Student Radio Association

York Report is a fortnightly magazine programme created for York University students, covering exclusively campus-relevant issues. Shows are presented live (except for the occasional pre-recorded special) and include live interviews along with pre-prepared packages and interviews, and a rundown of the latest campus headlines.

For URY, York Report was a new programme for the new 2008/09 academic year. We created it because the students of the University of York were in need of a campus current affairs source which could respond to the subjects which were most important to them in a reliable, informative, unbiased and accessible manner. Over the last three terms we feel that York Report has established itself as just that. Here’s how:

York Report has four key objectives, each of which is derived from the desire to represent and serve the students of the University of York. We aim to:

1) Keep the audience up-to-date on the most crucial campus news.

2) Report on campaigns/issues which the student body have shown to be important to them.

3) Find the student/campus angle on key national stories and inform students on the relevance to them.

4) Where possible, advise students on issues such as welfare and careers.

The accompanying audio will give you an idea of how we went about fulfilling these objectives, but let’s look at them one a time. [References to points in the audio entry are in square brackets]

1) York Report broadcasts fortnightly, meaning it is produced more regularly than either of York University’s campus papers. This therefore makes us something of a one-stop campus news source. Rather than having to pick up both papers to get the most important news, students can get most of it in one place from us. As well as running through the university headlines each edition, throughout the last year we’ve closely covered such big stories as the opening of the University’s first Student Union bar (after 40 years of waiting) [0’10’’], a racial equality scandal involving the Admission Service, the Battle of the Bands final, and the Student Union elections [4’55’’]. On each occasion we were able to provide the listener with the views of all of the necessary parties in all their triumphant/apologetic/ecstatic/(un)charismatic glory. York Report makes keen use of vox pop-ing – so that we can demonstrate what other students think of the issues involved, and prove that it really is the students who are setting our agenda.

2) Speaking of letting the students set the agenda; to fulfil our second objective we pay close attention to what campaigns are taking place on campus, as well as gauging student response to stories from other campus sources. A particularly good example of a feature stemming from this is our coverage of the “Disarm” campaign, which followed the reporting of further increases in the University’s investment in the arms trade [4’20’’]. We feel that we represented our audience well with this coverage – for us, the story wasn’t the increase in investment itself, but the student reaction to it.

3) The key national stories which have particularly affected York University students over the last year are, of course, the economic recession and the disappearance (and suspected murder) of University chef, Claudia Lawrence. We found from talking to graduating students that they were very much concerned about how the recession would affect their employability – so we spoke to the University’s careers service on behalf of those students [3’40’’]. Claudia Lawrence’s disappearance received enormous national coverage, but we were able to present the story in the more detailed fashion needed to actually jog the memory of any York student who may have seen something significant at the time. We dedicated a whole show to doing this, along with informing the students on the progress of the investigation [1’11’’].

4) It was with the Claudia Lawrence coverage that we truly came into our own in this sense. Understandably, a number of students demonstrated to us that a suspected murder so close to home had led them to fear for their own safety on and around campus. We therefore worked with the York University Student Union Welfare Office and produced advisory content such as the personal attack alarm (or “rape alarm”) package [2’35’’]. Wherever necessary, we also include details of other sources for anyone who wants further information on issues raised in the programme (e.g. telephone numbers for the Careers Service’s or Welfare Office, and helpful web addresses). We also try to offer advice where things get a bit complicated (as so often they do in Student Union matters). For example, as well as talking through the intricate changes in the positions for the SU Elections [mentioned at 5’02’’], we produced a light-hearted breakdown of the ridiculously complex voting system. The breakdown made this dull and problematic subject sufficiently entertaining that it was also adopted by one of the campus news websites as part of their election night coverage too.

In trying to meet these objectives, York Report has produced a wide variety of content over the last year, attempting to use an array of different journalistic styles. The most obvious contrast demonstrated by the accompanying audio is perhaps that between the sensitive and formal tone of the Claudia Lawrence special [1’11’’] and the more relaxed, upbeat SU election coverage. Our aim is to always provide a tone appropriate to the story. We also try very hard not to patronise our audience – because we try to let them set the agenda, we know that they know what we’re on about, and we know that they are interested in the issues.

What started off as a very small group has turned into a large York Report team reflecting the campus’ diversity. We are very proud to be bringing the students the radio coverage they need and hope to continue to do so.