Leanna Byrne | Editor
Single honors and TSM English students have been contacted by the franchise “The Tab”, an English student newspaper franchise, to set up “The Trinity Tab”.
The Tab is a group of newspapers for students based in London and published by Tab Media Ltd. It was first launched in 2009 by Cambridge students Jack Rivlin, George Marangos-Gilks and Taymoor Atighetchi as the “Cambridge University’s Online Tabloid” promising to “provide fast news and entertainment direct to your rooms”. They now have 38 universities signed from across the UK and have just moved over to Belfast last November. The Tab currently has 1.3 million monthly unique readers.
The email to all English students was a forwarded email sent to the Department of English. According to the email the online newspaper is “about the fun side of uni life”. The website’s aim is to focus on campus related issues rather than national sports or politics.
However, the set up of the new media outlet is only in its early stages as Junior Sophister Single Honors English student Heather Keane said that the Tab’s “next step was Ireland”. They “picked Trinity because it’s the most prestigious”, but it will not be directly affiliated with the university.
Furthermore, Keane says that Tab Editors in the London headquarters have links with reputable UK newspapers and are set on forging links with Irish newspapers such as the Independent and the Irish Times.
When contacted to comment on the new publication, a spokesperson from Trinity Publications said that the Trinity Tab has not sought approval from Publications and that a meeting will be held tomorrow morning to discuss the developments.
The Tab plan to assign editor positions by the end of May for the coming academic year.
