Webworlds

Edinburgh Student: winner of the Goldilocks challenge?

Harsh? Perhaps. But also true, and it’s worth making this clear early on in a survey of student newspaper sites. Most online editions that you’ll find are obviously the product of some burst of editorial enthusiasm – last term, last year, or worse – that has long-since fizzled out. Exams, coursework crises and graduations being the likely culprits.

Shining forth are those that, against all odds, have managed to transcend the flaky majority. These are the stalwart rags that – at who-knows-what cost to their editor’s degrees? – publish week after week, not only to the few thousand campus readers but to the whole web-wide world.

The guardians of aesthetically-challenged news sites, student-orientated or otherwise, are advised to take a first stop at the Edinburgh Student.  If Goldilocks had been tasting websites rather than porridge, she would surely have decided this one is ‘just right’. It’s not rocket science, but a good colour scheme and layout is surprisingly rare, and The Student maintains its poise throughout the site. I’m not entirely convinced that the content is always in the same league – the editor recently introduced a Page 3 girl in order to ‘provoke debate’. Don’t check your diary, the year is indeed 2005.

Good looks: Cherwell’s online beauty contest

The Oxford Student  has a modest presence on the web (soon to be updated, apparently) but features a valuable archive, some decent writing and an amusing links page (look under 'Fun'). Meanwhile, Oxford’s long-running Isis magazine is a different beast altogether – a proper glossy magazine, with Leonardo DiCaprio on the cover. It's the hands-down winner the classiest-student-publication award, and its web pages aren't bad either.

The Warwick Boar  is another decent, well-maintained site, although it has fallen prey to that most annoying of features, the online poll. This is the sidebar that asks you to vote yes/no/maybe on some topic or other. Its usefulness is summed up by one I saw recently, which asked 'Do you vote in online polls'? 100 percent of votes had been cast as 'no'.

Hats off to Exeter University's Exeposé,  which has for several years (longer than most) placed its weekly content online. Unfortunately, it is all in pdf format. Curiously, that other university with a student guild rather than union (Birmingham) also offers online content of its Redbrick paper  the same way. Personally, I think life's too short for downloading and scrolling through pdf files, so hopefully these two will make their material more accessible to the impatient masses soon.

The elegantly titled Scrapie – as in a nasty disease of sheep – is Bradford's student rag. Again, ignore the poll on the right-hand side (always on the right-hand side) and this is a neat site, with loads of content. At the time of writing this, it hadn't been updated for a while – but judging by the archives this is a recent blip, so it gets a mention anyway.

National student news sites are a rarity, so the arrival of a sparkly new one is welcome. The Rundown has been put together by some energetic types from Hull University, who want to foster student journalism.

When I first visited, the tagline read: 'If this website was cat food it would be the best cat food in the world', which is a bit Nathan Barley-ish but we'll forgive that for now. It's much more commercial-looking than most local student papers, and the features tend towards the lightweight variety (fashion, wacky stuff, student pranks etc). But the student news feed is about the most comprehensive you’ll find on the web, and there are some fun distractions if you're in the mood for some froth. In my opinion, you can't ever have enough free games.