Clocking off

26th Feb 2010

Our two new Com­ment & Fea­tures edi­tors Seb Mann and Rosa McMa­hon intro­duce themselves

BONJOUR, hola, shalom! Phew, awk­ward hel­los over. We’re your new com­ment and fea­tures edi­tors: Rosa and Seb. Nei­ther of us had met each other before, and now we are spend­ing hours upon hours together tak­ing the rowdy office ban­ter, and learn­ing how this won­der­ful paper is pro­duced in a week. A week!

Already branded the ‘short­est fea­tures edi­tors yet’ we, you’ll be pleased to know, fail to add to the aggre­gate height of the Red­brick edi­to­r­ial team as we step into Laura’s shoes. And don’t worry; Jude is still here doing about 80 per cent of the work at the same time as show­ing us the ropes.

We thought a joint edi­to­r­ial would be a good way to intro­duce our­selves. But nei­ther of us really knows what we’re doing and so far it’s just been us debat­ing where exactly a comma goes.

We’ve been told that this col­umn is about rant­ing and that as fea­tures edi­tors we now have a license to be brash, self-indulgent and a lit­tle bit ego­tis­ti­cal. So it’s prob­a­bly only fair that we tell you a lit­tle bit about our­selves. See it as a warn­ing, so next time you see our names at the top of this col­umn you’ll know whether to read on, or find an old copy of Red­brick, read Laura’s clock­ing off, and cry at how much you miss the old days.

It’s time to adopt a third per­son per­spec­tive. Rosa is a fan of tea but not of the word ‘lol’ and believes that great things come in small pack­ages. So short, non-acronym using, tea lovers are wel­comed. Seb hates poor gram­mar, a hatred which will be even more strongly voiced now he’s an edi­tor. (He also now hopes that no one will find any gram­mat­i­cal errors in this piece, but he admits that it will prob­a­bly hap­pen.) And while Rosa thinks Marx had a point, Seb has a vir­u­lent dis­taste for peo­ple who let their opin­ions fol­low trends.

How’s that for egotistical?

Prob­a­bly more inter­est­ing, or at least less self-centred, are our plans for the sec­tion. We like pic­tures, espe­cially ones that have been taken by some­one we know. We also think that stu­dents and their expe­ri­ences should be of cen­tral impor­tance to a stu­dent news­pa­per (obvi­ously) and where bet­ter than a fea­tures sec­tion to high­light this? For these rea­sons we will be look­ing for more lengthy inves­tiga­tive pieces and stu­dent responses to cur­rent affairs. So don’t hold back if you think you have some­thing to say.

This week we have some bril­liant arti­cles includ­ing the intro­duc­tion to and first install­ment of our stu­dent pol­i­tics project: a com­men­tary on the issues sur­round­ing the lead-up to the election.

Any­way, that’s enough from us. We hope this is suf­fi­cient to give you at least some faith in us. How­ever, we’re aware it prob­a­bly doesn’t…

Jude’s writ­ing this next week. We promise.