Cherwell (newspaper)

Cherwell

Typical Cherwell front page
Type	Weekly newspaper during Oxford University term time
Format	Compact
Owner(s)	Oxford Student Publications Limited
Editor	Ellen Peirson-Hagger and Marianna Spring
Founded	1920
Language	English
Headquarters	7 St Aldate's, Oxford
Circulation	c. 15,000
Website	Cherwell.org

Cherwell (pronounced "Charwell") is an independent student newspaper, largely published for students of Oxford University. First published in 1920, it has had an online edition since 1996. Named after the local river, Cherwell is published by OSPL (Oxford Student Publications Ltd.), who also publish the sister publication Isis, the Bang! science magazine, the Industry fashion magazine, and the freshers' magazine Keep Off the Grass. One of the oldest student publications in the UK, it is editorially independent and has been the launching pad for many well known journalistic and business careers. The newspaper has a commercial business team, receives no university funding, and is independent of all other student bodies, although for many years it occupied a building in the garden of the Oxford Union .

The current editors are Ellen Peirson-Hagger and Marianna Spring.

Cherwell was conceived by two Balliol College students, Cecil Binney and George Edinger, on a ferry from Dover to Ostend during the summer vacation of 1920 while the students were travelling to Vienna to do relief work for the Save the Children charity. Edinger recalls the early newspaper having a radical voice: "We were feeling for a new Oxford …. We were anti-convention, anti-Pre War values, Pro-Feminist. We did not mind shocking and we often did." The publication was independent of the University of Oxford and it was entirely financed, staffed, and owned by students.

Early editions combine this seriousness with whimsy and parochialism. The first editorial gives the newspaper's purpose as being "to exclude all outside influence and interference from our University. Oxford for the Oxonians".

Cherwell was the only newspaper printed in Britain during the UK General Strike of 1926, other than the British Gazette and the British Worker, during which time it was produced at the offices of the Daily Mail in London.