Welcome to the first edition of Nouse of the 2022/23 academic year. We are one of many campus media societies, the university broadsheet newspaper and the oldest society at York. I look forward to you reading this edition and hopefully getting involved with Nouse this academic year.
Over the past summer, as you can see by the title of my editor’s note, I have really struggled to read the news. That doesn’t mean I don’t read the news at all. It was a little bit of a clickbait-y title, I must admit.
As I’m sure many people can relate to, I’ve found looking at newspapers, or loading the BBC on my phone to be depressing, draining and dystopian. That is nothing against the journalists at these organisations, who continue to do great work, but rather about the content of their articles.
Current affairs at the moment is one piece of bad news after another. The stories of people being forced into poverty as a result of rising prices, accounts of Ukrainians defending their country after being subject to a brutal invasion and (at the time of writing) the potential use of nuclear weapons and the continuous devastating effects of climate change to name a few. After being obsessed with reading the news multiple times throughout the day for many years, it is now something I force myself to do, making myself the newspaper editor who doesn’t read the news... out of choice.
I find myself being driven insane by the lack of action, especially on issues such as climate change which despite its very obvious consequences, doesn’t seem to qualify as a priority for many. This frustration and anger is a theme throughout this edition’s comment section, with articles on the importance of climate action and the need to address social class inequality. As well as a few more light-hearted pieces, such as whether one should get their food delivered or about the feelings of our editors towards Long Boi!
I hope that for those who decide to pick up our paper, they can see that we have tried to ensure that the stories and articles we include are not quite so depressing. We have a commemorative piece on the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to the University of York as well as a welcoming message from YUSU President, Pierrick Roger, in our news section. In Science, Ethan explains why the most recent NASA mission failed and the Sport section looks ahead to the new academic year, which of course means more sport!
At the beginning of this piece, I briefly mentioned getting involved with Nouse, something I hope you choose to do this year, whether that be writing an article, joining our editorial team, supporting us with a behind the scenes role, following us on social media (@yorknouse if you’re interested) or picking up your free print edition across campus.
We have a few events coming up in the next few weeks. We will be at Freshers’ Fair on 1 October, our Welcome Event is on 3 October in D/L/006 from 7pm and our AGM (elections with all positions available) is on 10 October from 6.30pm in P/L/001. We are also very excited about a joint student media social on 7 October from 7pm in DBar which is jointly hosted by York Vision, URY, YSTV, The Lemon Press and ourselves.
I have to finish this piece by thanking the Nouse team and I apologise for the Oscar sounding nature of this bit! To the Senior team: Hannah, Katy, Charis, Hannah and James, thank you for all your support this summer from your cleaning abilities to your outstanding writing and editing skills. You have all been truly fantastic and I am so excited to be working with you this year. I couldn’t do this job without each one of you, thank you!
And to the wider Nouse editorial team, thank you for your enthusiasm and willingness to help out over the past few months whether that be subbing articles or helping to recruit new members. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your articles and spending time in the office with you all. I love the Nouse community which we have begun to create. To those who don’t have articles in this edition, namely, Millie, Tom and Giuseppe. You are all such an integral part of Nouse and this society would not be the same without you, thank you for all the work you do.
My final thank you, is a cheesy one, but is to you, the reader. Thank you for picking up our edition of Nouse, I hope that you enjoy it.
