The cream of student newspapers outclass some national newspapers in their design and effective use of technology. While the quality of their editorial content still varies wildly, student newspapers have been quicker than their bigger counterparts to make the most of advances in desktop publishing technology; over the last five years they have dramatically improved their design and presentation.
And as presentation has improved, advertisers have become more interested. Banks, travel companies, breweries, stationery shops and computer suppliers all regularly use the student media to advertise their wares. Some student newspapers have used increased advertising revenue to win a degree of editorial independence from their students' union paymasters.
So substantial is the advertising revenue potential that a new national student publication, The University Examiner, arrived on the market this October. Supported by national daily, The Examiner, it is distributed monthly to universities around the country and run by recently graduated journalists.
However, the State's libel laws mean student newspapers are always living on a wing and a prayer. Trinity News was badly shaken this year by a libel settlement and may have to miss the last two issues of the academic year (see above). A UCD student newspaper also faces a libel action from a former students' union president.
Student editors also often have to deal with interventionist students' union publishers, who may have priorities that are different from strictly journalistic ones. Editorial interference with a student publication in the Dublin Institute of Technology will be the subject of a National Union of Journalists meeting this week. In Galway, students vowed to set up an independent student newspaper when a students' union vice-president altered an article against the wishes of its author.
To cap it all, student newspapers frequently have to contend with limited production resources - and the long hours worked by student editors can seriously affect their academic performance.
So with all those potential perils, why get involved? Part of the motivation of the volunteers who produce scores of college newspapers and magazines around the country is the career success of former contributors to their publications. Student journalism has an impressive track record in producing journalists for national newspapers - the editors of The Irish Times and the Sunday Business Post being just two former student editors.
Irish Times columnist Vincent Browne, who was a student journalist in the 1960s, helped set up the College Tribune at University College Dublin when he returned to UCD to study for a master's degree in the late 1980s. As editor of the Sunday Tribune at the time, he allowed the students to use the national newspaper's facilities and develop a newspaper for the Belfield campus that was independent of the students' union. UCD now has a thriving student newspaper scene, with the broad-sheet students' union newspaper University Observer slugging it out with the tabloid College Tribune, which has largely cut its ties with its mother newspaper. Both newspapers are free and both fund their running costs through advertising.
Trinity College Dublin has what is probably the largest variety of student publications. The university's publications committee is responsible for six publications in all: Trinity News; a satirical magazine, Pirhana; a feminist journal, Harlot; a social cultural and political magazine, TCD Miscellany; and two cultural journals, Alternate and Icarus.
The publications committee, which is funded by the capitation fee paid by students at the start of each academic year, funds at least 30 per cent of the cost of producing each magazine, with the rest being raised by advertising, sponsorship or cover charge. Trinity also boasts a students' union newspaper, the Record.
One accusation constantly levelled at student papers is that they are insular, and of no interest to anyone without an intimate knowledge of the culture and personalities on campus. Student journalists in the Dublin Institute of Technology are trying to address that perceived weakness with the Liberty, a newspaper produced by them for Dublin's south inner city. The free paper is distributed to newsagents, community groups and social centres in the area and has a deliberate policy of not covering any DIT-related news.
Consequently, whereas Trinity News led its December issue with the implications of Charlie McCreevy's Budget for students, and the appointment of Mary Robinson as the first female chancellor of TCD, the Liberty put the plight of the inner city's homeless and a report on the prostitution scene on its front page.
The paper also featured reports on local drugs programmes, problems in flat complexes and the financial crisis in Tallaght Hospital.
However, the Liberty can afford complete editorial freedom - virtually all of its costs are covered by DIT. Trinity News, on the other hand, relies 70 per cent on advertising.
Other changes are afoot in student journalism. If you ask a present-day student editor in what field he or she would like to work after graduation, the answer is as likely to be "electronic publishing on the Internet" as the traditional career path of print journalism.
With those technological developments very much in mind, student newspapers - always quick to re-design and re-brand - are likely to mutate in an altogether more radical way over the next few years.
