As of today, Farrago Magazine, Australia’s oldest student publication, will cease operations under the current four editors. 

While this news may surprise some, many will agree that Farrago’s demise was long overdue. Once a bastion of student journalism, edited by such illustrious figures as Nicola Gobbo esq., it had of late become, to quote one unbiased critic, little more than a ‘glorified poetry competition’. 

Behind Farrago’s deceptively glossy covers lay lukewarm news stories from five weeks ago, op-eds so bland and uncontroversial you wonder when exactly the editors lost their spines, a satire team too haunted by the spectre of cancellation to make any actual jokes, and an entire section devoted to that horror of all horrors: student poetry. Small wonder that stacks of Farragos from 2019, 2020, and 2021 languish unread in the Media Space, feeding the Union House rats. 

The Media Department’s other endeavours have also fizzled out. Radio Fodder draws an impressive average of four listeners per show, while the Farrago YouTube channel is a barren wasteland which’s most (only) successful content was uploaded five years ago. Rumours are afoot that the editors had even set up a Farrago TikTok in a last pathetic attempt at relevancy. 

Farrago’s reputation on campus had also soured. One Redditor found Farrago “incredibly depressing and borderline narcissistic”, adding that it platformed the opinions of privileged, performative social justice advocates while censoring everyone else. (Of course, one could argue that Farrago is student-run, meaning if these esteemed critics wished to diversify the range of opinions published they could submit …. something …. themselves, but I digress.)

Nor was it beloved within the student union it was part of. Farrago might have a reputation as ‘leftist crap… the product of politically opinionated hippies’, but any politically opinionated hippie on campus would furiously disagree. Farrago was the Schrödinger's cat of student publications; depending on who you asked, it was too left-wing or not left-wing enough, Stand Up!’s propaganda machine or its bitter nemesis. Its editors were four overworked, underpaid uni students trying their best, or incompetent cartoon supervillains who loved nepotism and attacked innocent student politicians as bloodsport. 

Like the insufferable Media and Comms-studying, oat latte-sipping campus literati who ran it to the ground, Farrago had few friends but many enemies. None will mourn its demise, Honi Soit least of all.

Image taken from StudentVIP.