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back of the newspaper? The final pages of the Other Press didn’t use
to be so funny, as it wasn’t until 2005 that the first signs of a Humour
section began to manifest, initially as the “WTF” section. These two
pages included a column called “I heart Spam,” where the Managing
Editor would write replies to spam emails, and “Last Call,” an advice
column. Maybe the second part isn’t exactly humorous, but within
the year, a comics page was added.

The Humour section you know and love came in 2011 from

former Editor-in-chief, Liam Britten. In the November 22 issue,
Britten provided a quote for the Lettitor, introducing the new section
in a signature satire-style: “I am thrilled to be at the helm of the
Humour section. I feel Humour is one of, if not the most important
sections in the paper, so all the other section editors can shove it.
I’m dedicated to news. Hard news. I will look under every stone, at
the bottom of every beer glass, and in every strip club back room to
find the truth. I don’t believe in journalistic bias, because bias is just
another word for racism. And racism is bad; even a Swedish person
knows that. So read Humour. It’s got the good stuff.”

The Other Highlights

While my initial goal was to focus on the newspaper’s creative
history and evolution as a publication, what would a throwback piece
be without including some previous staff's antics?

In the same anniversary piece mentioned before, Glavin recalls
an “incident” where one of the staffers took a chainsaw to the office
wall in an attempt to increase the room’s total square feet. “I don’t
know what was going through the mind of the principal, George
Wootten, when he came by to talk to us about the incident and could
barely make out the people in our new office from the thick blue haze
of marijuana smoke.” In their defence, this was the ‘70s—and who
doesn’t like more square footage?

While I’m certainly more liberal with my language than some
Editors before me, the occasional f-bomb in my article pales in
comparison to what former Editor Tim Crumley did during one late-
night production session: “We were reading the masthead, which is
essentially a list of credits saying who did what in the paper. We were
trying to proof it for typos and such, when we realized that there was

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a credit given to the readers of the paper. It simply said ‘Readers...
You.’ We flipped. We went berserk. If the readers of the paper didn’t
know they were the readers of the paper, they must be idiots. No,
they must be fuckheads. So there it was, the next day. ‘Readers... You,
fuckhead.’ We got more mail about that than any article we printed
that year. Hmm.”

Other gems from the Other Press’ past that came up during my
research include: the time Britten wrote a serious movie review of a
porno; when an article written about how feminism provides easier
sex caused women’s groups around campus to vandalize newspaper
stands and tack a copy to the office door with “This is what sexism
looks like” across the cover; and when Trevor Hargreaves, along
with several others, hatched a plan to rename “the Western regional
conference the ‘Further Upper Canada Canadian University Press’
conference.” In 2006, the FUCCUP conference was held—an event
that remains immortalized on Urban Dictionary under the definition
for “FUCCUP.”

An-Other 40 volumes

Depending on whom you ask, four years can be a long time.

As I mentioned before, we have a series of “yearbooks” from
volumes past. A brief glance at the 2009 volume’s staff list reveals that
not a single name can be found in the issue you’re reading now (with
the exception of Angela Szczur, then Website Editor /IT extraordinaire
and now Business Manager—and girl got married, so even her
name’s different).

An almost 100 per cent staff turnover rate in four years may
sound problematic, but I’m looking with my glass-half-full goggles.

I see a publication that refuses to grow stale. I see a staff that comes
to the paper to give it their creative-all and then get the heck out,
leaving room for someone else to create their own vision.

Looking back at issues past, I feel confident in saying we're living
in an Other Press renaissance. Never before have the pages been as
glossy or robust with great content. If 40 is the new 30, then it’s safe
to say we're just getting started.

    
 

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