Cherwell (newspaper)

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Cherwell
Media of the United Kingdom
  • List of newspapers

    • Cherwell (

    Oxford Student Publications Ltd
    . Receiving no university funding, the newspaper is one of the oldest student publications in the UK.

    History

    Cherwell was conceived by two

    Balliol College students, Cecil Binney and George Adolphus Edinger, on a ferry from Dover to Ostend during the summer vacation of 1920 while the students were travelling to Vienna to do relief work for the Save the Children charity. Edinger recalls the early newspaper having a radical voice: "We were feeling for a new Oxford …. We were anti-convention, anti-Pre War values, pro-feminist. We did not mind shocking and we often did." The publication was independent of the University of Oxford and it was entirely financed, staffed, and owned by students.[2]

    Early editions combine this seriousness with whimsy and parochialism. The first editorial gives the newspaper's purpose as being "to exclude all outside influence and interference from our University. Oxford for the Oxonians".[citation needed]

    Cherwell was the only newspaper printed in Britain during the

    UK General Strike of 1926, other than the British Gazette and the British Worker, during which time it was produced at the offices of the Daily Mail in London.[citation needed
    ]

    Throughout the 1920s Cherwell had a strong literary focus, and a policy of not editing literary contributions. Undergraduate contributors included Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, John Betjeman, L. P. Hartley, Cecil Day-Lewis and W. H. Auden.[citation needed]

    The newspaper's focus broadened over the coming decades until January 1953, when the owners of the paper decided to turn it into a university newspaper.[3] In 1946 Cherwell was briefly banned by the university for distributing a survey on the sex lives of undergraduates, and in 1954 ran a series of pin-up photographs entitled "Girls of the Year". In 1970 then-editor Peter Stothard published a current Oxford theatre poster featuring a naked female, possibly a first for a British newspaper. Under his editorship Cherwell also published a backless photo of Gully Wells, considered very daring for the time. Both editions caused much comment. In 1973 the paper became a 'cause celebre' in the national papers when the Cherwell published a photo of general editor David Soskin with a topless model. This resulted in a personal fine by the proctors for David Soskin.[citation needed]

    In 1964, the newspaper's longest-running feature was created, the "

    Baroness Hogg.[citation needed
    ]

    In the mid-1970s Cherwell survived one of its periodic financial crises, and politically the paper campaigned against Oxford University's investments in apartheid-era South Africa.[citation needed]

    Editors

    The current Editors in chief for Trinity Term 2024 are Oliver Sandall (Modern Languages, 2022, Somerville College) and Adam Saxon (PPE, 2022, Keble College).

    Below are the previous Editors-in-chief of the Cherwell newspaper.


    Year Michaelmas Hilary Trinity
    2023-24 Suzanne Antelme

    Thomas Bristow

    		Bintia Dennog

    Anuj Mishra

    		Oliver Sandall

    Adam Saxon

    Cherwell and the English language

    The Oxford English Dictionary lists the terms 'sherry party' and 'Marxism' (as pertaining to the Marx Brothers) as having been coined in Cherwell.[4][5] Additions from recent decades are lacking probably because Cherwell is only sporadically lodged at copyright libraries, and because it is not included in electronic text search systems such as LexisNexis. Xerox University Microfilms has micro-fiche copies of the paper for some years, especially the 1970s.[citation needed]

    Notable Cherwell contributors

    Cherwell.org

    Cherwell has had a website since Trinity 1996, with the current website developed by Nelson Fernandes Serrao, former Oxford Student Publications Limited chair, in 2022.[11]

    The site is updated every day during term and regularly during the vacation. It contains all of the articles from the print edition, as well as breaking news, videos, features, arts reviews, sport reports and podcasts such as the soap opera podcast Staircase 22. Students use the website to vote on the paper's regular feature, Fit College and also to post comments on articles.[citation needed]

    In 2008, Cherwell won the 'Guardian Student Media' award for Best Student Website.[12]

    Cherwell was awarded Best Publication[13] in the South East region in the 2022 Student Publication Awards. Two news pieces were also shortlisted for the National Awards.[14]

    Sources

    References

    1. ^ "Advertising | Cherwell".
    2. ^ "Cherwell History Pt 1 – the Founders". 23 September 2016.
    3. ^ "Cherwell History Pt 4 – 'The Cherwell Renaissance'". 27 September 2016.
    4. ^ "sherry party, n." Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 10 March 2021.
    5. ^ "Marxism, n.2". Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 10 March 2021.
    6. ISBN 9781473512139
      .
    7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t "Cherwell – independent since 1920". Cherwell. 18 April 2011. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
    8. ^
      ISSN 0140-0460
      . Retrieved 21 August 2021.
    9. ^ Charles Butler, Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), page 14.
    10. ISBN 9780413519306
      .
    11. ^ "Cherwell - Oxford's oldest student newspaper". Cherwell. 15 May 2023.
    12. ^ Baraniuk, Chris. "Cherwell win website of the year award". Cherwell. Archived from the original on 29 January 2009. Retrieved 25 March 2010.
    13. ^ Twitter https://twitter.com/spajournalism/status/1504190768059142145. Retrieved 8 November 2022. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
    14. ^ Unger-Verna, Marino (23 March 2022). "#SPANC22 National Awards Shortlists Announced! -". Retrieved 8 November 2022.

    External links

    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cherwell_(newspaper)&oldid=1217921072"