Toward the end of the 2010s then Nexus Editor Lyam Buchanan and Critic Editor Joel McManus before people recognised his actual talents in journalism, hatched a scheme to buy Wellington’s Salient Magazine. Now, Salient was never actually for sale, but issues with Victoria University and VuWsa had created a significant risk that it would be defunded.
After running it by almost no one, Lyam and Nexus offered up to 10 BurgerFuel Vouchers redeemable at Five Cross Roads only, some leftover sports supplement packs, and, I think, some of those weird books that were bordering on Animal porn that guy used to give out across the country. For his part, McManus chipped in with some minor considerations and a slightly scratched but still playable copy of Jonah Lomu Rugby for the PS1. Salient reacted with a slightly less funny response, but they tried. Humour just never found its way to a Wellington office.
The point, as it was pitched at the time, was to raise awareness of the increasing risk of funder control and scrutiny in a voluntary student membership environment. And while it was the first time, it certainly wasn’t the last. Student Media is filled with instances since 2011 of angry Chancellors demanding retractions and threatening the removal of funds, or a board of students making fundamental changes to operating models of magazines because they were critical or reached a culture that people who would run for a political position didn’t understand.
As a result, magazines died or got absorbed into things that are so far removed from what they were that it makes you wonder why they kept the name. Gone were student magazines like Gyro, Satellite, Chaff, and Magneto. Nexus went from 4,000 copies to 1,000 on better paper, and Salient had issues with its run and numbers, too. There was even a period where Canta just stopped for a while. Through it all, though, Critic was the proverbial shining city on the hill. Untouchable, outspoken and the very embodiment of “Critic and Conscience.”
Then, with very little warning Critic announced that every second week it would drop down from 48 pages to 16 for Critic Lite. It was a decision made not for creative reasons but financial ones. People who didn’t understand or couldn’t reconcile the immense benefit that outweighed the cost made a black and white decision just short of a month after having a massive Gala event and celebrating Critic turning 100, which screams of the worst kind of patent hypocrisy.
When you strip everything away, including their record halls of Aotearoa Student Press Awards (which Nexus has also won many of, but doesn’t give a fuck about), you have to wonder what this decision served. We don’t have the answers, and we are not going to pretend we do. When faced with similar decisions, we cut the run rather than the pages and just hoped we had done enough to migrate students online. BUT we also have a wholly different structure than they do. Nexus is independent but published by the WSU, and the WSU, while appreciative of ads, has never made them key to our existence. If they had, we would have been fucked a long time ago. We are also in a good space with the University. The Vice Chancellor wore a beer hat and a toga, and a deputy Vice-Chancellor told us they were eager to find out if Al Gillespie was a witch. We got to this point by having steady growth and structures and earned institutional trust to be fair and critical without always being confrontational. The reality is that we know we are George Harrison and Critic is John Lennon, we know that they are important, and we want to be on record saying if people are throwing stones at them, then we will stand next to them… unless those people are us, then it is banter(?)
Nexus has been lucky to survive through a lot of this. Some is good management; most is good timing. But Critic being underfunded is just fucking stupid.
Our student magazine has almost a 60-63-year history, depending on who you talk to of taking unpopular stances that ultimately history agreed with: Nexus was pro a woman’s right to choose, anti-apartheid, pro-Palestinian, pro-marijuana reform, and pro-allowing Catholics in Lady Goodfellow (the church, not the person, but no kink shaming from us). We were anti-Coldplay and Nickelback before the world caught up.
Student Magazines are important, advertising sucks at the moment, but just bite the bullet and negotiate a way for Critic to keep 40-48 pages every week. Because once it is gone, it is gone.
The lesson in all of this is to vote. Whether in student or national elections, take the time to find out what the people you elect actually value. Do they like Student Magazines? Do they want to see digital spaces like video and podcasts grow? Will they protect the institutions you value and stand up for you?
If the designers have done their job right, there will be a QR code linking to a petition to sign. It is one that the Nexus staff received from a critic. If not, we have written too much for a two-page spread.
To our friends at Critc (and Canta, Massive, Debate, Craccum), hang in there, you are doing a great job! To our friends at Salient, when we heard the news, we really thought it would be you. So it clearly wasn’t a decision made on product quality. Je suis Critic.
And if you are reading this Joel McManus, if Critic really can’t find a tenable way forward then Nexus is willing to offer 20 BurgerFuel vouchers, 4 Orientation 2015 tee-shirts (the ones we couldn’t wear because #ori looked like a slur in that typography) .
