Coming off a year in which Spectator made some of the biggest changes in its history, its new managing board, which prints its first issue today, isn’t planning to slow down.
“You can expect a livened-up Spectator,” said Megan Greenwell, BC ’06, and the new editor-in-chief. “More splashy designs on the front page; even more fun, quirky stories that are going to appeal to a lot of our readers,” she said. Her goal? “It’s trying to make the paper required reading. It’s about figuring out what it takes for John Q. Sophomore, who currently doesn’t read us, to pick up Spec from McBain as he heads to his 11 a.m. class.” Last year, the newspaper moved to a bigger size, added full color on its front and back pages, and created two new weekly sections. Now, the new board, the 129th since the newspaper was founded in 1877, gets to do the fun stuff: pack the paper with stories and art that take advantage of the new size and design capacities.
“Last year we made a lot of really big changes, and this year is really about going back and cleaning things up, and making all the slightly smaller changes to make our product great,” said Greenwell, who served on last year’s board as the news editor. “We’re on broadsheet now—but we want to make even better page designs that can take advantage of being on broadsheet,” she said. “The same thing applies with being in color, and with having two special sections.”
“Spec has undergone a significant transformation,” said Theodore Orsher, CC ’06, one of the two new managing editors. “And a lot of the heavy lifting has been done in the last two years. This year is a lot about finesse, and it’s about becoming a better paper and making sure the development is sustainable.”
Spectator’s cultural coverage is one area in which a big change from 2004 will be refined. The Weekend section, which debuted in September primarily as a breakout section for music and film features, will become more of a critical guide to the city.
Arts and entertainment editor Tess Carota, BC ’07, has broadened the special section’s focus on music and film to include the other arts that Spectator covers during the week—for example, theater and fashion—as they apply to what students can see and do over the weekend. “It should be the most popular section, and it should be something that can appeal to all students,” Carota said. “What we’re trying to do is diversify our coverage of the New York City art scene.” The retooled Friday arts section will include a full-length weekend guide, editors’ picks, and interviews and trend stories on the front page.
Other section editors are focused on expanding both the breadth and depth of the newspaper’s coverage. City editor Jimmy Vielkind, CC ’07, who was a deputy city editor last year, hopes to increase community coverage by adding a police beat and, starting this spring, publishing a weekly Spanish-language digest for distribution in the neighborhood. Campus news editor Morgan Sellers, CC ’06, said she wants to expand the range of Columbia-related issues covered by the news section, helping to broaden the paper’s appeal to all undergraduate students.
Sports editors Anand Krishnamurthy, SEAS ’07, and Jake Olson, CC ’07, plan to supplement the popular SportsMonday section with a new Friday pull-out section called GameDay. The new section, which they hope to launch in the fall, would contain analysis and previews of the weekend’s sports events.
For the first time in recent memory, a pair of managing editors, Orsher and Liz Fink, CC ’07, will run the newsroom this year. Fink, a former associate news editor, will spend most of her time overseeing the news pages, and she has also initiated a staff-wide training program. Orsher, last year’s sports editor, plans to work on long-term projects like technology upgrades and alumni outreach.
Fink said having two managing editors is unorthodox, but advantageous. “It allows us to specialize,” she said. “For me, I get to go headover- heels into news, and I don’t need to be worried about being everywhere at once.”
Another new feature of this year’s board is the creation of an online editor position. Al Hwang, SEAS ’07, is a newcomer to Spectator, but he has already begun the process of revamping the newspaper’s Web site, www.columbiaspectator.com. Improving the site will be a semesterlong process, Hwang said. His goals include implementing a more attractive design, adding new online features, and making it easier to search for articles in the online archive. <!---->
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