Columbia Daily Spectator

Founded in 1877, the Columbia Spectator delivers news daily to thousands of readers around Columbia University, Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. The newspaper is published five days a week during the academic year, and offers news, arts, commentary, sports coverage, and photos from around campus and New York City, in conjunction with our blog, Spectrum, and our weekly arts and features magazine, The Eye. We are the second-oldest college daily paper in the country and have been financially independent from the University since 1962.

The organization is run by undergraduates from Barnard College, Columbia College, the School of General Studies, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science, with a staff totaling over 200 students. Spectator has opportunities for students wide range of interests, including reporting, writing, editing, photography, design, illustration, video production, and business.

Contact Us

For general comments or questions about the Spectator, you can reach the editor in chief, managing editor, and publisher at info@columbiaspectator.com. For editorial questions or concerns, email editor@columbiaspectator.com.

We are located at 2875 Broadway between West 111th and 112th streets. Look for the white sign, find the gray door with the keypad, and push #11.

Mail: 2875 Broadway, Suite 303, New York, NY 10025
Phone: General: (212) 854-9549, Business: (212) 854-9550
Business Fax: (212) 854-9553
Twitter: @ColumbiaSpec
Facebook: facebook.com/columbiaspectator

Join Us

Those interested in joining the Columbia Daily Spectator must be current undergraduate students at Columbia University. Students are required to go through staff training at the beginning of their time at Spectator. Interested students are free to attend section-specific sessions for more than one section, and staff members are able to contribute to multiple sections simultaneously (with the exception of news and opinion).

For fall 2012, Spectator will be holding four open houses for students to find out more about Spectator, and sign up for meetings and training sessions. Those will be held at 3 p.m. in the Spectator office on Saturday, September 8, Sunday, September 9, Friday, September 14, and Sunday, September 16.

If you're interested in joining or have any general questions, please contact us at join@columbiaspectator.com.

Corrections

We are committed to fair and accurate reporting. If you notice an error, please inform us at editor@columbiaspectator.com.

Spectator Publishing Company

Spectator Publishing Company, Inc., is the parent company of the Columbia Daily Spectator. The company, managed by the publisher, editor in chief, and managing editor, is an independent nonprofit organization accountable to a board of trustees composed of Spectator alumni. The publishing company employs a full-time professional staff in graphics and advertising who provide quality service to our many advertisers.

Reprint/reuse rights and permissions

If you are interested in republishing Spectator content, please contact the sales staff at sales@columbiaspectator.com.

Spectator Publishing Company

Spectator Publishing Company, Inc., is the parent company of the Columbia Daily Spectator. The company, managed by the publisher, editor in chief, and managing editor, is an independent nonprofit organization accountable to a board of trustees composed of Spectator alumni. The publishing company employs a full-time professional staff in graphics and advertising who provide quality service to our many advertisers.

Contact Us

For general comments or questions about the Spectator, you can reach the editor in chief, managing editor, and publisher at info@columbiaspectator.com. For editorial questions or concerns, email editor@columbiaspectator.com.

We are located at 2875 Broadway between West 111th and 112th streets. Look for the white sign, find the gray door with the keypad, and push #11.

Mail: 2875 Broadway, Suite 303, New York, NY 10025
Phone: General: (212) 854-9549, Business: (212) 854-9550
Business Fax: (212) 854-9553
Twitter: @ColumbiaSpec
Facebook: facebook.com/columbiaspectator
Google+: spc.me/specongoogle

Join Us

Those interested in joining the Columbia Daily Spectator must be current undergraduate students at Columbia University. Students are required to go through staff training at the beginning of their time at Spectator. Interested students are free to attend section-specific sessions for more than one section, and staff members are able to contribute to multiple sections simultaneously (with the exception of news and opinion).

For fall 2012, Spectator will be holding four open houses for students to find out more about Spectator, and sign up for meetings and training sessions. Those will be held at 3 p.m. in the Spectator office on Saturday, September 8, Sunday, September 9, Friday, September 14, and Sunday, September 16.

If you're interested in joining or have any general questions, please contact us at join@columbiaspectator.com.

Corrections

We are committed to fair and accurate reporting. If you notice an error, please inform us at editor@columbiaspectator.com.

