In the ‘Who We Are’ section of The Tab’s website, The Tab states: “we don’t do boring.” True to form, anyone who followed last year’s controversy surrounding the Edinburgh branch of the tabloid can confirm it was far from boring.
Last October, the Edinburgh Tab came under fire for anti-Scottish comments following a series of videos and comments posted to their TikTok account. Under a street-style interview video, one user commented: “not a Scot in sight” in reference to the lack of Scottish students featured in the video. The Tab replied to the comment with the now infamous “as god intended.”
This sparked a wider debate surrounding classism and accent bias at the University of Edinburgh. I spoke with Ksenia, a third-year Scottish student, to hear her perspective. She says the comments “summed up” the experience of many Scottish students who are made fun of because of their accents and origins (though she herself has not experienced this). She says: “There’s a group [of English students] that looks down on Scotland and Scottish students. Definitely not all of them, but a sizable group. It’s bizarre how [they] will come to Scotland and look down on the people that are from here.”
The Tab’s response to the situation left something to be desired. Following the initial video and comments, The Tab posted videos poking fun at angered Scottish students and joking about the situation, including one where an interviewer pretends to run away from a student upon finding out she is Scottish. Ksenia says: “They could’ve come back from that but kept doubling down.” These videos have since been deleted, and the Edinburgh Tab’s social media accounts were temporarily made private. A year later, The Tab has yet to release a formal apology, leaving students feeling like the situation wasn’t taken seriously.
This was a year ago. Since then, The Tab continues to post from its social media accounts website. But are students as engaged?
The Tab has long been known for its audacious articles and for facilitating campus gossip with social media segments such as “Match-Making Monday” and “Fess Up Friday.” Its Instagram boasts 23,000 followers. Most students I spoke to view it as a source of gossip rather than a news site. When asked what she thinks of The Tab today, Ksenia says, “I feel like they’ve fallen off after that whole scandal. I don’t follow them in the same way that I used to; I don’t find it that interesting.” Camille, another third-year student I spoke to, confirms she also follows The Tab for “the gossip.” Even so, she tells me it’s losing its appeal: “I don’t even read anything they post anymore. It feels very childish and irrelevant.”
Both interviewees comment on the repetitive and unoriginal nature of The Tab’s content. While Ksenia describes it as “redundant,” Camille says: “It’s always the same jokes, and the same people either being made fun of or being the ones to poke fun.” Though its tongue-in-cheek humour is something The Tab is known for, students are tired of the same form of content, which frequently comes at the expense of certain groups. Camille states: “Their journalistic content was never that appealing or engaging, to be honest. It felt generic.”
Are new students more engaged? Is following The Tab still a rite of passage upon their arrival in Edinburgh? Sam, a semester exchange student, tells me he had never heard of The Tab by the end of his first month in Edinburgh, which begs the question: has The Tab become irrelevant?
The outlet recently announced that it’s looking for new writers. One has to wonder whether this call was answered. Camille tells me she considered becoming a Tab writer in her second year but decided against it because she “didn’t think there was anything for [her] to contribute.” The Tab does have a narrow scope. Its content focuses almost entirely on the University of Edinburgh, though it claims to “welcome all students of an Edinburgh-based university” to their writing team. This leaves other Edinburgh students feeling misrepresented and excluded.
Though The Tab will inevitably be a presence on campus long after this controversy, students remain sceptical about its content. Perhaps it’s time The Tab realised it was not worth alienating an entire group just for a few likes on Instagram.
Illustration by Berenika Murray for The Student.