“How many pages long is a standard edition of Honi?”
This infamous quiz question is posed each year to Honi Soit hopefuls.
A fun question, but arguably not one that is totally indicative of reality. I would suggest amending the question to a more challenging, but truthful one — how many pages of Honi do the editors and writers get to truly occupy? Because we certainly do not control all 24.
The paper, as the official publication of the Students’ Representative Council (SRC), reserves page space each week for incredibly useful information on SRC casework resources, academic advice, and general promotion of valuable SRC services that students may not otherwise be aware of.
However, this is not the extent of advertising space in our declaratively independent, anti-capitalist rag. Each week, and for decades before us, Honi has been laden with advertisements which interject student journalism, piss-takes, and art. But why? Honi is not a profitable paper — and prides itself on its boisterous independence.
Now that Honi is funded by the SRC, what good do external advertisements do? This question has now become a topic of discussion every week among the editors as we paginate each edition, trying to fit as much student work in as possible.
This year, dear editors’ ink-stained and docile hands have been forced each week into allowing full page advertisements for a political party into the paper. This is outside the realm of our permission. Publishing a political ad in our independent paper also elicited concerned letters from our readers.
We rebelled within the boundaries that we could — we published a spoof advertisement in our comedy section, a product of fabled layup delirium which mocked said political party, and resulted in an angry phone call from this political party to the SRC president (sorry Harrison).
How did we get into this situation? Well — this, kind of, has always been the situation.
Advertising was once published in Honi out of utility — merely to keep the paper afloat. The paper’s SRC funding commenced officially in 1967, mainly due to advertisers waning in interest. The 1967 changes also gave the SRC more power over the publication, with the Council at the time hoping to appoint an editor that would “win” back advertising support. However — if the SRC decided to fully fund the venture that was Honi, why did advertising continue to play a role in the paper after this massive change?
When one dives into the Honi archives, some of the most salient anachronisms (there are many) are the advertisements. Prior to SRC funding to keep the publication afloat — Honi Soit relied heavily on alcohol advertising. In 1929, its first year of publication, Honi brandishes its pages with various adverts for Tooths Beer (now extinct) or, as it once called itself, the one “true lager.” I guess I will only live to taste the fake ones.
The appeals to the precocious Sydney University undergrads are marvellous feats of rhetoric. Honi Soit would only advertise a “logical” liquor after all. It also is embroidered with evocative buzzwords which would do numbers in 2024 — a “high protein” beer would have many of us under its hoppy spell.
From then, other brands hopped on the bandwagon. We see Penfold Wine, which for the entire decade of the 1930s and into the 1940s, would occupy a place on the coveted front cover of Honi. After that, it continued to advertise internally.
It is commonplace today for nauseatingly botanical seltzers or craft beers to sponsor clubs and societies on campus, to advertise and build faithful consumers. However, trying to imagine alcohol being advertised in modern Honi feels comical — it just does not belong there.
In 1929, the editors wrote an Open Letter addressed “To Women Undergraduates,” wherein they convincingly reassure the women readership: “Honi Soit may be the official journal of the Sydney Uni Undergraduates Association. That does not mean that it is not for you,” continuing to “confess to a repressed desire to espouse the cause of feminism.” Immediately underneath this letter, a Tooths Beer advertisement furnishes the hearty welcome by heralding its “inimitable tang which makes [Tooths] so often the choice of thirsty men.”
This is potentially the first, of many times in the decades to come, where advertising feels misplaced with the politics of the paper.
Within Honi’s first few years, these alcohol brand names kept the publication afloat. In fact, readers were encouraged to “support the advertisers,” which can be seen in a note printed in a 1930 edition, essentially stating, drink the beer or the paper will perish —
Thankfully, the temperance-defying readership of the 1930s managed to keep the paper afloat, while Honi expanded their advertising repertoire.
Advertising also provides an interesting perspective into products that advertisers suspected were affordable or marketable to USyd students. The amount of jewellers advertising engagement rings in a paper marketed to undergraduates is amusing, but lines up with the Australian Bureau of Statistics data of the time — with the median age for marriage in 1940 being 23.7 for brides and 26.5 for grooms. Jewellers continued to advertise rings in Honi well into the 1970s.
The adverts also shed light upon how advertisers saw the Sydney Uni “market.” The various advertisements in suiting, depicting gentlemanly figures or glamorous women, impute a certain class or financial presumption onto the average student. Advertisers believed that the average student would have access to income that would allow for such purchases —whether it be silk scarves or artisan suitmaking — with David Jones Elizabeth Street consistently occupying space in Honi for decades.
As Honi grew in its politics, or perhaps into its politics, the advertising did not — arguably alienating a significant portion of their readership. Despite dipping its toes into feminist politics, advertisements continued to detract from any desired impact. Take a David Jones Elizabeth Street advertisement from 1946, for instance, flaunting a jacket that “whittles your waistline to a mere nothing.”
After the 1950s, advertising largely migrated to the innards of the rag, mainly within the confines of an allocated page or section. Unfortunately — our editorial team is not unprecedented in mocking the advertising section. There is an evidenced cynicism dispensed from the editors largely within the titles of the advertising section. In 1956, an ad page was sarcastically titled “for discriminating readers.” In 1962, the ad page was again laden with cynical titles each week — “you paid for them — so read them” and “frankly there weren’t enough adverts this week — so we have filled the page with a very large headline” and “we’ve opened an old fashioned gin shop.”