Archives

Our Archive site includes issues published from 1953 to 1985 and from 1991 to 1992. The text of articles, headlines, photo captions, and advertisements in those issues is completely searchable. We are working to make available the complete run of the publication from 1877 to the present.

The Archive currently contains 3,989 issues comprising 30,733 pages and 124,417 articles. Whenever possible pages were scanned from original paper copies and digitized using state of the art technology that provides full-page, searchable reproductions of articles, photographs, and advertisements. (For articles published in the last 15 years, please search the main Spectator website.)

The goals of the Archive are to provide a public resource for Columbia University history and to preserve the Spectator's past work. It is the result of a partnership between the Spectator and Columbia University Libraries, and funded jointly by the Libraries and through generous gifts from Spectator alumni and friends, especially members of the class of 1958.

Interested in helping us finish the job? Please support digitization by donating here.

The original printed copies of the Columbia Spectator are housed in the Columbia University Archives. Some of our first volumes are also searchable on Google Books.

Reprint/reuse rights and permissions

If you are interested in republishing Spectator content, please contact the sales staff at sales@columbiaspectator.com.

Advertise With Us

The Spectator is one of the strongest ways to reach a highly coveted but elusive market: 18- to 22-year-old college students. We’re the only daily newspaper serving the more than 60,000 students, faculty, administrators, and staff of Columbia University. The Spectator is also the premier news source for local coverage of Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and the Upper West Side.

For rates, specifications, and information about advertising in The Eye or on our website, visit our advertising site here.

Submissions: tips, op-eds, letters to the editor

Tips: Email us at editor@columbiaspectator.com. Have pictures you think we should post? Email spectrum@columbiaspectator.com, tweet at us @ColumbiaSpec, or post it on our Facebook at facebook.com/columbiaspectator.

Op-eds: Spectator welcomes submissions from individuals affiliated with Columbia University or Morningside Heights. They should clearly state an opinion and may not have been previously published elsewhere. Pieces should be roughly 650 words, and may be edited before publication. Email submissions to opinion@columbiaspectator.com.

Letters to the editor: A letter to the editor should be no longer than 350 words and must refer to an article from Spectator or The Eye, or a Spectrum post. Letters may be edited and shortened for space constraints. Submit letters to opinion@columbiaspectator.com.

Comment Policy

We feel it’s important to balance the impulse to remove all objectionable material against our commitment to free and open discussion and debate. We love comments and don’t love being comment police, but sometimes things get out of hand. When a comment is objectionable, we’ll remove it.

We reserve the right to delete any comment we find offensive, but a few things are particularly likely to get your comment deleted:

Libel. Broadly speaking, comments that contain untrue statements about living persons will be deleted.

Gratuitous profanity. We won’t delete comments simply because they contain profanities, but comments we deem more profane than substantial will be deleted.

Intolerance. Comments that attack a particular racial, ethnic, or religious community will be deleted, as will comments that disparage people of a certain gender or sexual orientation.

Self-promotion. Irrelevant comments designed to draw attention to a commenter’s own enterprise will be deleted.

We also reserve the right to put commenters with a history of publishing offensive remarks on “commenting probation.” Commenters “on probation” can still leave comments on columbiaspectator.com, but those comments must be approved by one of our editors before they appear on the site.

Deputy Board

News editors: Abby Abrams, Samantha Cooney, Avantika Kumar, Chris Meyer, Cecilia Reyes, Tracey Wang, Christian Zhang

Opinion editor: Jess Geiger, Joohyun Lee, Daniel Liss

Arts & Entertainment editors: Emma Finder, David Salazar, Charlotte Murtishaw

Sports editors: Muneeb Alam, Caroline Bowman, Eli Schultz, Molly Tow

Multimedia editor: Naomi Cohen, Nino Rekhviashvili, Morgan Wilcock

Spectrum editor: Jenny Xu

Copy editor: Emily Sorensen

Photo editors: Luke Henderson, Douglas Kessel, Olachi Oleru, Jenny Payne, Kiera Wood

Graphic design editor: Alanna Browdy, Karen Nan, Sinjihn Smith

Digital outreach: Max Marshall

Sales & Monetization: Michael Ouimette

Development & Outreach: Audrey Greene, Kristine Musademba

Promotions: Emily Aronson

Editorial Board

Board of Trustees

Spectator Publishing Company, Inc., is the parent company of the Columbia Daily Spectator. The company, managed by the publisher, editor in chief, and managing editor, is an independent nonprofit organization accountable to a board of trustees composed of Spectator alumni.

