Pluto (newspaper)

"Pluto" is a student newspaper at the University of Central Lancashire's Students' Union

It is usually published every fortnight through the academic year, and began life in 1985 as the "Ribble Echo". The name originally stood for Preston Libertarian Undergraduate Tabloid Offering. In recent years its format has varied from a newspaper to a glossy magazine. It is now printed in tabloid newspaper format with colour photography.

In the 2005/6 academic year, Communications Officer Mark Hudson (now with "The Sun" newspaper) relaunched the organ as a fortnightly tabloid newspaper with a more upmarket pull-out supplement modelled extensively on that of "The Guardian"'s G2 which was edited by Domenico Sanna and James Hoare, the latter now News Editor at extreme metal magazine Terrorizer. Despite mostly new staff, the format was maintained under the then Communications Officer, Nicholas Graham "The Hodd" Hodder. Pluto sometimes uses the tagline "Furthest From The Sun?", in reference to the British national tabloid format "red top" newspaper. This was ostensibly due to "The Sun" being previously banned from being sold in the Union Shop (now the expanded "Essentials" mini-mart type general store), due to the apparent sexism of topless photography of "page 3 girls". The tagline is due to be removed along with re-launch in late autumn 2007, in addition to a redesigned layout, improvements in subediting and a new masthead. Pluto now has its own website with staff blogs. In 1998, "Pluto" was named as Guardian Student Newspaper of the Year.fact|date=October 2007

Nicholas Graham Hodder, the Communications Officer for 2006/7 (and member of "Central Lancashire"'s University Challenge 2007 team), went on to write for "PC Utilities" magazine.

Hodder was replaced by Ed(ward) Walker and is now Editor of Pluto with slightly expanded staff, possibly due to more volunteers than previous years.

In 2008, the elected Communications Officer role was abolished due to governance changes. To replace it, the role of Media Officer was created, to enable the person in this position to concentrate entirely on the student media. Elections were held in April of this year to fill this position and Andy Squire was elected as UCLan SU's first Media Officer. He is now responsible for Pluto, PR1 (the magazine inserted into Pluto), Frequency (radio station) and PS-TV (the TV station, which stands for Preston Student Television).

ee also

* University of Central Lancashire