Last spring, amid a faith crisis in journalism, I found the Tow Center. I had heard about national media outlets shoving microphones in students’ faces during protests, mass layoffs at news publications across the United States since 2023, and a Gallup poll confirming a national decline of trust in journalism. At that moment, I decided to look to the Columbia Journalism School, which has been tasked with upholding standards and innovating approaches to journalism since its inception in 1912.

Dionis Ortiz sat in front of a painting of a city sidewalk, featuring graffiti, cracks, broken glass, paint splatters, and caution tape, zooming in from his solo art exhibition Concrete Realities. Ortiz, a “born and raised” West Harlem artist, talked about the difficulties of finding studio and exhibition space in Harlem. Such spaces can be incredibly expensive, he said, presenting a major barrier to self-propelling, independent artists.

As I walked past Wien Hall in early February, Faculty House brownie in hand, my friend pointed out something strange: The gates that separated Wien Hall from 116th Street had changed.