ISSUE 900 SPECIAL 23
gairrhydd | FEATURES@GAIRRHYDD.COM MONDAY JUNE 08 2009
A short history of gair rhydd: 1972 - 2009 THE
Smut rag gair rhydd hasn't always been the pillar of journalism we know it as today. There's also a darker past that we don't usually let out too often. 'Colossus' which preceded gair rhydd was well known for its more pornographic edge. Below are a few highlights from that bygone time:
H
Ceri Isfryn delves into the archives
aving spent the last few days trawling through the gair rhydd archives, there’s one thing I can say for certain: gair rhydd has certainly changed over the years. The paper started life as 'Broadsheet ' in the late 1940s. The first issue in our archives from 1959 dons the inventive headline ‘Freshers arrive… in One Big Group’ before proceeding to describe all first years as "an amorphous and undistinguished mass, defying description.” Despite the questionable style of writing. The six-page paper, which cost threepence at the time, provided the student body with a means of critiquing the Union executives, making it an indispensable part of University life.
The paper's rebellious spirit continued into the 1980s
Nudity on the front page? Why not, asked a 1971 edition of Broadsheet, gair rhydd's predecessor. They printed a stripper who had danced at the Students' Union earlier in the week - probably not the sort of thing you can expect at Come Play anytime soon.
By the 1970s, the paper appears to have increasingly indulged in smuttiness to please its readership, showing a particularly keen interest in breasts. A 1971 edition printed a photo of a fully naked stripper who had danced at the union that week on their front page. The accompanying caption reads “most people preferred the band”. Another article in the same year referred to the then SU VicePresident as a “sultry blonde who will do much to relieve the tedium of General Meetings.” Needless to say I’m pretty certain that similar descriptions about today’s sabbatical team would not go down particularly well. When the University’s Union merged with that of the University of Wales Institute of Technology and Science, the smut continued as the paper was suspiciously re-named Colossus. The change went down like a lead balloon, with 102 signing a petition protesting against the nature of the paper’s “pornographic” content. John Hartley, the editor of Colossus at the
time replied by telling the disgruntled readers to stick their petition “up their arse” before enraging them further by printing a cartoon which was so obscene that the printers refused to print it. In 1972, the paper was christened gair rhydd (Welsh for 'free word'), which of course remains the name we know and love today. The paper’s rebellious spirit continued into the 1980s, when Meirion Jones - the first paid editor and now investigations producer of Newsnight - caused controversy when in true Spooks style he broke into the principal’s office and copied and exposed confidential files about an Iraqi henchman. This led to him losing his university Lifetime Honorary Membership something which all students receive automatically. Afterwards he cheekily ran an article with the headline ‘A punishment worse than death.’ Stylistically, the paper mutated through the decades, as editors continued to fiddle with the masthead, design and style of the newspaper – moving from a tabloid format to an A4 fanzine-style paper and then back toward a more professional style tabloid, the paper has seen many changes through its history. From 1978 Meirion Jones remembers ignoring the aesthetics of the pages in favour of procucing a more regualr tabloid-style newspaper, "we didn't care what it looked like." As technology developed, the paper also progressed. When 1993-4’s editor John Rostron was handed the reins, there was only one computer in the office, compared to the eleven that now adorn the office. He bought the office’s first scanner which cost an astounding £3000, and installed enough computers and software to design the paper in-house. It wasn’t until 1994 that the paper became fully computerized, where previously editors continued to cut and paste the pages together, before sending it off to the printers. In 1993, the paper became one of the first papers in the UK to be published on the internet. John Rostron remembers a student from the maths
department coming to tell him about this new fancy invention, fancily entitled the ‘world wide web’. Whereas the internet was only really used by computing and maths enthusiasts at the time, the website rapidly grew as the internet became more popular. Today the gair rhydd site receives regualr traffic from web-surfers around theworld, allowing debate to flourish. While today the paper is sent off via email, in previous decades round trips of around 100 miles were required to deliver the pages to the printers in Swansea or Bristol. Quench, the younger brother of gair rhydd was born in 2003 out of GRIP - which was short for Gair Rhydd Information Pullout. First edited by Tristain Thomas with help from Alex Macpherson, Quench was to become the snazzy student magazine to complement gair rhydd.
By the 1970s, the paper appears to have increasingly indulged in smuttiness In 2004 gair rhydd won the NUS/ Daily Mirror best student newspaper award. In 2005 it was runner-up. gair rhydd's reputation was severely damaged in by the controversial Danish cartoons it reprinted. The future of student media is always under threat, with funding always in question. But if the past 37 years are anything to go by, the future of gair rhydd seems perfectly safe. As long as there remains a dedicated and passionate editorial team and a supportive and engaged student body, there will always be a copy of gair rhydd to pick up every monday morning. Here’s to another 37 years of gair rhydd.