Pelican (magazine)

Pelican is the University of Western Australia's student magazine. It is financed by the UWA Guild with approximately 1,000 copies of each issue published and distributed around the university campus. It is Australia's second oldest student paper, having begun publication in 1929.[1]

Pelican
TypeStudent newspaper
FormatMagazine
Owner(s)University of Western Australia Student Guild
Founded1929
LanguageEnglish
HeadquartersPerth, Western Australia
Websitewww.pelicanmagazine.com.au

Pelican publishes six print editions per year. Pelican is aimed at Perth's tertiary students and young people aged between 18 and 28 frequenting the inner-metropolitan area.[2] Each print edition is centred on a theme, and includes regular reviews (books, music, television, film, and arts); opinion pieces; campus news; and current affairs analysis.

History

Founded in 1929, Pelican lays claim to being the country's second-oldest student newspaper, after Farrago.

Originally, Pelican took the form of a weekly current affairs broadsheet. Geoffrey Bolton's anecdotes of the 1950s Pelican notes the involvement of Rolf Harris and John Stone.[3] It also had various fluctuations in its publication.[4] Before the student union had its own building in more recent years, the publication's office was in what has since reverted to university usage.[5]

Over the years, it has moved between being a "tabloid"-sized magazine, and having both glossy finishes and newspaper print covers. It became an ongoing tradition that the Pelican editor appears naked on the cover of the final edition, although it is unknown when this tradition began. Research by former Pelican editor Henry Skerritt, published in his final editorial of 2000, suggests that this tradition began in 1972.[6]

Content

Typically, each edition of Pelican circulates around a particular theme. Each isue also includes articles that deal more broadly with politics, popular culture, and aspects of the student lifestyle. Pelican also includes coverage of music, books, film, television, and the arts. These are ordered within individual sub-sections, each of which is coordinated by a different section editor.

Voluntary student unionism

The implementation of voluntary student unionism in 2006 had a significant impact on the viability of student newspapers across Australia, compulsory student union membership fees having been the major source of income for most. Pelican is one of the few Australian papers to have not been affected by these changes, and this can be largely attributed to the high voluntary membership intake of the University of Western Australia Student Guild.

Controversy

In late 2007, in the lead up to the federal election of that year, UWA student and Australian Labor Party candidate for the seat of O'Connor, Dominic Rose, was caught up in a national controversy over an article published in Pelican. It was revealed that some time before his preselection, the student had written a piece in which he referred to then Labor Party leader and Prime Ministerial hopeful Kevin Rudd as a "filthy Liberal".[7] The story was carried nationally and appeared in major publications, including The Age,[8] news.com.au,[9] The Herald Sun,[10] and the national broadsheet The Australian.[11]

Footnotes
  1. "About Pelican". 13 July 2015. Retrieved 11 April 2023.
  2. "Guild - Pelican Student Newspaper". Archived from the original on 2 April 2009. Retrieved 19 March 2009.
  3. Bolton, G (2003), The tyranny of distance revisited, Melbourne University Press, retrieved 11 April 2023 The trove summary of the item includes the comment 'At the beginning of 1950 I was the editor of the pelican, the student newspaper for the University of Western Australia' and further anecdotes.
  4. ""The Pelican" Ceases Publication". Kalgoorlie Miner. Vol. 57, no. 15937. Western Australia. 5 April 1951. p. 2. Retrieved 11 April 2023 – via National Library of Australia.
  5. A three-man Philippines University debating team, Benjamin Navarro Muego, a student of Sociology and captain of the team; Rufo Opinior Gonzalez, a Humanities third year Honours student at Ateneo de Manila University, majoring in Philosophy; and Enrique Voltaire Ramos Garcia, a law student, began an Australian tour in Perth, Western Australia on 3-6 May, 1964 and scored a narrow win when it took the for side in a debate on capital punishment against a University of Western Australia team - in the editorial office of the University of Western Australia undergraduate paper Pelican, Benjamin Muego (left) discusses various aspects of campus journalism with Pelican editor Roderick Lyall a fourth year Arts Honours degree student [photographic image] / photographer, Richard Woldendorp. 1 photographic negative: b&w, acetate, 1964, retrieved 11 April 2023
  6. Pelican Magazine, volume 71, edition 8, October 2000, p.5.
  7. "Labor hopeful's Rudd rant". 3 October 2007.
  8. "Labor hopeful's Rudd rant". 3 October 2007.
  9. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22521707-5013469,00.html
  10. "Inspired by Rudd's plan for Dominic Rose | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog". Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 19 March 2009.
  11. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22522602-11949,00.html

References
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