- ‘The College Times’ masthead
Jack Leahy
Deputy News Editor
The University Times has learned of plans to launch a student tabloid website based around the Dublin third-level institutions. The project involves a significant proportion of staff of the Midnight promotions group, who run events in Alchemy and Dandelion nightclubs on Monday and Wednesday respectively. Former Dublin City University Student Greta Dunne – a member of the private Midnight Facebook group for staff – will serve as editor.
- ‘The College Times’ demo homepage
The College Times, a project that recognises the lack of a tabloid student newspaper in Ireland, will be launched in the near future and boasts an Exsite-designed demo website. Existe is a Dublin-based web design company that also designed the Midnight website. The high level of recent activity suggests that the site is being primed for launch in the near future and a number of articles already accessible refer to the start of the summer period as a premise.
It includes sections on student news, sports, gig reviews, travel, student classifieds, a ‘Confession Book’ forum in which users post details of minor transgressions, and a section entitled ‘It’s All About Sex’, among others. A number of articles appear pseudonymously, with Theta Omicron frat leader Jack O’Connor offering advice on the execution of contraceptive application, anal sex, and the female orgasm in the latter section. O’Connor posted his finished articles in the College Times staff Facebook group but the online versions appear under the names ‘Conor Jackson-Wild’, ‘Conor Jackson Wild’, and ‘Connor Jackson-Wild’. It is unclear if any of the site’s other articles are written under pseudonyms.
Suggestions that the project is being run by the Midnight group come from the involvement of a number of core Midnight staff – director Jamie White, Dan O’Brien, Orla Byrne, O’Connor, Rob Walsh, among many others – though the site’s currently available content does not immediately suggest that the site will be used as a promotional tool for the brand. In total, the College Times staff group and the Midnight staff group – both private and exclusive – have sixteen members in common.
The site also advertises yet-to-be-launched Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts, as well as an interactive poll gathering users’ opinions on nightlife, sexual positions, and post-education life choices.
