The Shilling Paper was started six months ago in Cambridge by a group of students impatient with the local newspaper and with existing student papers. It has enjoyed an outstanding success. Published in a university town without two of its editorial staff suggest, could easily be copied; and they have set out the means by which this can be done.
We started the paper, both as a rival to the pretentious shoddy university official paper, Varsity, and as a means of increasing contact between town and university. We found a considerable interest within the university in the town's industrial problems, the rents struggle, and analyses of power blocks and class interests in the town. To some extent it also worked the other way, and town people were interested to read about the university without the liberal/trendy gloss of Varsity.
The purpose of the paper, as distinct from that of a socialist society newsheet, is to reach and sell to several thousand people. This does not mean a string of liberal ideas - it means producing detailed factual evidence for our statements, and posing questions as well as developing the socialist answers. We have also printed two of the three right-wing articles received after our early 'we'll print anything statements, but this was mainly to demonstrate their speciousness and illiteracy. Variety of tone and contact is vital: as are technical tricks, breaking up the text with sub-headings cartoons, photos, changing column widths etc. What kinds of articles have we printed? 1) Solid shit-stirring: reports on university finances, confidential dons' meetings secret reports, letters, industrial relations, city council stupidity, who controls what, etc. Sympathetic dons, Labour Party Councillors, shop stewards are of course vital. 2) Well researched surveys: on Cambridge education, poverty, housing, working conditions, university *servants' pay etc. Very important people just never know what goes on in Cambridge. 3) Factual articles on the national and ¡ nooses for export to Nigeria etc. We also covered the Ford strike, and our reporter was the only one in Dagenham allowed into the Union HQ the result was that we are now able to distribute through Cambridge's factories with greater success. 4) News items: also articles on music, theatre (Cambridge has an active street theatre group, book reviews, funnies etc.
THE1/-PAPER 5) The paper also carries information about the workings of the local Soc. Soc. and RSSF group not detailed and directed only at members (this can be done by newsheets) but of the kind that will interest sympathisers and non-active members. The paper is not tied to any socialist group, and is a forum, not a party paper. If it were, it would not sell.
Most of those running the paper have not been centrally involved in the socialist groups in Cambridge partly because time prohibits doing both, and partly because of lack of commitment to them, although not necessarily / the everyday progress of Cambridge politics. For this reason, it has sometimes proved hard to get articles on agitational themes.
None of this is to deny the stimulus which the paper has given to the political scene - but the unresolved question of its relationship with Soc. Soc. etc. is important, as it would be in most universities.
MECHANICS OF THE PAPER. a) 2500 copies are produced each week. Of this about 2000 are sold to students, 300 to 500 to the town. Sales vary from 2100 to 2500, depending on the number of sellers. b) We usually print twelve fairly small pages 14" x 10" in size. This size makes layout easy, is easy to read and to carry. Also few printers can accomodate a larger page size. c) The printers' bill is about f100 a week. We sell about £20-630 advertising each week at £1 per column inch. If we sell out, at 1/- a copy, sales income is £125 a week. But what with copies unsold, and money not returned by sellers, we usually take about f105 to £110 Overheads - office rent, typewriter hire IBM £15/15 a month) letraset for headings, cowgum, paper, petrol (access to a car IS essential parking, telephone bills come to about £20 week. These figures approximate but we come out roughly even each week. We started with the sum of £120 collected from dons and students - not too difficult a task. After 12 issues we have £110 in the bank. d) Equipment needed - not much. We print by photo-offset i.e., from a photo plate. Each page is pasted out on to a layout sheet, which is photographed and reduced by the PrINCES Articles are typed to a certain width, for which two reasonably competent typists are needed. Typewriter (electric) essential; letraset, etc. An office capable of holding ten or a dozen people all working with a large desk space is essential. e) Skills minimal and easy to pick up. Apart from typists, someone who knows how the printing process works, and a couple of layout men. f) Printers our paper is sold on Friday mornings, and goes press from 10.30 Thursday morning until 1.30 that afternoon. us, but it is not a bad thing to form a company (cost €25) though we haven't done so. This may make it easier to find a printer. h) Selling. We sell through a few dozen street sellers, a stall in the market place, and a few shops (who take a very low commission). We don't give street-sellers a commission but rely on bullying. Hence we have to rely on good weather. i) Time - production doesn't take long after the first few weeks. We have copy meeting on Saturday, where we decide what to cover, find out features people want to write etc. Materia comes in Tuesday and Wednesday. Typing and laying out takes all Wednesday night and Thursday morning: 12 to 16 hours work by 6 or 7 people. Originally we had a small number of people working 30-60 hours a week on the paper, but now we have more people, a regular routine, and theoretically at least two teams doing alternate weeks' papers. j) Admin jobs — a distribution manager must sit around all day co-ordinating selling, and rescue money from sellers. An adman must sell and collect money for advertising. Someone has to pay all the bills, buy equipment. A news co-ordinator is a good idea we have had as many as five reports on the same boring committee.
The difficulties of starting a paper are usually greatly overestimated. Once we decided we wanted a paper, we had an issue out in two weeks, having collected money, found offices and found printers.
Editors are an irrelevancy - affectively those who sit up all Wednesday night edit'. It is unfortunately impossible to make it any more democratic. But one man needs to know where everything will go, check that all the ads go in. Baked general plan of layout, and responsible for negotiation with printers One important result of this flexibility is the ability to produce instant free newsheets. After the LSE struggle and Cambridge sit-in, collected f95 at a mass meeting, and had 7000 4-page newspapers out within about 20 hours. We intend to do the same thing again, this time for distribution on Cambridge's estates, about the nefarious activities of the Tory Council, the rents struggle etc. This time we will be able to do 10,000. By this kind of thing, involve people in politics at the local level, and also stimulate interest in the paper.
Finally, a word about duplicated newsheets. Where a base is advanced, they might prove very useful. It is clear, however, that they provide no substitute for a newspaper: they will
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a left-wing tradition, it is nonetheless selling more than 2,000 copies a week. Its example,