Student newspaper

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A student newspaper is a regular publication made by students and mainly addressed to students. Their area of ​​distribution can extend to a single subject area (student union newspaper) or nationwide. They are usually distributed free of charge in university buildings, canteens and cafes. In communication science, they are more likely to be classified as magazines because of their content and presentation , but in their self-designation they continue to be mostly called student newspapers.

Structure and content

Three basic forms of student newspapers can be observed:

Created by student representatives

These are mostly financed entirely from the funds of the General Student Committee (AStA) or Student Council (StuRa) or student representatives. Their representatives also write the articles. In terms of content, these publications therefore often focus on university policy issues and reports on the projects of the student committees in the respective universities. The number of readers is therefore rather small. The AStA or StuRa organs have guaranteed financing through the semester fees . Your biggest problem is the lack of motivation of the committee members to work, which is why the publications sometimes appear quite irregular and the articles remain of inferior journalistic quality. The responsible speakers usually receive an expense allowance. The edition varies between a few hundred and a few thousand pieces.

Student city magazines

The employees of these student newspapers are all students who are usually not members of student bodies and want to work as a journalist. The own demands on the journalistic quality of the articles and the layout are therefore quite high. In addition to local and regional university politics, topics include lifestyle, culture, urban politics and event tips. The aim is to make the student newspapers attractive to those students who are not interested in university committees. In this respect, they are similar to city ​​magazines , albeit with a higher proportion of text. The funding is partly through advertisements, but also through regular subsidies from student representatives. The latter regularly leads to conflicts with these media if critical articles about the work of the AStA or StuRa were published before the funds were approved. Publishers are associations, GbRs or student representatives. Some editorial offices have secured their content-related independence with the publisher through their articles of association or editorial statutes.

In some cases the editor-in-chief and advertising agent are paid, and rarely also the layout designer. The student editors work unpaid.

Student city magazines appear regularly and several times during the lecture period with a circulation of several thousand. These usually only exist until their founders and key editors complete their studies. Hardly anyone is older than ten years. Long-lived exceptions are the bsz (Bochumer Stadt und Studierendenzeitung), which has been published without interruption since 1967, as well as the Unaufbelief of HU Berlin (since 1989), the Heidelberg student newspaper ruprecht (since 1987), the Akrützel from Jena (since 1990), the new universal from Trier (since 1994) and DER ALBRECHT from Kiel (since 1999). The Dortmund "Indopendent" in 2008 from the obligation lektüre replaced, which is aimed at students in the entire Ruhr region since the beginning of their appearance.

Regional and nationwide student newspapers

Founded by students, publications such as the nationwide magazines Audimax and Unicum or the Saxon ad rem now have a professional structure. The publisher is a publishing house built up by the newspaper founders, which finances the magazines distributed regionally or nationwide through advertisements. The editor-in-chief, publishing staff and advertising agents are paid, as are the editors and staff who receive line fees. Thematically, reports on lifestyle, pop culture and career entry dominate. Political and local issues tend to be avoided in order to be attractive to the largest possible target group - and thus to advertisers. The printed edition and distributed in the universities is up to approx. 415,000 copies (Unicum and Audimax). In addition, the left-wing critica has been published nationwide since 2008 .

The free Uni Spiegel (1998-2019, circulation approx. 200,000) and FAZ -Hochschulanzeiger , which are published by established publishers and a professional editorial team, can or can also be classified under this heading . Since October 2006, Zeit Campus, the first national magazine for students, has been published, which is produced by Zeit-Verlag in a significantly more complex way than the free magazines. The magazine is offered at a price of € 2.50 and has a sold circulation of 107,446 (IVW 4th quarter 2007).

Legal position

Student newspapers are publications in the sense of press law . In contrast to school newspapers, their distribution in university buildings cannot be prevented by the university management, provided the content is neither clearly commercial nor violates personal rights.

history

19th century to 1945

The first student newspapers appeared at the beginning of the 19th century, initially in the environment of the original fraternity in Jena and in the course of the liberal progress movement of the 1840s. However, these early start-ups were usually short-lived and often threatened by censorship .

