What’s it like in the editor’s seat? Outgoing Felix editor tells all in end of term interview

Jovan Nedic talks about deadlines, highlights and achievements over the last year in the hot seat - News

Friday 26 June 2009
By Naomi Weston

What do you do when it’s a quiet news week and your deadline is in three hours? We talk to Jovan Nedic, outgoing editor of Felix, Imperial’s award winning student newspaper, to discuss the pressures and highlights of being in charge.

Felix is published once a week and provides students with a regular fix of news and quirky gossip from across the College.

 

What has been one of the highlights of the last year?

One of the highlights has been working with so many different people who I wouldn’t normally meet. When I was an undergraduate here I was very into sport and didn’t meet as many people as I do now.

Did you achieve what you wanted to?

I definitely achieved what I wanted. I am particularly pleased with all the different magazines we managed to print and find funding for. We brought out several magazines over the last year covering science, games and sport.

One of the big projects I worked on during my time as Editor was setting up the digital archive for all past editions of the paper. It’s been a huge amount of work but we hope to launch the archive in the autumn. This means anyone can search past Felix editions dating back 60 years. No other student newspaper in the UK has launched a similar archive so I’m really proud of it.

Has the job been tougher than expected?

Putting together the news section of the paper has definitely been harder than I expected. I’ve learnt that news doesn’t just fall into your lap. Slow news weeks can be very tough.

Felix won the Guardian student newspaper of the year award in 2006 and 2008. What do you think makes it a success?

We don’t take ourselves too seriously which I think is key to our success. Everyone at Felix writes because they want to and because it is fun. We have a good mix of news and more jokey material and the paper is very student focused.

What are your future plans?

I’ve decided to study for a PhD at Imperial in fluid dynamics in the Department of Aeronautics. It’s something I’m very interested in and would like to work in either the wind energy industry or in Formula 1.