Pelican is aimed at Perth's tertiary students and young people aged between 18 and 28 frequenting the inner-metropolitan area.
[2] Each print edition is centred on a theme, and includes regular reviews (books, music, television, film, and arts); opinion pieces; campus news; and current affairs analysis.
Pelican is one of the few Australian papers to have not been affected by these changes, and this can be largely attributed to the high voluntary membership intake of the University of Western Australia Student Guild.
In late 2007, in the lead up to the federal election of that year, UWA student and Australian Labor Party candidate for the seat of O'Connor, Dominic Rose, was caught up in a national controversy over an article published in Pelican.
It was revealed that some time before his preselection, the student had written a piece in which he referred to then Labor Party leader and Prime Ministerial hopeful Kevin Rudd as a "filthy Liberal".