Pulp interviews Cake for Honi
Ticket: Cake for Honi
Members: Roisin Murphy, Zara Zadro, Christian Holman, Thomas Sargeant, Ellie Stephenson, Fabian Robertson, Sam Randle, Carmeli Argana, Khanh Tran, Amelia Koen
With an expansive range of student media experience and a clear vision, Cake are running for Honi Soit to offer “a thriving community [and] a radical and empowering student voice”.
In their interview with Pulp, Cake articulated a clear and engaging vision for Honi. They certainly plan to continue the current team’s commitment to news coverage, promising “deep and detailed and well considered” investigations into the university and management, a focus on the federal election (even commiting to heading to Canberra for their coverage) and the introduction of data journalism. Cake made a point to emphasise their interest in arts coverage as well and plan to represent STEM and International student voices.
Both Cake and their competitor, Drip, are running as left-wing, progressive tickets. When asked about what makes them different then, Cake promised action and not just talk and they criticised previous tickets for failing to translate their personal politics into meaningful action in the paper. Cake spoke about their intention to utilise investigative journalism to cover staff cuts, underpayment and casualisation as well as cuts to courses and schools like the School of Literature, Art and Media. They also intend to rebuild university life through a focus on arts and culture and by encouraging students to get involved in performances and campus parties as well as the paper itself.
Whilst a singular and united political vision may not necessarily be a requirement for a robust Honi, Cake’s political stance was articulated far more clearly than Drip’s, suggesting they had thought seriously about what running as a left-wing, progressive ticket means to them.
“Being left-wing in the paper to us means not being afraid to say, yes, management and the government are actually biased against students and they are very right-wing, therefore we have to take a view that that radically favours students to counter that”.
Cake aims to “rebuild Honi’s social media strategy”, placing a particular emphasis on short form video content in a range of fields like news, stupol and performing arts updates that could be used across Instagram and TikTok. Whilst the ticket’s plans to expand Honi’s presence across social media sites is certainly a valiant one, there’s no denying that even filling the regular paper with newsworthy and engaging content is work enough. Time will tell whether this is just a case of election promises that can’t be lived up to or the beginning of significant digital development for Honi Soit.
Cake has evidently thought deeply about how they will expand their contributor pool beyond the typical base of arts students. They plan to platform STEM students and voices and with two of their ticket members (Sam Randle and Amelia Koen) heralding from the Science faculty, this seems likely to happen under their editorship. They also intend to use “Honi to act as a portal to explore the arts more”, namely through a local gig guide and mentorship for those reviewing student performances. Whilst these plans will no doubt have positive flow on effects in building Honi’s readership as will their promising but broad plans to collaborate with clubs & societies beyond Welcome Week, the ticket were less clear in how they intend to actively engage with students who have never read the paper before.
Cake plan to continue Honi’s gossip column but as a means to “punch up not down” and to hold student politicians to account without sexualising them (referencing the former Honi gossip persona, Miss Soit, who was criticised for sexualising the subjects of her articles).
Cake seem keen to work with Pulp in the future, favouring collaboration rather than excessive competition and making mention of a potential group chat between editors. If elected, Cake will have 2 former Pulp editors on their team indicating that such collaboration between the campus publications isn’t just a pipedream.
Cake are experienced, competent and possess an exciting vision for a more well-rounded Honi Soit, even if that vision is a little ambitious. They appear serious about their commitment to a left-wing newspaper and no doubt have the expertise to turn their vision into a reality.
Watch the full interview below.
Disclaimer: Pulp Editor Fabian Robertson is a ticket member for Cake for Honi and is not involved in any of the coverage for Honi Soit elections.