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York Report 
 
York Report 
is a fortnightly magazine programmecreated for York University students, coveringexclusively campus-relevant issues. Shows arepresented live (except for the occasional pre-recorded special) and include live interviews along with pre-prepared packages and interviews,and a rundown of the latest campus headlines.For URY,
York Report 
was a new programme for the new 2008/09 academic year. We created itbecause the students of the University of York were in need of a campus current affairs sourcewhich could respond to the subjects which were most important to them in a reliable,informative, unbiased and accessible manner. Over the last three terms we feel that
York Report 
has established itself as just that. Here’s how:
York Report 
has four key objectives, each of which is derived from the desire to represent andserve the students of the University of York. We aim to:1) Keep the audience up-to-date on the most crucial campus news.2) Report on campaigns/issues which the student body have shown to be important to them.3) Find the student/campus angle on key national stories and inform students on the relevanceto them.4) Where possible, advise students on issues such as welfare and careers.The accompanying audio will give you an idea of how we went about fulfilling these objectives,but let’s look at them one a time. [References to points in the audio entry are in square brackets]1)
York Report 
broadcasts fortnightly, meaning it is produced more regularly than either of YorkUniversity’s campus papers. This therefore makes us something of a one-stop campus newssource. Rather than having to pick up both papers to get the most important news, students canget most of it in one place from us. As well as running through the university headlines eachedition, throughout the last year we’ve closely covered such big stories as the opening of theUniversity’s first Student Union bar (after 40 years of waiting) [0’10’’], a racial equality scandalinvolving the Admission Service, the Battle of the Bands final, and the Student Union elections[4’55’’]. On each occasion we were able to provide the listener with the views of all of thenecessary parties in all their triumphant/apologetic/ecstatic/(un)charismatic glory.
York Report 
makes keen use of 
vox pop-
ing – so that we can demonstrate what other students think of theissues involved, and prove that it really is the students who are setting our agenda.2) Speaking of letting the students set the agenda; to fulfil our second objective we pay closeattention to what campaigns are taking place on campus, as well as gauging student responseto stories from other campus sources. A particularly good example of a feature stemming fromthis is our coverage of the “Disarm” campaign, which followed the reporting of further increasesin the University’s investment in the arms trade [4’20’’]. We feel that we represented our 
 
audience well with this coverage – for us, the story wasn’t the increase in investment itself, butthe student reaction to it.3) The key national stories which have particularly affected York University students over thelast year are, of course, the economic recession and the disappearance (and suspectedmurder) of University chef, Claudia Lawrence. We found from talking to graduating students thatthey were very much concerned about how the recession would affect their employability – sowe spoke to the University’s careers service on behalf of those students [3’40’’]. ClaudiaLawrence’s disappearance received enormous national coverage, but we were able to presentthe story in the more detailed fashion needed to actually jog the memory of any York studentwho may have seen something significant at the time. We dedicated a whole show to doing this,along with informing the students on the progress of the investigation [1’11’’].4) It was with the Claudia Lawrence coverage that we truly came into our own in this sense.Understandably, a number of students demonstrated to us that a suspected murder so close tohome had led them to fear for their own safety on and around campus. We therefore workedwith the York University Student Union Welfare Office and produced advisory content such asthe personal attack alarm (or “rape alarm”) package [2’35’’]. Wherever necessary, we alsoinclude details of other sources for anyone who wants further information on issues raised in theprogramme (e.g. telephone numbers for the Careers Service’s or Welfare Office, and helpfulweb addresses). We also try to offer advice where things get a bit complicated (as so often theydo in Student Union matters). For example, as well as talking through the intricate changes inthe positions for the SU Elections [mentioned at 5’02’’], we produced a light-hearted breakdownof the ridiculously complex voting system. The breakdown made this dull and problematicsubject sufficiently entertaining that it was also adopted by one of the campus news websites aspart of their election night coverage too. In trying to meet these objectives,
York Report 
has produced a wide variety of content over thelast year, attempting to use an array of different journalistic styles. The most obvious contrastdemonstrated by the accompanying audio is perhaps that between the sensitive and formal toneof the Claudia Lawrence special [1’11’’] and the more relaxed, upbeat SU election coverage.Our aim is to always provide a tone appropriate to the story. We also try very hard not topatronise our audience – because we try to let them set the agenda, we know that they knowwhat we’re on about, and we know that they are interested in the issues.What started off as a very small group has turned into a large
York Report 
team reflecting thecampus’ diversity. We are very proud to be bringing the students the radio coverage they needand hope to continue to do so. 
Track List
•
1
0:10 :: New SU Bar package (Rob Watts)
•
2
1:11 :: Claudia Lawrence special (Dave Tracz)
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