The Cheese Grater

The Cheese Grater is an award-winningmagazine produced at the University College London by a society of UCL Union, a students' union. It was first published in March 2004.

The contents are a mix of (student) political news stories, exclusive investigations and humorous items, particularly cartoons. It most often concerns itself with activities of UCL Union, of which its writers are generally strongly critical.

The Cheese Grater was formed when René Lavanchy, then a first-year student at UCL, decided to found a new magazine to plug what he saw as a gap in the provision of student media at the college, specifically as UCL Union regulations prevented the publication of most serious criticism of the Union at that time. Dissatisfied with the tone, content and production values of Pi Magazine, the only significant student publication at the time, he resolved to edit a new magazine himself and publish it on the cheap. Having approached a fellow halls resident, he secured him as treasurer and applied for the magazine to be affiliated as a society of UCL Union, so that it could publicise through the Union and use a UCL e-mail address. The society was affiliated on 12 February 2004.

The first issue came out on 25 March 2004. It was photocopied - badly - onto 7 out of 8 A4 pages, the last being blank, and the page numbers were handwritten on the original. Publication continues to be done by hand on public photocopying machines without any binding. The first issue struck the keynote of The Cheese Grater's tone with a spoof article purporting to be the script of The Passion of Rick Jones, a film based on The Passion of The Christ but transferring the scene to UCL Union's annual general meeting.

The Cheese Grater 's second issue came out in October 2004 and included an article on the controversy between Ted Honderich and the newspaper London Student.

After London Student ran an issue (20 September 2004) with the front-page headline 'Racial Harm-ony' and the headline 'Honder-Sick' on page 2, in which it accused the UCL emeritus professor of philosophy of damaging race relations at the University of London, Honderich's lawyers wrote to the paper and demanded a right of reply, citing inaccuracies. The reply was duly published. Shortly afterwards came The Cheese Grater's account of the events, including a reproduction of part of the lawyers' letter. The article accused the London Student journalists of bad journalism and Honderich of overreacting. Although the then London Student editor took exception to the article, neither he nor anyone else has shown there was anything inaccurate in it. This was the first article to carry The Cheese Grater 's 'special report' banner.

...
Wikipedia