Farrago Editing Team:
Geir O'Rourke, Elizabeth Redman, Tim Forster
and Erin Handley.
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Behind the scenes of Farrago, the UoM's student paper
First published on 3 April 1925, Farrago is Australia's oldest student paper. One of the 2011 editors, Elizabeth Redman talks about running the paper and the team behind it.
How long has Farrago been around?
Farrago was started in 1925 and it’s changed quite a bit over the years. It used to be a broadsheet newspaper and was published more frequently. Now Farrago is more like a monthly magazine.
The editorial team changes each year. Why is that?
The editors are not appointed; we’re elected by the student body in the annual student union elections. This means there’s a fresh team every year. Plus, we’re happy to serve for a year and then let someone else have a turn.
Is there a hierarchy?
There’s four editors and we’re in the office pretty close to full-time. Most of us are only doing one uni subject a semester this year. There’s no editor-in-chief – we’re a team. We also manage a large team of student sub-editors and all of our writers.
When you’re not working on the magazine, what do you study and where do you hope it leads?
Like you might expect, we’re mainly Arts students who want to be writers of some kind. I am completing a BA in Media and Communications with a Diploma in French. I'd like to be a journalist. Tim is doing a BA in Politics and Screen studies with a Diploma in Spanish and he wants to be a writer. Erin is doing her honours year in English Literature after a BA in Literature and History with a Diploma in Spanish on the side; she would like to be an author of fiction or an academic. Geir’s BA is in politics and economics and he wants to be a journalist and writer.
What skills have you learned through your work at the magazine that will be valuable in these careers?
We’ve all written regularly for the magazine over the last few years and that helped us hone our writing skills, research skills and news judgement. It also taught us to respect deadlines, word counts, our readers and our editors. Now that we’re in the editorial chairs, we spend a lot of our time managing people and we’ve learned to work well as a team. We’ve also learned a bit about graphic design, website management, budgeting and the printing process. We’re very grateful for the opportunity to learn not only writing skills but a whole range of transferable skills as well.
What about past editors and writers? Where are they now?
They’re everywhere – publishing, journalism, politics, academia and other fields as well. Well-known former editors include Christos Tsiolkas, Geoffrey Blainey, Nam Le, Lindsay Tanner, Kate Legge, Morag Fraser and lots more. When we look at this list we’re very conscious that we have pretty big shoes to fill!
Elizabeth Redman
Editor at Farrago
W: union.unimelb.edu.au/farrago