What Makes This Paper Great and How It Can Be Greater

I’ve known this column was coming for four years, but that doesn’t make it any easier to write. Only now, as I sit down to actually compose it, do I understand why some seniors simply walked away without writing one. Perhaps they, too, found it infuriating to parse four years of good times, setbacks, growth, and camaraderie into just a few column inches. This dilemma led some of my forebearers to engage in valedictory masturbation and compelled a few to try truly off-the-wall tacks—including an allegory comparing the Columbia experience to neighborhood Chinese takeout joints. In the end, I think the best senior columns tread a middle road between the nonsensical and the sentimental, which is where I’ll try to take my little attempt.

After all, the Spec has always had a way of bringing out the best and the worst in people. And I should know—I enjoyed much of the best and saw some of the worst during my two-and-a-half years at the paper. It’s probably inevitable to develop a love-hate relationship with anything into which one pours that much time and energy, but the extremes continue to amaze me.

Consider this. At its best, Spectator is an award-winning publication, a daily miracle produced by more than 100 dedicated undergraduates serving as scribes, photographers, designers, editors, and publishers. While it often falls short of our expectations—both as a staff and as a readership—in terms of breadth, professionalism, and overall quality, Spectator is consistently one of the better college newspapers out there. For anyone who cares about what’s happening on campus and in the neighborhood just outside the gates, the paper fulfills an essential public service.

And as any of Spectator’s reporters and editors will no doubt recall, there’s no better sense of accomplishment than that which comes from the shared experience of putting out the paper and getting feedback from readers. Like all students at Columbia, I’ve had my share of personal achievements. (Surviving the housing lottery, anyone?) But to help break a story of real importance to the community, to know Spectator received a standing ovation at a Community Board 9 meeting, or simply to leave the office with friends knowing you’ve put out a good issue—those are the feelings that stick with you. Spectator is ultimately a very personal place, and for any student aspiring to break into the newspaper business or simply trying to make a few friends, the Spec is happy to oblige. Though I’d never given journalism a second thought before college, I was attracted by the opportunities Spec offered: to learn more about the trade, but also about my school and those around me. The friends I made in the office and the lessons they taught me about writing and so much more will be with me the rest of my life.

But at its worst, the Spec can be a little shop of horrors—a rag where every story disappoints, where mistakes add up, and where the staff is never as diverse as the readership it serves. It’s an environment that drives editors to rewrite copy at the expense of writers’ wishes and one that presses publishers at a nonprofit student enterprise to push for the bottom-line. It’s a place where some students work more than 40 hours a week only to come home exhausted, frustrated, depressed, and hopelessly behind in class. And of course, it’s an organization that haphazardly pits students against each other for nearly half of the school year, inevitably leading to a scarred reputation in the student body and a diminished talent pool.

Of course, this is an overly simplistic take, and I can’t presume that every reader and staffer feels the same way about Spec’s foibles. Yet for those of us who lived it day-in-day-out, we saw the organization’s shortcomings clearly. And unfortunately, because of institutional inertia and the difficulty of putting out a daily paper, most of the larger issues often went unattended.

I write this at the risk of receiving catcalls of “sour grapes” because I feel that for all of the reasons listed above, Spectator must change. Spectator is flawed, of course—most institutions of its size are. And as a learning exercise in contemporary journalism, I maintain that Spectator is the best to be found on campus. But institutionally and interpersonally, questions remain. Why does the product always come before the people? Is Spec’s marathon pace of 40-hour work weeks and bloated issues really necessary? And why are open elections good enough for nearly every other campus group picking future leaders but not for Spectator?

And that is why I end this column by calling on Spectator’s current and future staffers to think hard about what makes the paper great—both as a service to the community and as a place to spend your nights—and to cast aside that which simply distracts, embitters, and destroys. For it’s the lifelong friendships and memories of shared achievements, not of infighting and petty victories, that you’ll remember most as you prepare to leave Columbia behind.

That’s what I’ve taken away, anyway, from my time in the whirlwind. That, and a lot of free office supplies.

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in economics. He was an associate editor on the 129th Associate Board and the Campus News editor on the 130th Managing Board.