In fact, we aren’t even original in conjuring spoof advertisements —evidenced in a spoof Coca Cola ad from the 1980s. I suspect that the contemporary editorial team couldn’t take aim at any existing advertisers.
There lies a palpable frustration that exists today — wherein ad space occupies precious pages that can be used for student work. Throughout the archives, there are many different clippings that illuminate that this has been out of the editor’s control for decades. In one Advertising Rates clipping, it is disclosed that “all advertisements must be handed in at the S.R.C. office and will not be accepted by Honi Soit staff.”
The existence of a “business manager” and, later, an “advertising manager” gives the paper a misplaced commercial flavour for a notoriously boisterous publication.
Perhaps the sarcastic ad page titles, but mainly the counter-cultural route that Honi was taking, contributed to advertorial decline — catalysing the SRC to fully fund Honi Soit, so that it would not be wholly dependent on advertiser funding. The implanting of a more conservative editor from the contemporary SRC was also intended to remedy the rambunctious editors that lost them their advertising revenue in the first place. However, despite this apparent stride in the direction of self-sufficiency, and official recognition of Honi as an important aspect of student life, advertising in the paper continued after the 1967 decision for the SRC to fund Honi.
Ads continued to be situated begrudgingly between student works and journalism, with the reluctance of editors highly evidenced — the 1970s saw the first rebellion against the advertisements positioned upon the front cover.
The 1970s saw less engagement rings in the ads and more pregnancy tests and contraception. Ads for postal pregnancy tests as well as family planning clinics occupied quite large spaces in the advertorial section — corresponding with an increase in feminist writing in the paper. In fact, the remaining engagement ring ads still buying space in the paper rebranded to lean into a libidinous flavour of the paper, with many other ads pointing to sexual revolution: “This guy can make love… but can he make the right decision when it comes to buying a diamond for his bird?” The very same jeweller also bought a banner slot on the front page — “KEEP SEX OUT OF THE ADS.”
To aggregate Honi’s radicalism and irreverence, it was clear that the ads were becoming a contested space themselves, obviously trying to appeal to the readership by leaning into the sexual liberation movement of the time — despite not being selected by the editors. Many other advertorial attempts at mirroring Honi’s politics so as to fit in inconspicuously have proven tenuous — see Capitol Motor’s advertisement for their “left-wing” motorbike…
Between the ads shilling local legends (Flodge, Jura Books) and the misogynistic ones — one can glimpse into what property hunting was like for USyd students during the 1970s. Honi advertised many striking real estate ads for quaint, inner-west properties, at prices eye-watering to the student of 2024.
Again, it would be unimaginable to consider modern Honi advertising local properties for sale — an endeavour feeling further and further remote from the grasp of university students. “Why pay rent?” being a normal slogan for a 1970s Honi ad feels comically sinister to a modern reader.
Editors throughout history have had the convictions of their opinion pieces potentially tarnished by being positioned next to densely full ad pages and notoriously nefarious corporations, the most obvious being the cigarette advertisers.
Cigarette ads were dotted throughout Honi across decades — well into the years when Honi was funded by the SRC and not needing to rely on advertisements. Don Draper style commercials still forged their way onto the page with the likes of ‘Rider Tobacco’ and ‘Old Holborn’. Ironically, students were frequently encouraged in the very same newspaper to approach welfare officers with any form of health concern, and potentially would have seen editions of “Health Honi” also in circulation during their time at uni. In 2024, in a time even cigarette packets themselves are censored — it is bizarre to conceptualise that our left-wing student council had accepted funding from these corporations. There are some spreads which extremely date the paper — beer and gambling ads occupying a quarter of the page each immediately next to one another.
When looking through the archives of 1990s Honi, there is an immediate feeling of a burden lifted —ads became much more sparse, with far less eyesores interrupting the flow over the paper. However, I quickly found that the 1990s was the advent of frequent full page beer ads — so illustrative and detailed that you could even see the condensation on the Coopers Green bottle.
Combing through the old advertisements is sobering through the beer ads and ironic where it plainly exists at odds with the views of the students of the time. In an article last week, The Sydney Morning Herald asked the Honi editors for comment about what it’s like to be part of an independent student newspaper, at a time where student media independence is under threat at universities such as UNSW. We were quoted on how “we still get a lot of editorial freedom.” The final barrier inhibiting our independence, and has for decades, are advertisements that collide with our left-wing and independent political stance.
I spoke to SRC President Harrison Brennan about the relevance of advertisements in Honi, who said: “as time has gone on and the SRC’s minimum SSAF (Student Services and Amenities Fee) has increased year-on-year with successful applications, the need for external paid adverts is questionable.”
“Adverts for political parties have no place in Honi Soit, however advertisements for community campaigns and/or initiatives led by activists are certainly suitable for Honi Soit, given its history of producing left-wing journalism that supports and reports on the campaigns run by students or the broader community.”
“Where I think advertisements generally detract from the character of Honi Soit is when the editorial team has no authority to dictate whether advertisements feature in the paper, or which ones.”
In our own week 2 edition, we printed a letter from one of our readers:
“Dear editors,
I’m assuming you’re being paid to promote [redacted] because it is a shit political party and isn’t honi’s vibe.
So how much are you getting paid to be shills for a random political party? Or is this a piss take?”
Until the Honi ads can promise us $16,000 units in Glebe again, we don’t want any. And now, a word from our sponsors! Which will probably be in the next few pages.
