policy of printing all shades of political opinion. Honi should never shut its doors to students opinions, no matter how unpleasant they may appear to the editors of the moment. For this years Honi to be improved on it will need more staff. The majority of people that roast Honi are neither willing, or if the truth be known, capable of doing anything to help it. Yet there are capable people that must be enlisted. Honi needs more feature writers so that the editors have more of a choice and thus a better paper.

There is one thing however, the new editors will have to watch, the development of a clique that doesn’t encourage new ideas and thus turns in on itself, wallowing in its isolation and irrelevance to the students.

I hope that these things can be accomplished, the new editors will certainly have the capability to do so, it remains to be seen whether they will have the will.

So I wish the new team good luck for the new year’s toils and an even better Honi.

Yours etc.

Malcolm Turnbull.