Members:
Chase Behringer
Wendy Brandes, chair
Ernest Brod
Morris Dickstein
Duchesne Drew
Sara Just
Stuart Karle
Beth Knobel
Rick MacArthur
Nekesa Moody
Steven Waldman

News

The news section is the eyes and ears of Columbia University and the surrounding neighborhoods of New York City. Our reporters sit down with top Columbia and Barnard administrators, walk the city streets from the Upper West Side to Harlem, and work with student councils and clubs to get to the core of our student life coverage. Writing for news might be the best way to get the most out of your experience as a student and resident of New York, as you encounter people, places, and events that are integral to shaping your life here, though perhaps beyond the scope of an average Columbia undergraduate.

Deputy editors
Abby Abrams (Student Life)
Samantha Cooney (Academics)
Avantika Kumar (Upper West Side)
Chris Meyer (Manhattanville/Morningside Heights)
Cecilia Reyes (Administration)
Tracey Wang (Student Life)
Christian Zhang (West Harlem)

Associate editors
Luke Barnes
Lillian Chen
Benjamin Gittelson
Emma Goss
Jillian Kumagai
Gina Lee

Beat writers
Rakhi Agrawal
Ying Chang
Emma Cheng
Naomi Cohen
Kelly Echavarria
Natalie Felsen
Sophie Gamez
Abigail Golden
Eva Kalikoff
Sharon Liao
Max Marshall
Josephine McGowan
Shayna Orens
Alessandra Poblador
Thea Raymond-Sidel
Neha Sundaram
Hallie Nell Swanson
Qiuyun Tan

Opinion

Spectator welcomes submissions on any topic relevant to the Columbia University, Morningside Heights, and West Harlem. We accept opinion submissions in the form of op-eds and letters to the editor, and also publish columns and staff editorials.

Submit an op-ed: Op-eds should clearly state an opinion and may not have been previously published elsewhere. Pieces should be roughly 650 words, and may be edited before publication. Email submissions to opinion@columbiaspectator.com.

Submit a letter to the editor: A letter to the editor should be no longer than 350 words and must refer to an article from Spectator or The Eye, or a Spectrum post. Letters may be edited and shortened for space constraints. Submit letters to opinion@columbiaspectator.com.

Columns
Opinion columns are written by current Columbia students who are selected on a semesterly basis. They represent the opinions of the author in the byline. Columns run once every two weeks and carry a steady theme throughout the semester.

Staff editorials
As the editorial voice of the newspaper, Spectator's editorial board decides the content of staff editorials at biweekly meetings. The editorial board consists of the editor in chief, managing editor, editorial page editors, and at-large members. Members are selected on a semesterly basis and can be from any of the undergraduate schools affiliated with Columbia University.

Editorial Board
Current members: Nelson Castaño, Ryan Cho, Gabriel Falk, Jennifer Fearon, Margaret Mattes, Hilary Price, Steele Sternberg

Additional information
For further information about content submission or to join our staff, contact the editorial page editors at opinion@columbiaspectator.com.

Arts & Entertainment

Spectator A&E covers all things arts and entertainment in New York, both on and off campus. We are composed of eight subsections, each of which provides student-relevant arts coverage in the daily pages, the Eye magazine, and on Spectator's blog, Spectrum.

In the past year alone, A&E writers have interviewed comedian Tom Green, "Amelie" star Audrey Tautou, and the creator of the viral YouTube hit "Shit Girls Say." But some of the most important and exciting work Spec A&E does is focused right in our own neighborhood, reviewing student and campus productions, profiling student and faculty artists, authors, and musicians, and offering a guide to the multifaceted arts scene inside Columbia's gates.

Sports

Spectator Sports provides in-depth coverage for all of Columbia's varsity teams. We also publish features on club sports teams, alumni affairs, athletes' post-Columbia careers, the athletic department administration, as well as human interest pieces ranging from homophobia in athletics to current and former Columbia Olympians. The section also showcases columnists who voice their opinions on everything from the CU basketball team's strategy to the importance of physical fitness in a college student's life.

