beaver

Guest Blog: The LSE Beaver | Students@LSE

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/studentsatlse/2012/10/25/guest-blog-the-lse-beaver/

Guest Blog: The LSE Beaver★

The Beaver (newspaper) - Wikipedia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beaver_(newspaper)

The Beaver (newspaper)

The Beaver is the fortnightly newspaper of the LSE Students' Union at the London School of Economics, England.

The Beaver has had some of its stories being picked up by the national press. One thousand copies are published and distributed around campus every other Tuesday during term time. Articles are also published online daily. The Beaver is governed its society which is free for any LSE student to join. The paper is made up of sections News, Comment and Features in addition to its magazine Flipside. The Beaver also produces Beaver Sound, a multimedia podcast platform.

History

Named after the school's mascot, the beaver, which was chosen "as representing an industrious animal with social habits",^[1] The Beaver newspaper was first published in its recognised format on 5 May 1949, and is one of the oldest student newspapers in the UK. The British Library of Political and Economic Science holds print and digital archives of the paper dating back to this first issue, which was christened by George Bernard Shaw, one of the LSE's founders. Since then it has gone through several makeovers, survived LSE's turbulent history and emerged to be one of the most respected and widely read student newspapers in the UK.

News

The Beaver's news section has consistently been among the strongest in UK student media, consisting of LSE, University of London and Higher Education stories from across Britain, frequently being quoted in the national press. A recent example concerned the story of the LSE Council having discussed the option of privatisation,^[2] which was subsequently reported by a number of national newspapers including The Guardian.^[3]

Comment

Comment publishes pieces discussing issues that are relevant to the LSE community, political analysis, social commentary, original cartoons, and debate. The extensive range of articles and letters featured reflects the broad readership of the paper. Contributions to the Comment section have been wide-ranging and varied, from former LSE Director Sir Howard Davies to lay students. The name of the section was changed from Opinion to Comment in 2013.

Features

The Features section of the paper deals with international relations, politics and strategic affairs. Interviews are a quintessential part of the section, and previous interviews conducted by Taryana Odayar have been with Economics Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen; ministers such as Marcelo Neri, the former Brazilian Minister of Strategic Affairs; North Korean defector Hyeonseo Lee; Dr Mattia Romani, Managing Director for Country and Sector Economics at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; and academics such as German Historian Sonke Neitzel. Other prominent interviewees have been Sir Nicholas Stern and Queen Noor of Jordan,^[4] and Ambassadors such as the Lithuanian Ambassador to the UK. In 2019, the Features section interviewed Alastair Campbell, former communications director to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.^[5]

Flipside

Launched in 2018, Flipside encapsulates all the magazine sections of the Beaver. The primary feature of Flipside is a fortnightly interview featuring one or more prominent members of the LSE community. It also features sections which previously belonged to The Beaver – Sport and Part B – and created the new sections Social and Review. The name Flipside is a reference to the fact that relative to the other sections of the paper it is printed upside down which requires the user to flip the paper around to read it.

Beaver Sound

The Beaver Sound is the newspaper's new multimedia podcast platform for news since 2019. The platform features series such as LSE lImelight, Crossing the Globe, Grimshaw Speakers, and Guftagu, a series focusing on issues around open dialogue in South Asian communities in collaboration with the LSE SU Pakistan Society. 

Notable former contributors

• Richard Bacon - former Executive Editor; now Conservative Member of Parliament for Norfolk South
• James Corbett - former political editor; now contributing editor of The Observer Sport Monthly and author of Everton: The School of Science and England Expects
• Ekow Eshun - edited both Features and Arts; now the Artistic Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and a contributor to BBC2's Newsnight Review
• Simon Gardiner - former AU Treasurer; now prominent philanthropist
• Simon Garfield - former Executive Editor; now journalist and author of Mauve and Our Hidden Lives
• Stephen F. Kelly - contributor, then producer Granada Television, now author and broadcaster
• Paul Klebnikov - former editor; first editor of Forbes' Russian edition
• Bernard Levin - early contributor to the newspaper, particularly of theatre reviews
• John Stathatos - former executive editor; photographer, writer and art critic whose publications include The Book of Lost Cities and A Vindication of Tlon: Photography & the Fantastic
• Justin Webb - former editor; former BBC's chief Washington correspondent; now presents the Today programme on BBC Radio 4

Notes

1.  "Guest Blog: The LSE Beaver". October 25, 2012.
2.  LSE Council moots privatisation - The Beaver
3.  Vasagar, Jeevan; Shepherd, Jessica (October 26, 2010). "LSE looks at option of going private" – via www.theguardian.com.
4.  The Beaver Archived 2012-07-20 at Archive.today
5.  "Alastair Campbell Talks People's Vote". March 12, 2019.

External links

• The Beaver online
• LSE Digital Library archive of The Beaver online

★

Original coat of arms – 1922

For those of you who are wondering why there is a beaver etched onto the banner of this blogsite, let me enlighten you on the history of the LSE Beaver. 

The beaver was adopted as the official mascot of the school in 1922, the same year the motto was chosen: rerum cognoscere causas – a line taken from Virgil’s Georgics meaning ‘to know the causes of things’. Beavers are hard working and industrious yet sociable animals, attributes that the founders would have hoped LSE students to both possess and aspire to.

Though you will be hard pressed to find the beaver mascot anywhere official (apart from above the arches of the Old Building), LSE students have by no means forgotten their furry friend. A number of different student run organisations make use of the mascot:

Beaver statue: photo from LSE Library archives

The Beaver newspaper was founded in 1946, and as such is one of the oldest student publications in Britain. It is also one of the most well respected, with news stories written in The Beaver frequently being quoted in the national press. It has a weekly readership of approximately 5,000 and is distributed free across campus every Tuesday.

Social activities at Rosebery hall of residence are centred, day and night around the Tipsy Beaver Bar and most of the Athletics Union sports kits feature the beaver emblem, although some more prominently than others!

Kings College Students famously ran off with LSE Beaver in 1983, one of many practical jokes played between the colleges as part of the RAG activities.

Photo credit: King’s College London Archive Exhibition

The beaver has had a long and, often very exciting life at its home on Houghton Street and it is always thought of fondly by LSE students and alumni alike.

Sarah

LSE Alum: BSc Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method (2011)