Talk:Gair rhydd

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[edit] Sure this was started in 1972?

I was at Cardiff University (Engineering Dept on Newport Road) until 1976. I don't recall this newspaper atall!

Later - I recall one issue of a student "information magazine" posted to me before I arrived for the first time in 1971. It was memorable only for telling us that Cardiff did not have a Sainsburys. Being a country lad and a biker, this comment made no sense - what was Sainsburys and why on earth would I need one? Tomrawlinson 17:10, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Gair Rhydd was started in 1972 but you might not have known it. I get the impression that in the early years production was sporadic - perhaps six issues a year - and distribution around the university somewhat random. (Although anyone who was involved at that time would probably be able to put me right on that) My first hand knowledge of it only begins in 1976 when I moved to Cardiff. The paper did well under someone who is still a great friend of mine - Kev Wood - and another Editor at that period was Jon Harlow who now works for the Sunday Times in the USA. Before I became Editor in 1978 copy was sent on a train Red Star to Bristol to be typeset and the whole process was very cumbersome. It took the best part of a month to produce a paper. I was lucky to be working with a brash, enthusiastic team of talented volunteers and we decided to dump the old way of doing things wholesale and make things up as we went along. We compromised on the physical look of Gair Rhydd in order to produce a regular newsy tabloid paper every fortnight. Off the back of punk you could get away with anything. There was no fancy typesettting. Instead articles were typed on card in the middle of the night and stuck onto layout sheets with Pritt sticks. It had Letraset headlines and was printed quickly round the corner from the Union and delivered all over the University as soon as it came out. At times it looked ghastly but because of the people we had working on the paper we developed enough momentum for Gair Rhydd to go weekly the next year 1979-80. We produced more editions of the paper in two years than had been printed in the previous six years of its existence. We must have done something right because on the basis of that the Union voted to fund a sabbatical Editor from 1980-81 on so that Cardiff would continue to have a weekly student paper. Newsnightmeirion 18:54, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I went through the old Gair Rhydd archives tonight and came accross the issue 2 (sadly issue 1 seems to be missing) but the photo clearly shows the date being 19th October 1972. I would have taken a better photo but the spine prevented the complete article from being visible. There has been talk of getting all the archives unbound, scanned and put online. graemep 22:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)