Type | Weekly newspaper |
---|---|
Format | Broadsheet |
Owner(s) | Spectator Publishing Company, Inc. |
Publisher | Anurak Saelaow |
Editor-in-chief | Catie Edmondson |
Managing editors | J. Clara Chan |
Founded | 1877 |
Headquarters | New York, New York |
Circulation | 8,000 |
Website | www |
Columbia Daily Spectator is the weekly student newspaper of Columbia University. It is published at 112th and Broadway in New York, New York. Founded in 1877, it is the oldest continuously operating college news daily in the nation after The Harvard Crimson, and has been legally independent of the university since 1962. During the academic term, it is published online Monday through Friday and printed every Thursday. In addition to serving as a campus newspaper, Spec, as it is commonly known, also reports the latest news of the surrounding Morningside Heights community. The paper is delivered each week to over 150 locations throughout the Morningside Heights neighborhood.
Spectator is published by Spectator Publishing Company Inc, an independent 501(c)(3) corporation. Spectator Publishing Company was formed in 1962 and has been independent of Columbia University since then. The president of the Spectator Publishing Company also serves as the editor in chief of the Columbia Daily Spectator.
Spectator's writing departments, each headed by one or two editors, include campus news, city news, sports, arts and entertainment, and opinion. The other non-writing departments, also headed by their own respective editors, include photography, design, online, production, copy, and business. The business departments, which oversee the newspaper's advertising, finances, and alumni relations, are headed by the publisher.
Spec is currently run by the 141st managing board. First-time writers at Columbia begin their time at the paper with a 1- to 2-month trial period, during which they learn the basics of writing an article and publish their first articles. Each November and December, students run for positions at the paper, a grueling process that takes nearly a month. They begin by shadowing, or sitting with the current editors or associate editors and learning the editing process. Next they write proposals for their desired position. The students then take editing tests made up by their department editor that test them on fundamentals. Finally, they go through the turkeyshoots, an interview in which the current managing board grills the applicant on why the applicant feels that they would be a good fit for the position. The results of the process, including the new managing board, are announced in mid-December, the weekend before finals.
In 2005, Spec started printing La Página, a weekly flyer in Spanish with translations of some of the week's English content most relevant to neighborhood readers. It folded within the year.
The next year, in February 2006, the paper launched a series of blogs, SpecBlogs. They were the third Ivy League paper to do this, after the Harvard Crimson 's Sports Blog (December 2005) and The Daily Pennsylvanian 's TheBuzz (January 2006).