Charlie Hastings is candid about the journey that has brought him to a second consecutive run for editor of the University Times (UT).
Was he surprised when he lost last year’s election?
“Yeah. I don’t really know why I did,” Hastings told Trinity News in an interview ahead of his second bid.
”I think I had a very decent amount of people backing me. I definitely came off better in the interviews than she did. After the hustings it was usually reported that I was a little bit stronger in my points. So to be honest, I have no idea why I lost.”
The final year English and Italian student didn’t immediately set his heart on another run, and only decided in the run up to elections to put his name forward. Nonetheless, there is nothing half-hearted about his determination to become editor having made that decision.
Hastings’ ambitions to return the newspaper to its former glory are at the centre of his campaign.
“They provided excellence every single year,” he said, highlighting that the University Times was awarded best non-daily student newspaper by the US-based Society of Professional Journalism (SPJ) in 2017. “They had a really strong team of writers and editors and leaders.”
Since 2017, UT has seen more turbulent times. A 2019 campaign to defund the paper followed a scandal in which staff bugged a students’ room on campus. In 2022, a campaign to re-open nominations in the uncontested editor election succeeded, ending an unbroken streak of deputy editors progressing to the role. A mass resignation of staff later that year, following the editor’s sacking of four senior members – including Hastings himself, then a second year student – was the final straw in bringing the paper to its lowest point ever.
But Hastings still looks back to a time when the paper was “the best in the world”: “Something stopped that momentum, and now I feel like years later, we’re still trying to get it back, and I really don’t want to leave campus without seeing that it can get back there.”
“I know if I leave this place without at least attempting to give myself the opportunity to face that challenge, it’s gonna become a regret in the future. I don’t have any regrets so far in my life and I don’t want to start now.”
His plan to overcome that challenge involves putting greater emphasis on staff welfare within the paper. “I think not enough is being done for the welfare of writers, and I think it creates an unwelcoming atmosphere. You just have to look at the retainment rate of writers [to see] that they aren’t really taken care of.”
Hastings intends to do this by introducing a staff welfare meeting at the beginning of each semester, and holding more regular office hours as editor.
“I just want there to be more people who are interested in having journalism be their thing, their university experience, like it was my thing, like it was your [the interviewer’s] thing, and I don’t think there’s enough people like that.”
Asked how he intends to maintain a balance between the welfare of staff and striving towards ambitious heights, he replied: “To be honest, I think there needs to be more of an imbalance, towards the editor”.
“The editor’s a full time paid position. You’re supposed to work 40 hours a week for your pay. But it’s up to your own self discipline to show up for a full time job every week; you’re not clocking in and out, nobody’s keeping track of your hours, nobody’s like calling you if you’re late for work; it’s up to you to show up for your constituency every single day. But I just don’t think it’s being done.”
Articulating perhaps his biggest gripe with the UT of recent years, he continued: “I think that considering the fact that the editor is the paid leader of the newspaper, I’d like to see a lot more done from the editor’s point of view in terms of improving the paper.”
“I would like less burden overall on the students, because they’re not getting paid, they have [other] stuff to do. Journalism is a hobby, until you graduate college and pursue it as a job. But it’s a hobby and it should be treated as such, at least right now, while you’re still in university.”
Other plans in his manifesto include a greater emphasis on the Irish language, a revival of the University Times Magazine, and enhancing the paper’s use of social media.
On how he would ensure that an increased focus on social media isn’t to the detriment of the quality of the paper itself, Hastings is cautious not to “dumb it down”.
“We live in a world where there’s 1,000 different modes of stimuli, flying at you at 1,000 miles an hour, every second of every day, and you’ve just got to choose what to pay attention to. So I think in terms of not dumbing down social media engagement, I think I’m gonna need to do my best to balance out the gimmicky bits with the actual educational stuff and the newsworthy stuff.”
His manifesto also lays out a plan to enlist a “visibility editor” to shine a lot on what he sees as “underrepresented voices”.
“I agree that at first it’s gonna seem a little strange,” he says, acknowledging potential criticism that such an innovation only serves to pigeonhole minorities into one section.
“But I think having that dedicated, codified space is going to encourage more people who are part of those communities, and people who want to write about those communities, to step forward and write about them. And then when that happens, you can disperse them across the rest of the paper and normalize it.
On whether there is a place for artificial intelligence (AI) in journalism, Hastings said that though it can be a helpful tool, its role should be a limited one.
“I have no problem with using AI to think of interview questions, for example, or to think of a direction [in which] to take your article. I have no problem going to AI as an advisor.”
“But the problem comes in when you try to make AI the premier authority, when you’re giving all your editorial authority to a robot, then that is a problem. It should strictly be in an advising capacity – that’s all AI should be used for.”
Hastings’ love for the newspaper he hopes to helm is unmistakable. If the energy to make a second run for election weren’t evidence enough, his passion for the paper shines through in his irritation at its weaknesses and his determination to remedy them.
“I’m running because I have ideas and they’re still applicable, even after last year. I want people to be excited about the newspaper again. And I feel like, if I leave now, that’s not gonna happen.”
