Editing Honi Soit is a labour of love. Week after week, there are pitch meetings to be had, emails to be sent, articles to be edited (and written), and of course, spreads to be laid up for print.
But editing Honi is also a matter of privilege. Countless hours of work go into ensuring the paper is ready. For many students who may be passionate about the paper, the required commitment turns many away from the editor role.
We need to have this conversation because the opportunity to edit Honi doesn’t stop at editing this paper alone. Honi’s status in local Sydney culture marks its editorship as a major achievement that can be exchanged as valuable currency in terms of employment and social networking. Past editors have shared anecdotes of writing opportunities they accessed purely out of recognition that they edited the paper. Honi proffers a certain kind of nostalgia in the minds of many influential USyd alumni which offers employment stepping stones — or at the very least, is a conversation starter.
We spoke to nine students, seven who chose not to join Honi tickets, and two who changed their minds, to unpack what stops students from editing the paper.
Balancing finances and workload
A major concern for several students was the financial toll of editing Honi. Since 2022, the stipend has been doubled, but pre-2022 editors received a paltry $5,000 for a year of editing.
Alana had previously been asked to join a few Honi tickets. She notes that although editors receive a stipend, for most students — especially those who live out of home — it isn’t enough to form a liveable wage.
Alana: “I more or less never edited Honi because I couldn’t afford to, I was always deeply passionate about the paper and I still am, but my conception of what it is to edit Honi is a 20-40hr a week time commitment that may as well be considered volunteering considering how small the stipend is.
From what I’ve observed, to be able to edit Honi you need to:
a) Live at home and/or have the means to survive the year financially, or
b) Be extremely passionate about journalism and intend to make a career out of it and be prepared to make some significant sacrifices (i.e. moving home, dealing with long commutes, working other jobs).
I was never really in either camp — I was living out of home and supporting myself financially and didn’t see myself going into journalism so I couldn’t really justify saying yes.”
Alongside balancing finances, juggling editing with pre-existing commitments was also an issue for many of those who declined. Mary* was asked to edit Honi several times last year, but she had to decline as she was working several jobs, doing Honours full time, and was looking to debate at several majors. Similarly, Jessie* also could not balance editing Honi with her studies.
Mary: “I guess if I wanted I could have made time but then that would have incurred a financial cost, because I’d have to sacrifice some of my jobs, or just a straight up opportunity cost.”
Jessie: “The main reason for me [not to edit] was that it became evident early on that editing Honi wouldn’t be compatible with my studies. I was entering Honours and through speaking with past editors, who told me they had to defer or go to part time, I realised it wouldn’t [be] compatible with my academic goals.”
There is a prevailing perception that editing Honi is such a major commitment that it can be “too much”. Many past editors advise future editors to significantly cut down study or work commitments to edit the paper. Anecdotally, at many Honi handovers, outgoing Honi teams have warned incoming members that there is no way they can maintain a full-time study load, a part-time job, or romantic relationships whilst editing the paper. While this advice may reflect a desire to optimise this paper which undoubtedly has responsibilities to students, this absolutist thinking causes many students to opt out before rigorously determining whether or not editing is a possibility.
Frequent Honi contributor Maxim was asked to edit on multiple occasions, but the timing was never right due to other responsibilities.
Maxim: “I was worried I’d be too busy to do it and it would be too much is the main reason.”
The emotional burden that accompanies Honi’s colossal workload often renders it inaccessible for students struggling with their mental health. Noah* experienced personal difficulties which made it harder to contribute as a team member.
Noah: “I was having a hard time at home and knew I wouldn’t be able to put in good work…I didn’t want to be a deadweight.”
Elections and political processes
Unlike most student media editorships, Honi editors need to be ‘elected’ to the position. In practice, this often ends up with an uncontested team of ten forming through mergers or pre-election deals. However, the prospect of a contest is ever present and can intimidate students away from joining ‘tickets’, particularly students who aren’t well-versed with or comfortable in student political circles. Jack* and Victoria both initially declined to join tickets in fear of an environment associated with elections and politicking.
