New Managing Board Begins 126th Year

Things have changed for Alice Boone, BC '03. Boone, Spectator's 126th editor-in-chief, is not the oldest member of the new managing board, which prints its first issue today, but she is one of the most experienced.

Boone, in her sixth semester on staff, was editorial page co-editor last year and now leads a managing board whose members' experience varies from a year as an associate editor to one semester at the school. The old rules do not apply. And, by all indications, that is a good thing.

"So often in the past couple of days I've stopped myself from saying, ëOh, we don't do it that way' ... [The new board is] not so used to the old way of doing things," Boone said. "They don't see the things they're suggesting as change. It seems like common sense to them. I'm glad to be bringing common sense back to the way we do things."

Spectator begins its 126th year today with a new commitment to making the paper more accountable to both its staff and its readers. Overseeing that committment is a relatively young board whose members hope to bring a fresher approach to covering the community than Spectator has had in recent years.

"[The editors are] a mix of both people who have been in the Spec and know the ropes and people who have never been to a doping meeting, like me," Managing Editor Isolde Raftery, BC '04, said in reference to the nightly meeting in which the front page is planned.

"At first glance this board's like leaving the kids home with the babysitter," new associate managing editor Mike Ricci, CC '02, said. The 126th is the fourth board Ricci has worked under. He said he sees its members as particularly capable of bringing new ideas to the newspaper.

The board is filled with "people who are not Spec insiders and who haven't gone through the process," said Ravi Rajendra, CC '03, the 125th production editor. "They bring other ways to look at the newspaper, to look at the campus."

The youngest member of the managing board, Steve Poellot, CC '05, is the first first-year to serve on the board in recent memory. "If you're on Spec for too long, you forget some of the issues that are relevant to the people who spend their time outside the office in different activities," he said.

New blood also means new visions for the year at Spectator. Those apply both to the product that reaches campus and also to the way the newspaper operates internally.

The most immediate and visible change will be the re-naming of the former Spectacle section to Arts and Entertainment.

"Arts and Entertainment will be completely revamped and brought a lot closer to campus. We're bringing in more ideas to A&E--not just more stories, but permanent features. Spectacle was part of the old Spectator look," Raftery said.

The new section will look very different from the old one, which was known for its wacky (and to some, unreadable) headline fonts. Arts and Entertaiment will look like the rest of the paper this year, especially in headline fonts, said new production editor Ali Kaufman, GS/JTS '04, who also oversees layout and design.

Also new is the position of graphics editor, the creation of which is part of an effort to make Spec's pages more appealing. Kaufman said there would be an effort to include graphic elements on most pages.

One of the biggest internal changes that will be noticable to readers is the "revitalization" of a beat chief system in the news department. The three news editors, Katherine Isokawa and Alaya Johnson, both CC '04, and Brian Webster, CC '02, hope that the system will help the paper to report all aspects of the community better.

Under the new system, 13 reporters will be assigned to different areas of coverage in the University and neighborhood. They will be responsible for managing the newspaper's coverage of their particular area.

"I want readers to see their part of campus in Spectator's coverage," Isokawa said. "I'd like for more readers to see themselves in the paper."

As Boone put it, the point is to "widen the net so that we're not always talking to the same student leaders and administrators. Spectator is serving people best when its breaking hard news, relevant to students."

Raftery pointed to a larger goal of increasing the quality of writing that appears in Spectator, especially in feature stories.

"Readers will see a variety of stories this year," she said. "I think the quality of writing will really jump out at them."

On the business side, new publisher Rob Bruce, CC '03, is overseeing an austerity program meant to rehabilitate Spectator's parent company, Spectator Publishing Company's, financial health. SPC operated significantly in the red last year.

Bruce talked of how Spectator went from unprecedented profits two years ago to the need this year to "tighten down and create a budget." His goal is to do this without impinging on Spectator's ability to adequately cover the news and keep its staff refreshed.

"We've got to have people who are happy--we just need more creative ways to keep people happy," he said.

Bruce plans on reaching out to alumni and making sure that the publishing company's ventures like the Jester of Columbia are making money.

Financial issues aside, this year's board is marked by energetic editors who are consciously bringing different perspectives to the nation's second-oldest college daily.

"It's positive to have fresh blood. Because we don't already have dominant people when an issue comes up. We're not all-stars, but we're solid team players," incoming sports editor Nick Fisher, CC '03, said.

"It's cool to have people indoctrinated like this while being on the board rather than as they go up the ladder," Johnson said.