The Orbital is the official student publication of the Students’ Union of Royal Holloway, University of London.

We observe an autonomous operation and advocate freedom of speech, with the final output being constitutionally supervised by the Students’ Union, through the sabbatical officer of the Vice President (Communications & Services) acting as Executive Editor.  The Editor and Deputy Editor are elected in a cross-campus election every year.

Originally launched as a newspaper called The Egham Sun in 1986 Royal Holloway’s official Students’ Union publication was converted into a magazine format in the early 1990s and renamed The Orbital after the nickname of the nearby M25 motorway.

Published as an A4 glossy magazine in the late 1990s, it transformed into a smaller glossy monthly publication in 2005 with a new logo and style.  During the 2006 National Student Journalism Awards, judges from the media industry praised the new format, describing it as “gritty, witty, relevant and coherent, packaged with good design and strong front covers,.”

In the same awards, The Orbital enjoyed nominations for Best Student Critic (Laura Beattie) and Best Student Photographer (Patrick Camara Ropeta) and went on to win Best Magazine.

Editor Patrick Camara Ropeta was thrilled by the success: “The Orbital came out of nowhere to win the top prize for student magazines. We are relatively small and unknown compared to most nominees, and larger universities often dominate the awards circuit. It’s such an honour to be chosen over such magazines; it’s a testament to the level of quality that The Orbital can achieve against all the odds.”

In 2007, the magazine evolved into a 40 page full colour quarterfold magazine under the new Editor, Mario Creatura. He also founded OrbitalLive! an event established to offer students the opportunity to walk in off of the street to contribute to their student publication.

The premise behind the event was for the OrbitalLive! team to create an entire issue of the publication using only contributions made in the first two days of Freshers’ Week. Mario Creatura described the ‘ethos of [the event as] helping to encourage journalistic talent and involvement in such an amazing institution.”

In 2008, Editor Jack Ratcliffe added glossy covers to focus on the publication’s main themes of lifestyle and culture.  Emphasising the importance of proper production, Jack redesigned submission templates to modernise the submissions process, facilitating an easier workflow for copy and layout.

In early 2009 a new SU Publication Constitution and board structure were ratified, having been rewritten from scratch by recently-elected Editor Nick Stylianou, in order to allow for a streamlined operation in years to come.  In April 2009, Nick began work on a brand new website to herald “a new era of multimedia journalism”, to inform the students of Royal Holloway, both online and in print.

The launch of a glossy supplementary publication, called Junction13, included a photo-heavy focus on lifestyle and culture, to come out as a monthly accompaniment to the newspaper. Nick Stylianou has included more interviews with College members of staff, who continue to support the publication. The Orbital has broken a number of high-profile stories, including RHUL’s ill-fated Project IDEA initiative in 2009 and the appointment of a new principal in 2010.

Moving towards a multi-media focus, The Orbital live-blogs important campus events, such as General Meetings of the Students’ Union and panelled discussions with College on topics like climate change and library opening hours. With a monthly podcast, video headlines and a dynamic website relaunched at the beginning of 2010, The Orbital’s Editor Nick Stylianou said he was ‘looking to push the boundary of student media’ and ‘refusing to define a publication to print only’.

This was reflected by The Orbital’s coverage of the SURHUL 2010 Sabbatical Officer elections: exit polls, live-blogging and the first ever live video broadcast from both Candidates’ Question Time and the results night showed exclusive interviews and guaranteed over 8000 hits in one week. Nick commented ‘every student at Royal Holloway should be able to get involved in elections, whether they’re on campus or not’ and took the opportunity to thank ‘[his] amazingly-dedicated editorial team for putting in the hours to survey students at ballot boxes – it was almost like I was running for a position!’.

In early 2010, Alexandra Murphy, formerly Submissions Editor (08-09) and interim Deputy Editor (2010) was elected to succeed Nick Stylianou as Editor for 2010-2011.