With Student Union (SU) elections around the corner, I recently sat down with one hopeful candidate running for the position of University Times (UT) editor, Charlie Hastings, to talk about his campaign and plans for UT if he was elected.
Hastings is currently in his fourth year majoring in English with an Italian minor. He was the music editor of UT in first year and assistant editor in second year – which he was fired from, followed by a position as Chair of the Editorial Board in his third year. Hastings sees his time spent working at UT as key to why he would be suited for the role of editor.
His time as assistant editor was “tumultuous”. Given this past experience, a priority of his he continuously flags is the welfare of the students at the paper.
Before we get into his plans for UT however, Hastings fills me in on a bit of the paper’s background. The paper was started in 2009 by Robert Donohoe, the Comms officer at the time. “It was founded in the beginning because they wanted a form of checks and balances for the rest of the Union”. The paper, though a part of the SU, “operates relatively outside [of it]” and there is a clause in the SU constitution that prohibits a UT editor from being impeached by other Union members. Hastings would like to remove this clause.
“I fear power that’s unchecked, so I would like to change that, but full disclosure…just like with any [kind of] constitution….it’s really, really hard to change it.…so I just hope that people understand that if I was elected, it would be my number one priority to just be a good editor,” so that there would be no need for such a clause to be revoked in the first place.
Hastings’ passion for journalism began long before coming to Trinity. “I have three brothers…and I was the middle child, so nobody really cared what I was doing – which was good in a lot of ways – but when my brothers would act up, I would take a crayon and write on a piece of copy paper just like all the shit that they did. And then I’d give it to my parents when they got home like this is the rap sheet. And then eventually I realised hmm this is kind of like journalism”.
Hastings was also the editor of his highschool newspaper which “was a lot of fun”. He has also been published in local newspapers and has completed a few news internships. The journalism he most enjoys doing is magazine writing. He adds though that “news is great. I really appreciate the ability that news has to reveal what’s going on and tell people the truth and hold people accountable. That’s really exciting”.
He also founded Get a Grip magazine with a number of other students in his second year at Trinity. “It might have actually been in this study room, or maybe one of the other ones over, but I had like 12 people in here…we all came together….and we just created our own thing….it was lots of fun”. The paper ended when members left on exchanges abroad in third year but the Get a Grip website is still up online for anyone interested in reading past articles. “We had a good six to eight month run…it was really fun when we were doing it….it taught me a lot”.
“I think the number one thing is, I’ve just been around for such a long time…I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. I’ve had senior roles [at UT] for two out of the four years I’ve been here”. (He is not currently working at UT because he is focusing on his thesis). “I know what works at an administration level….and I’ve seen a lot of stuff really crash and burn, and so I know to avoid those things”.
Hastings ran for the position of editor last year and lost to Brídín Ní Fhearraigh-Joyce by 148 votes. What made him decide to run again?
“It mainly comes down to the fact that I know I can improve the paper. I’ve been there long enough to where I completely trust my judgment when it comes to what’s right for it, what isn’t. I really, really care about it…since my first day, this is what I wanted to do”.
“Did you know in 2017 the University Times won an award, the Society of Professional Journalists, a US-based thing….for the best student newspaper in the world?”
“[UT] also won two awards for the best designed student newspaper on the planet in 2015 and 2016. Read the Wikipedia page, this is all on there”.
Hastings praises Ní Fhearraigh-Joyce and previous editor Clara Roche for their work at upholding the high standard of the paper and states that his goal is to “just continue the momentum, because I know we can be the paper that was winning those world class journalism and design awards again”.
“I’ve really admired what Brí has done…she has done a lot for the Irish section of the newspaper”. On this point, Hastings tells me he would try to “expand off of that” by trying to encourage Irish speakers of all levels to engage with the paper. “There’s a lot of room to have a spectrum, where you have…translated Irish articles, where you have articles originally written in Irish, and maybe where you have, like, a sentence of the week in Irish, where you could learn how to say: ‘the seagulls ate my sandwich”. A phrase we both agree would be useful.
Have his plans for the paper changed much from last year? “I would say the main points are the same”. Hastings lists welfare as being one of his top priorities. If appointed, he would hold “Journalism 101” classes and welfare meetings with all UT editors “at least once a month”. He would also have 9-5 office hours for people to meet with him on their own time.
His other main point is visibility. Hastings plans to dedicate a “space to where [underrepresented] people can share their stories”. When asked about the role of the visibility editor mentioned in his manifesto, Hastings explains that this person would be appointed not to speak on behalf of minority groups but to act as “more of a recruitment agent” by running pitch call outs and building “a community to where all these people can come together and share what’s being underrepresented currently”.
“Once we have that space where you can reliably open the newspaper and find stories like that every single time, I’d like to be able to spread them out…have some in Radius….in the main news section…in the magazine. If you just have [these stories] in one space, that kind of makes it seem like some sort of ‘other’. But it’s not, it’s meant to be a normal thing that we can all appreciate as human beings. So that’s the goal. I think we need more stories in that regard. And so that is my plan, to get those stories in the newspaper”.
Hastings also intends to put more emphasis on improving Radius, the magazine component of UT. “Considering it’s the most well-circulated, the most well-funded magazine on campus, there can be a lot done to make it not only just more itself, but just more important in the newspaper in general”.
“I think because Brí this year has covered a lot of what I wanted to do in the news section…I think I’m safe to shift my attention more towards the culture stuff, and that’s what I’m good at anyway, and that’s what I like to do”.
“I think more attention needs to be paid to the auxiliary sections of the newspaper; radius magazine, culture, supplements, commentary, sports”. Hastings would really like to see women’s sports covered more in the newspaper. “It’s been really hard to find someone who can consistently and accurately write about sports at Trinity, and because sports itself is suffering, women’s sports is going to suffer even more, because we’re not even giving sports coverage a chance….so that’s a big thing”.
Another key part of Hastings’ manifesto is community. Again, he emphasises the importance of office hours. He also thinks that pitch callouts are “a really easy, really underutilized way to foster community,” and he would ask the editor of each different news section to send out not only pre-written pitches for people to claim but also do pitch callouts for specific topics, “nudging people in the right direction….because if you just say ‘give me anything’ people don’t know…and so most of the time people just go with what’s being listed.”
In his manifesto, Hastings also stated that he would begin a Letters to the Editor section. “I hope that there would be enough interest in writing a letter to the editor to where I could print a reliable section on that every month…when I first thought of that idea, it was mainly for checks and balances reasons, like if I obligated myself to print letters to The Editor every month and someone was like, hey this needs to be improved, and that was put in the paper for people to see, it could give people an opportunity to follow up… to share their own ideas”.
Hastings is full of praise for the work of this year’s Student Union. “I have nothing but good things to say about this year’s Students Union. That being said, like I said before, my job is to always keep an open eye on the Students Union. That’s what the University Times was created to do”.
What is the most important point of his manifesto? Hastings does not hesitate. “Welfare, easy. Just considering the personal experiences that I’ve had with the University Times, and knowing full well that, because I’ve been in those situations on the staff side of it, I can know what to do on the editor side of it….trusting myself in that regard, I think, is giving me the confidence to go after that particular point in my manifesto with the most vigour”.
Hastings plans to continue the broadsheet layout of UT. “I appreciate the Broadsheet format. I appreciate its history, and I like that. It feels like a genuine newspaper in your hands. So I’ll keep it”.