Jack: “I initially turned down an offer to join an Honi ticket since I was intimidated by the election process and it felt like too big a leap for me at the time. I was lucky that a vacancy later opened up after the election when I’d had more time to think about it and so I decided to take the chance and go for it.”
Victoria: “When I was first approached about joining Honi in early 2023, I was incredibly skeptical. After two society roles, I was exhausted from a world I believed to be run by gossip, status and intellectual superiority. Having only one Honi article to my name I also felt (and still feel) woefully underskilled. I’d watched the 2021 election, and the process and environment seemed horrible and futile in its horribleness. After publishing some more and realising the beauty of these student institutions — there’s nowhere else you can publish purely for creativity and not for financial gain (though obviously some do it for clout) — my opinion changed.”
Pre-electoral negotiations can be traumatising in their own way, and mean the members of an editorial team are not what was envisioned. Given that editing Honi involves spending at least 12 hours on a Sunday packed into a shoebox-sized office, it is difficult to opt in unless you have friends or acquaintances on your team. Creating a ticket or joining onto a team also requires political savoir-faire and social networks that may not be accessible to keen writers who are further removed from these webs. Often, these networks were cultivated in inner-west or eastern suburbs private schools; this creates barriers for international students and students who live further from the city centre who can’t engage as frequently in USyd activist culture.
Noah: “A factor is that I didn’t feel as close to the team I was with [due to a merger]. Also, the way the election was made uncontested by backroom dealing left a bitter taste in my mouth.”
Nafeesa: “I always thought of the prospect of editing Honi. I wasn’t sure of the process until a friend of mine edited, and I saw how it’s based on elections and wasn’t so interested after that as I didn’t want to get into stupol.”
Blythe: “Ticket formation is kind of political. You have to know people who know how to form a ticket and run a campaign. That was not an issue for me because I never got to that point and I did know people, but for people who may be able to sacrifice the time and [feel] passionate about the paper, if you can’t get a ticket together successfully you can’t really edit the paper.
When I was in 1st year and 2nd year ticket formation did feel very tied up in stupol. Maybe this is just my perception but it felt like to form a ticket you had to be in the right place in the context of stupol.”
Social and cultural barriers
Scraping below the surface of the Honi time commitment unearths many other privileges required to edit. Some previous Honi editors have had to travel up to two hours by public transport to get to weekly layups. Considering that layups can stretch past midnight, the additional physical toll of the editor role is off-putting to many. Additionally, for many students, especially people of colour, there is a degree of familial pushback. Many ethnic parents, and indeed peers, do not see the value of engaging with student media due to cultural expectations and ideals about the university experience. Those who are interested in editing often need to justify what Honi offers to them in terms of career prospects, even if that is not the underlying reason for their passion.
Nafeesa and Alana share why Honi may appeal less to students who aren’t white or from a local or private school background.
Nafeesa: “Distance was a big factor for me. I live more than an hour and a half away each way from campus, and knowing that Honi requires weekly layups where editors have to be present on campus didn’t appeal to me so much.”
Alana: “The material barriers of time and financial cost basically create cultural barriers in turn like if you were a person of colour from the regions, editing or writing for a paper that’s otherwise steered by the stereotypical rich white private school kids likely wouldn’t really appeal to you regardless of whether you had the means and capacity to participate”.
These barriers to entry materially affect Honi’s output, considering it entrenches privilege in editorial teams and reporter circles.
Alana: “When editing involves such a massive financial and time commitment that only reformed private school kids can edit, the paper itself suffers and becomes more boring, more liberal, and less diverse.”
Solving this problem is not easy— privilege courses through the veins of campus life, making these barriers to entry universal across many student societies and activities. However, since the Honi time commitment can be so titanic, and the social consequences of editing can be long lasting, these barriers are significantly inflated. Addressing the elephant in the office is the first step to demolishing these obstacles — our student paper cannot be truly representative without it.
*Names have been changed.
Additional note: Some responses have been edited for clarity.
