Working at Univers

The current issue of Univers, the magazine of Tilburg University, has just been distributed all around campus. When I walk in -around 9.15 in the morning because I just did not make it to the early train- it is the first thing I see. I see people take it from the rack, flip through it, put it in their bag and walk away. For me, this is what makes it fun to work in journalism, to hold something you made in your hands, in print, and see people read it on the train home. It sometimes even makes me smile when I see someone holding a copy of Univers above their heads, using it as a shelter for the rain.

This is of course an outdated way of looking at journalism. Univers is much more. Every three weeks, we publish a magazine that students and employers find everywhere on campus, and that is traditionally what Univers is. But, like everything in society, a big part of our job is now digital. We have a website that is just as important as what we make in print, so every day our journalists start with writing for the online version. We also take care of our Twitter and Facebook, of course the easiest way to stay in touch with our readers. We work with eleven people at the editorial office; it is a mix of students that work there in their spare time, and people who do this for a living. Besides that, we have columnist, bloggers, illustrators, photographers and other freelancers that work for us. We try to write about everything that happens on campus, it is a magazine for everybody who has something to do with Tilburg University. To reach that, we also have teachers who write a blog and we make an English section in our magazine and on our website.
Our relationship with the university is one of independence, we can write everything we think is important. Of course we cannot just write down all the gossip we hear, we do have a responsibility towards the university and our readers to be careful and integer. This way, our role is to let people know what is happening around the university, but also to be a watchdog and to sometimes denounce problems we detect in university life. It has been like this for 50 years, Univers celebrated its anniversary this year. In the past, it was one of the first real independent university media. It played a big role in students protests in the sixties, and has played different roles in university life ever since. Today, it is still a vital part of Tilburg University, but also of Tilburg as a city, and of the dialogue about higher education on a national level. In the future, we hope to expand our English side, to serve every part of the university population even better. But, above all, we will just be the magazine that people have known for years and that is still going strong.

Di Jozien Wijkhuijs