Trinity students in the News

`Pens are not free . . . Don't steal them." There are several of these notices, including a couple which make a similar plea about scissors, stuck up on the walls of the DU Publications Office in Trinity College's House Number 6. The office is shared by four of Trinity's student publications, including Trinity News, which last week picked up six of the first Oxygen National Student Media Awards. When you consider both the number of higher-level colleges which were eligible to enter and the number of student journals nationally, that's an impressive haul for one publication under any circumstances.

TN is currently edited by Ruadhan MacCormaic (19), a second-year student in history and politics, who was presented with four of the paper's six awards: Editor of the Year, Newspaper of the Year, Outstanding Contribution to Campus Media and Non-Funded Publication of the Year. The award News Photographer of the Year went to TN's Ian Russell. Over coffee in Bewleys, MacCormaic and a fellow staff member, features editor and writer Jean O'Mahony (19), who was named Journalist of the Year, ruminate on reasons for the success of their newspaper.

TN has been around since 1953. It went from tabloid format to broadsheet about five years ago, and has a current print run of 5,000. It appears every three weeks during term-time, and is distributed free around campus. Its advertising content now not only covers the paper's costs, but also makes a profit which goes back to college funds. Contributors are not paid.

College journals change all the time, due to the natural turnover of their student writers and editors. Not much stays the same from year to year, apart from the title. Under the current editorship, however, TN is probably the best it has ever been.

New technology helps, of course - no more sticking bits of typed paper down with cow gum and reducing pictures on the photocopier - the paper now has its own website, is printed in colour, and produced on computers using Quark and Photoshop. There's a main broadsheet section and a tabloid-sized arts supplement folded into it.

Everyone is contactable through e-mail addresses, and all but one of the current staff have a mobile phone. TN looks professional in a way student publications never came within an ass's roar of in my own college days. But it's the content - the range and quality of it - which is the business. There's an eclectic mix of items of student interest and those appealing to a wider audience, each of which balance and complement the other.

A recent issue contained a carefully researched article on facilities available to student parents (by O'Mahony); a report on working as a student volunteer in Uganda; a two-page spread on the pros and cons of various American cities for J1 soujourns; an article by Green TD John Gormley on Iraq; an in-depth interview with playwright Tom Murphy; an Irish-language interview with Walton Empey, Church of Ireland archbishop of Dublin; several music, cinema, book and theatre reviews; as well as sport and news of student politics. "People from other publications were saying to us that we had all these facilities," MacCormaic says evenly, "but really what we inherited was a concept and three dilapidated computers."

Even in this era of advanced technology and information overload through the Internet et al, it seems that at least some students do still read newspapers. "A lot of the people I hang round with are also politics students," MacCormaic points out, "so we'd definitely be reading the nationals. I do think students in general read papers, though. The fact that they're sold cheaply on campus is a big thing."

He also notes that they get a lot of feedback to their own publication. "We've been filling broadsheet pages with letters to the editor, which never used to happen before."

It is MacCormaic's second year on the paper, and O'Mahony's first. "There was no training or anything like that," he explains. "You learn on the job." What attracted him to it was the "huge amount of freedom, and the fun of it. Ten to 14 of us can decide how we want to fill the entire paper. It's really exciting to go home on the bus and look around to see 10 people reading the paper."

IN addition to having a core dedicated staff of about 14 people, which is crucial to the paper, there is also a pool of some 70 contributors on a more casual basis. "We always have a big party at the beginning of term," O'Mahony says. "We tend to get lots of people contacting us after that - it could be the free drink!" In her position as features editor, she asks people to write certain articles. "And if none of them want to do it, I end up writing it myself."

MacCormaic spends several hours each day in the office, and spent most of last summer there also, working on getting advertising for the paper. "Previously, ads used to be £50 from corner shops kind of thing, but we were trying something different." He succeeded in getting several London and Dublin recruitment companies to advertise. The result has been that this is the first year TN has been completely financially independent, receiving no grant at all from its publications committee.

Apart from still working on getting ads, as well as editing, writing and being one-third of TN's design team, MacCormaic also finds the time to go to lectures and study in the library. And, presumably, enjoy some sort of social life. Since last year's editor took a year off to do the job, how does MacCormaic manage it all? He clearly hates admitting this information, but he reveals that he gets up at 6 a.m. every day and is not often in bed before 1 a.m. "The more you're doing, the more organised you become."

For a moment, he looks terrifically embarrassed by the admission. What teenager likes volunteering the information that they're unfashionably hardworking? A regular 6 a.m. start has never featured in the typical student timetable, and it does make you wonder what MacCormaic will have achieved in even another five years, given the combination of his considerable talents with a strong workethic.

O'Mahony spends "about a third" of her student day in the office. The main sacrifice both herself and MacCormaic consider they've made for TN is not trying for "Schol" (Scholarship Exams) this year - the senior freshman exam for which successful candidates receive kudos, a stipend, free rooms and exemption from the regular senior freshman summer exams.

"I would definitely have gone for it if it hadn't been for the paper," says O'Mahony.

"But we've gained far more from doing this than by doing Schol," MacCormaic states. "I don't regret a thing. I'd do it all again."

www.trinitynews.com