Type Weekly newspaper Owner(s) LSE Students' Union Editor Greg Sproston | Format Tabloid Publisher Mortons Print Founded 1949 | |
The Beaver is the weekly newspaper of the LSE Students' Union at the London School of Economics, England.
Contents
- History
- News
- Comment
- Features
- PartB
- The Union
- Interviews
- Sports
- The City
- Notable former contributors
- References
The Beaver has a strong tradition of hard-nosed, intelligent reporting. Around 2,500 copies are published and distributed around campus every Tuesday as well as online. The Beaver is governed by the Collective, a body of students who have contributed three or more written pieces or photographs to the paper and elects the editorial staff. The paper is made up of sections for News, Comment, Features, The City, The Union, The NAB and Sport, as well as an arts and culture supplement, PartB.
History
Named after the School's mascot, the Beaver, which was chosen “as representing an industrious animal with social habits”, The Beaver newspaper was first published in its recognised format on 5 May 1949, and is one of the oldest student newspaper in the UK. The British Library of Political and Economic Science holds print and digital archives of the paper dating back to this first issue, which was christened by George Bernard Shaw, one of the LSE's founders. Since then it has gone through several makeovers, survived LSE's turbulent history and emerged to be one of the most respected and widely read student newspapers in the UK.
News
The Beaver's news section has consistently been among the strongest in UK student media, consisting of LSE, University of London and Higher Education stories from across Britain, frequently being quoted in the national press. A recent example concerned the story of the LSE Council having discussed the option of privatisation, which was subsequently reported by a number of national newspapers including The Guardian.
Comment
Comment publishes pieces discussing issues that are relevant to the LSE community, political analysis, social commentary, original cartoons, and debate. The extensive range of articles and letters featured reflects the broad readership of the paper. Contributions to the Comment section have been wide-ranging and varied, from former LSE Director Sir Howard Davies to lay students. The name of the section was changed from Opinion to Comment in 2013.
Features
The Features section of the paper deals with international relations, politics and strategic affairs. Interviews were a quintessential part of the Features section until 2015, and previous interviews conducted by Taryana Odayar have been with Economics Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, Ministers such as Marcelo Neri; the former Brazilian Minister of Strategic Affairs, North Korean defector Hyeonseo Lee, Dr Mattia Romani; Managing Director for Country and Sector Economics at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as the head of the AOM NGO from Liberia during the peak of the Ebola crisis, and academics such as German Historian Sonke Neitzel. Other prominent interviewees in the past have been Sir Nicholas Stern and Queen Noor of Jordan, and Ambassadors such as the Lithuanian Ambassador to the UK.
PartB
Launched in 2005, PartB is The Beaver's arts and culture supplement. It contains sections dedicated to music, film, literature, theatre, fashion, visual arts, food, television and satire. It regularly contains interviews with prominent cultural figures as diverse as Alan Bennett, Gerald Scarfe, M83, Nigel Slater, Stewart Lee, and Nick Heyward of Haircut 100.
The following year, PartB was shortlisted for Best Student Magazine in the Guardian Student Media Awards.
The Union
Launched in 2015 by former Executive Editor Ellen Wilkie, The Union aims to provide students with an insight into the inner workings and aims of the LSE SU.
Interviews
Launched in 2016 by then Executive Editor Taryana Odayar, notable interviews have included the President of Kiribati HE Anote Tong, Vice President of Panama Isabel de Saint Malo de Alvarado, former Syriza Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, London Bureau Chief of the New York Times Steven Erlanger, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance Dr Ethan Nadelmann, winner of the 2015 Young African Achiever Award James Woods-Nkhutabasa, and Director of LSE IDEAS Dr John Collins amongst others.
Sports
The Sports section has a mix of match reports from LSE teams and comment on world sports. Has courted controversy in the past with its traditionally dismissive approach to the sporting efforts of rival universities. Highlight of the year was traditionally the last Sports section before Christmas, containing photos of the Athletic Union Barrel. This caused particular controversy in 2005 after printing a photo of LSE Director at the event which ended up causing considerable damage to King's Strand campus in December 2005.
In 2000, The Beaver's James Mythen won Sports Writer of the Year at the Guardian Student Media Awards.
The City
In 2014, Jon Allsop, with Managing Editor Alexander Fyfe, founded the City Section, a section designed to report and provide comment on the affairs to City. This was in order to engage some of the more business and economics orientated students of the LSE.