The History of Oxford Student Journalism

        There are so many aspects of Oxford life that remain unexplored

Charlie Bowden is an undergraduate finalist in History at Jesus College from Basingstoke, Hampshire. He edited The Oxford Student newspaper, interviews historians for OxPods, and is co-president of his college History society.

At the end of Trinity Term of my first year, mere days before Prelims (year 1 exams) began, I found out that I had been chosen as the next Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford Student, one of Oxford’s biggest student newspapers. Amongst the many plans and ideas that swirled in my head over summer as I began to get to grips with managing the paper, one crystallised that I would end up dedicating a lot of my second year to: researching and writing the first ever history of my student paper.

The idea sprung from quite an innocuous place. I received an email, alongside every other student at my college, from our chaplain letting us know that he had written a short history of the college chapel – its architecture, its artefacts and their donors, and its services from the sixteenth century to the present day. I thought that I might be able to apply the same brief but enthused historical approach to another Oxford institution which I knew nobody else had fully investigated.

Of course, the key difference between the history of a chapel and the history of a newspaper is the source base. Our chaplain could draw on legions of works of architectural and institutional history focused on Oxford, including multiple histories of the college itself; I had no such luck. In fact, when speaking to an Oxford alumnus who had completed a similar history project for another student society, I was told that I had a far more difficult job ahead of me than he did.

As The Oxford Student is owned by the Oxford SU, it does not have an independent office or archive where documents and past editions may be stored. I was thrilled to discover that almost all of the print editions ever published have been stored in the Bodleian Library, but any internal documentation had either been thrown away or lost in the many relocations the SU has undergone over the years. If nothing else, I at least had the key primary sources available to me, so I got to work.

Over the summer vacation of my first year I began to investigate previous iterations of the newspaper’s website on the Wayback Machine. It was there that I made a major initial discovery – that an editor of the paper twenty years before me had published an article exploring its history up to that point. I managed to make contact with that editor, as well as the alumni she had spoken to back in 2004, and they were all very willing to share their memories with me. The editor had also, as it turned out, organised a 15th anniversary party for the paper and as such was able to get in contact with many of her predecessors on my behalf. This was crucial to building the framework for the project as it became clear what editors cared about the most when telling me the stories of their tenure in charge.

When Michaelmas Term began and my tenure as Editor-in-Chief officially started, I arrived in Oxford a couple of weeks early to give myself time to dig into the paper’s archives in the Bodleian. I was able to make a good first start, but it would end up taking the entire academic year to read everything thoroughly. It was a difficult balancing act to keep momentum for the project going while running the paper and studying for my second year British History paper, and I often had to put it on the back burner to focus on more urgent deadlines. My enthusiasm and determination to see through what I had started kept me going.

By the end of term I had built up a good foundation of information from both old editions and interviews while keeping the paper itself and my tutorial essays afloat. Over the next two terms I continued to fit in the occasional Bodleian trip or alumni interview wherever I could, while making sure to not lose track of my academic work.

When it finally came to turning my notes into a written project, I decided to follow my chaplain’s lead in constructing a thematic rather than chronological history. This also suited me practically because I did not have equal amounts of information for every era of the paper due to print editions or alumni being unavailable to consult. Having discovered a treasure trove of pre-The Oxford Student news publications owned by the SU at the Oxfordshire History Centre, however, I happily made space to discuss the paper’s predecessors and foundation.

I ended up with a piece of text 25,000 words in length, having initially set out to publish a thesis-length project (12,000 words). I was pleasantly surprised by how many people were eager to review drafts of the work in spite of my concerns that it would be too long for many people to want to take a look at it. One of those people was a History tutor at my college who had provided me with valuable guidance and advice throughout the whole research and writing process.

With the assistance of the paper’s current creative director I also came up with a front cover displaying some of the most impactful front pages from across the paper’s history, and published the full thing online in September. If you’re interested you can view it here, and for those who prefer physical copies I’m happy to say that the History Faculty Library has agreed to store a printed and bound version of the project, which will be deposited by the end of this term. My college generously awarded me a grant to cover the costs of printing and binding.

My key takeaways from this incredibly fulfilling project are that:

• There are so many aspects of Oxford life that remain unexplored by either amateur or academic historians. If there’s a part of it that you’re enthusiastic to delve into, see if you can incorporate it into your thesis or complete an independent research project like mine.
• People, whether they be tutors, fellow students, librarians or alumni, will want to help you if you’ve put a lot of work into a project and their support can benefit you. Of course, there may be some who are unable to lend their time to you in that moment, but there will be many more who will be eager to assist you with your work. History is, after all, an intensely collaborative enterprise if you want it to be.
• If you’re an undergraduate, second year is probably the ideal time to get involved with long-term commitments, whether they be membership of a society committee or undertaking something separate from what’s already available in Oxford. Those activities will give you incredibly valuable skills that you can take into your academic work as well as life after your degree.