‘INFINITE MONKEY THEOREM’ refers to the idea that if you sat a load of monkeys at typewriters, they would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. Now imagine what would happen if you gave the monkeys a university education and a grant of £10,000 a year? It turns out that this is a real social experiment and it’s called “Pi Media”. We're still waiting for our masterpiece.
The grandiose title, Pi Media, is the umbrella term for Pi Magazine, Pi Squared and Pi Matrix (the website). Unfortunately it seems that when Pi expanded the franchise, they inadvertently diluted any quality which may have previously existed. The truth is that Pi Media wastes money, is badly managed, poorly written and has lost its selfrespect.
Pi gets one of the biggest grants of the UCLU clubs and societies, being handed an impressive £10,000 every year. A nice tidy sum to work with, you might think; but that’s not all! Pi also receives an approximate further £10,000 from advertisers (those nice people at Deloitte who throw money at students in return for their souls, at al.) Add the membership fees of approximately £700 per year and that all adds up to a lot of moolah.
So how does it all get spent? While membership fees go towards social events, each issue of the magazine costs approximately £2,000, and each issue of the newspaper costs £1,000. With six copies of each publication being produced per year, that totals a whopping £18,000 of expense. No dount a Pi columnist would describe this sum as being equivalent to 115 Bacardi Breezers and a pair of Louboutins; clearly we're talking big money here. Unfortunately, it’s not all being well-spent. Forlorn stacks of unread Pi are a familiar sight to many students, and (like the circle of life) these unread copies are inevitably pulped. Media & Communications Officer (and Editor-in-Chief of Pi) Sean Clothier was vague about total wastage, claiming that there are usually “around 300 copies” of Pi Squared left-over every print run, and that there were “no more than a couple of hundred” of Pi Magazine. How would he explain the existence of at least 400 copies of the magazine from the last issue still in unopened boxes in the Union and stacks of unread copies in common rooms across college, I wonder?
He who pays the Pi-per
This ‘distribution malfunction’ appears not to be a one-off problem. The UCLU Fire Officer has previously requested that boxes of Pi be removed from the back of 25 Gordon Street, and the Treasurer and Editor-elect, Chris Blanchard, recently admitted that “distribution factors meant that issue 668 ended up with ten or twelve boxes to be recycled.” With each issue costing £2,000 to produce, issue 668 effectively led to £600 being pissed up a wall.
But it’s not just about the money. Service and Events Officer, Olivia Alford, objects to Pi Media in terms of waste. She points out that UCLU has a green initiative and that glossy magazines are notoriously hard ro recycle. It’s a fair point; why bother producing hundreds of magazines no one will ever read? it does seems inconsistent for UCLU to claim green credentials while producing masses of glossy toilet-paper...
Trashed and wasted
Money and pulping aren't the only kinds of waste, however; there’s an awful lot more, and it’s inside the publications. Past and current Pi staff members freely admit that the magazine and newspaper are badly managed, designed and written. Yet it didn’t always used to be this way.
Way back in 2004, Pi was a runner-up in the NUS/Daily Mirror Awards. At the time, the judges praised the “sleek design” and “impressive content” of the magazine and described it as “packed with content and easily readable”. The M&C Officer at the time described Pi as “the UCL community magazine, written by UCL students for the UCL community.” How nice for Pi of yesteryear; though it makes Pi 2008 look a little shit in comparison.
Catch-22
Interestingly, the constitution still states that Pi ought to be “a quality monthly magazine that is well designed, widely distributed and a stimulating read” providing UCL students with “a quality magazine that entertains and provokes, but more importantly, a forum in which to encourage students to write articles and attain journalistic experience.”
“Provocative” obviously means different things to different people. When past-editor Oliver Smith was asked about the content of Pi magazine, he declared, “students don’t want politics, they want smut.” With regards to “encouraging students to... attain journalistic experience”, Smith claimed that, when he left the magazine last year, “only a small percentage of the [105-strong] membership are writers” and that just “a few writers” write everything.
When asked why this was the case, Smith described it as “a Catch-22 situation; Pi is shit, so no one wants to write for it; so it stays shit”. What a depressing sentiment, considering that it’s the editor who is “responsible for encouraging new writers to contribute and make everyone aware of media events.”
On that note, Alford has also complained that Pi doesn’t publicise Union events enough, despite the Constitution stating that it should. Alford feels that the newspaper “is not relevant to students” and that the magazine “isn’t tackling key issues”. Her main question is, “why does the Union give Pi such a large grant, if it doesn’t serve the Union at all?” A very good question indeed, and one that remains unanswered.
Low Pi.Q.
While not reporting on relevant student issues, there has been a rash of unfortunate stories appearing in the publications. It seems that the ‘brightest and best’ of UCL are only just about capable of cobbling together pieces about builders rating female students (charming) and describing rugby society antics as “gay”.
In terms of consistency, Pi has managed to include an obligatory Facebook story in almost every issue this year; so well done. Smith declares that this is because “the Facebook community is better than the UCL community”. If that is the case, we may as well just give up now and never leave our computer screens.
Perhaps while we're there, we could check out Pi Matrix - surely it fares better than the paper publications? Oddly, out of the £20k Pi gets each year, only £50 is spent on the website. This might explain why, in March 2008, the listed contact details were... er, two years out of date. Not exactly at the forefront of technology then.
Everyone hates Pi
Very few people would argue that Pi Media is good value for money. Many students feel embarrassed to be represented by the magazine and it hardly seems to be an asset to the Union. Pi itself seems to have lost its self respect (does anyone remember their self-deprecating but cringeworthy “everyone hates Pi” stunt in the Quad?) So what needs to be done?
In terms of monetary waste, Alford says, “the balance needs to be redressed in terms of spending” considering that “they haven’t got a clue what to do with all that money.” With regards to physical waste, Sean has said, “We're investigating better ways to decide how many we need”. Unfortunately, the problem of waste within the magazine is a little harder to solve.
Someone’s got it infamy
If Pi doesn’t give students Union news, or provoke readers intellectually, or even foster a sense of community at UCL, then what is it doing? When previous editors have the attitude that “infamy is better than anonymity”, things can only get worse.