The Eye

A weekly supplement of the Columbia Daily Spectator, The Eye is an arts and culture publication that likes to dabble in politics, religion, and the philosophical implications of Nicki Minaj. Founded in 2006, The Eye offers feature articles that investigate campus life and emerging trends in New York City. In the last year, The Eye has tackled pop-up restaurants, "Girls," and gay hip-hop. Each week the magazine publishes a lengthy lead story, several long-form features, an interview, and a personal essay or work of fiction. It also includes several bite-sized reflections on campus life and pop culture punningly called Eyesites and 20/20.

You can also like The Eye on Facebook and follow The Eye on Twitter.

Spectrum

Spectrum is the blog of the Spectator, updated around the clock with the latest bits of campus news, witty commentary, and everything else a Columbia student needs to know. Spectrum is the home for special series like The Shaft; our annual guide to navigating the insanity that is the Columbia housing lottery; and the Freshman 15, our guide to preparing for your first semester on campus. The blog is also where we showcase the best of our multimedia content—like our sports podcast, audio slideshows, and HD videos accompanying sports, news, and arts stories.

Photography

Members of the photo section provide the visual content of the newspaper, with a growing emphasis on accountable independent reporting, online projects, new media journalism, original content, and comprehensive coverage on both the campus and city side of news.

While shooting for Spectator, you may find yourself covering high-profile political speeches on campus, local protests at neighborhood churches, models walking the runway at Fashion Week, championship games at Baker Field, portraits of locals in Manhattanville, classy restaurants in the city, concerts, art expos, and much more. Past coverage has included President Obama's election night in Chicago, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit, and a string of features on the Manhattanville expansion.

Spectator Photo also offers a number of workshops and positions for those interested in working with the latest industry-standard image processing software. The section will provide photographers who do not own equipment with all necessary gear for assignments. This includes DSLR cameras, lenses, memory cards, batteries and, where necessary, external flashes and telephoto lenses.

Multimedia

Members of the multimedia section create HD videos to accompany stories from all sections of the paper, including news, arts, sports, and The Eye. The section also produces podcasts and audio slideshows, and assists other reporters in shooting video for their own projects. Spectator multimedia offers a number of workshops for those looking to learn to shoot and edit video. The section will provide photographers who do not own equipment with all necessary gear for assignments, and has brand-new camera and lighting equipment available for use. Visit our YouTube page to see some of our work.

Design

The Spectator design team is in charge of the look and feel of the newspaper. We create fun and informative graphics and we implement the page layouts for the daily paper. Members of our team learn and perfect their skills using the latest industry-standard design software: Adobe InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator.

We are looking for students interested in graphic design with any or no experience with newspaper layout. Time commitment is flexible and is limited to the evening that you choose to work in the office. Training is one-on-one with a current design editor to familiarize you with using the software and newspaper style.

Copy

The copy section is the final gatekeeper to every word that is published by the Columbia Daily Spectator. We define and enforce the writing style of the newspaper and make our writers' writing clear, consistent, and grammatically correct.

We look for a strong editorial hand for good writing and a keen eye for good grammar in our editors. No experience in copy editing is necessary, and the time commitment is as low as three hours a week.

Online

The online section is responsible for web presence of the Spectator, which includes the daily content, The Eye's website, and Spectrum. Using the latest web technologies and an unprecedented amount of moxie, the online section (O-Team) constantly strives to help the Spectator present its content in new and better ways, from adding functionality to the website to stand-alone projects like our interactive housing calculator created for the Shaft series on Spectrum.

Business

The business sections are responsible for overseeing the day-to-day finances of the Spectator Publishing Company. Interested in helping to run a media organization with over 300 staffers and hundreds of thousands of readers? The Columbia Spectator’s business team provides one of the best opportunities on campus for undergraduates to gain real business experience through meaningful and important leadership roles.

The Spectator Publishing Company, financially independent from the University, is a registered 501(c)3 organization run almost exclusively by students, who are tasked with funding and maintaining the Columbia Daily Spectator, the Eye magazine, and the blog Spectrum.

Sales and monetization section: Helps develop and implement new monetization strategies that keep Spectator profitable in the digital age

Outreach and development section: Connects with alumni from the past 60+ years and works to supplement the company's fundraising efforts

Finance and strategy section: Coordinates internal operations like budget management and technology financing while also organizing external marketing campaigns for the Spectator and its partners. The section also collects data on readership to understand the Spectator's expanding audience and its needs.