The student press system flourished for the first time in the decades after the founding of the Reich : on the one hand, many of the magazines of the large corporation associations , some of which still appear today, were created at that time . a. the Wingolfsblätter (1872), Unitas (1878), the "Kyffhäuser-Zeitung" of the VVDSt (1881) and the Burschenschaftlichen Blätter (1887). On the other hand, the then emerging free student movement of non-incorporated students produced a large number of its own magazines, including the "Finkenblätter" (1898) founded by Paul Ssymank .

After the First World War, the association organs of the political student groups were added, but they had little effect on the student body. Numerous AStA and DSt groups also maintained their own local or regional university newspapers. Towards the end of the Weimar Republic (1930), a total of 103 student newspapers appeared in the German Reich, 66 of them association magazines and 37 general student publications.

After 1933 most of these newspapers were banned or discontinued; What remained were the organs of the Nazi student union and the Reichsstudentenführung created in 1936 .

Student newspapers in the Federal Republic

After the war, a number of political student newspapers were created (including the Bonner Akut from 1949 , the Münsteraner Semesterspiegel from 1954, the Tübinger Notes from 1956, specifically from 1957). In addition to general political debates about compulsory military service in Germany , emergency laws and social reforms, the mostly left-wing publications also dealt very much with the structures at the university. The authors called for co-determination in the university committees, independent student representatives ( student parliaments) and for professors to come to terms with the Nazi past.

Later, the student representatives took over the financing of the publications in order to ensure an independent student public. When the politicization subsided in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a number of newspapers went dead. In the case of many survivors, the focus shifted significantly, away from fundamental political debates and committee reports to more lifestyle, service and entertainment.

In recent years, students at medium-sized universities have tried to sell their publications exclusively online in order to save printing costs, but without much success. Most student publications remain dependent on grants from student councils. However, some are only financed through advertising.

Student newspapers in the GDR

In the GDR , independent student newspapers only existed in samizdat , especially in the university cities of East Berlin , Leipzig and Jena . Students like Jürgen Fuchs were due to participation in the critical literature publications of the Stasi observed and expelled . These were exceptions, however, because the majority of the students in the GDR were apolitical - if only because of the high level of selection before the start of their studies. For them there was the FDJ publication Forum , which was distributed throughout the GDR. Thematically, the censored paper focused on study training, reports on harvest operations, congresses or other student events, as well as essays by and interviews with scientists.

This only changed in 1989, when criticism also arose at the GDR universities in the course of the autumn protests . The first independent student newspaper UnAufberford at the HU Berlin appeared for the first time at the beginning of November 1989, followed by ad rem (Dresden), Ohne Filter (Leipzig) and Akrützel (Jena) on December 14th . Soon the newly founded student councils, later also self-publishers, took over the financing. Many of the turning sheets were received by the mid-1990s. Committee publications with predominantly university policy debates found no readers among the politically skeptical East Germans. The few that remained were transformed into regional magazines or city student newspapers.

literature

  • Hans Bohrmann: Structural change in the German student press. Student policy and student magazines 1848–1974 , Munich 1975 ISBN 3794040201 .
  • Markus Höppener: Opinions on campus. The admissibility of a magazine edition by the student interest group at the university , Baden-Baden 2000 ISBN 3789066117 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b https://www.journalistenkolleg.de/lexikon-journalismus/studentenzeitung Deutsches Journalistenkolleg, Lexikon
  2. ↑ Zeit Campus reached 107,446 copies sold in the fourth quarter of 2007 ( Memento of the original from February 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Zeit-Verlag press release, January 14, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zeitverlag.de
  3. ↑ Bohrmann p. 37 f. and 41 f.
  4. ↑ Bohrmann p. 50 ff., 57.
  5. ↑ About us - AKUT Bonn. Accessed on September 12, 2018 (German).