Freedom of Information requests are a valuable tool in the arsenal of any journalist, and a key tenet of democracy in the United Kingdom. The Student Publication Association (SPA) is concerned by the findings of openDemocracy’s ‘Art of Darkness’ report, released today, one finding of which is that a ‘Clearing…
Half of the UK’s student newspapers at the forefront of scrutiny of universities and colleges face closure within the next year as universities use COVID-19 funding pressures as an excuse to cut lifeline funding, research from the Student Publication Association (SPA) has shown. Just over half (52%) of publications surveyed…
Each year, the Student Publication Association appoints a few Project Officers, who join our team to help out with specific initiatives, from advocacy to assisting with our digital output. As we’ve just entered the 2020/21 year for the SPA, with a new Executive Committee and Board of Trustees, we’re recruiting…
A fresh opportunity to get involved with the Student Publication Association has opened up, as we are recruiting three Trustees to join our growing charity. We’re looking for three new faces to join our team, to widen the base of skills we can draw upon in our work, and ensure…
The work the Student Publication Association does locally, within our eight regions, is some of our most important, and the Regional Officers we appoint each year are a huge part of this. They allow us to give more detailed, targeted support to our publication members from around the country, no…
The very name of Facebook’s news feed has begun to feel slightly ironic in recent weeks as the presence of news articles has noticeably diminished. This is the result of major changes to Facebook’s algorithms, which now prioritise posts from friends above those from pages, and particularly above those from…
Student journalism often works best when it focuses on issues at the heart of its readership and when the stories can’t be read elsewhere. The most successful stories in the news section of a student publication are those which are original and have a clear focus on the institution at…
The late, great, Bill Shankly once said “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.” That quote has become part of football folklore, with naysayers and doubters of…
In 2012 the New York Times posted a story online that was different to anything that had been done before. They uploaded a long-read story that would inspire a whole new form of journalism and attract a new readership to their website. Now we’re asking: can student journalists do it…
Unless you’ve been living under a large, soundproof rock, without internet access, it’s fair to say that the recent storm of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment allegations has been impossible to miss. The stories about disgraced Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein, have come in thick and fast, from the initial article…