NSOP, SSOL, GPA, and WLF? Must be back to school time.

When McBama! Zomg McBama! hit campus last week, we here at Spec were still just getting back into the swing of putting out a daily paper. We were still experimenting with a new layout, which was adopted for our new paper size—though you’d be hard-pressed to see any difference (in my opinion), we cut the width of the newspaper down about an inch, and with that slimmer space we experimented with new fonts to came up with a cleaner page design. Meanwhile, other news was taking place, a new Spec blog was in the works, and then ServiceNation chose Columbia to host the launch its two-day program. We put a lot of energy into running a special McBama supplement (with a fine cover illustration by photo editor Linda Carrion—sadly, the print job on that cover did not do justice to Linda’s superior quality work) and now that the campus has settled down again (unless the ROTC snowballs into another cluttered national media circus) I’m wondering where the weekend has gone.

In the meantime, I wanted to make some kind of mark on this blog today so that the teaser headlines under the blog’s name are not ALL McBama-related. While I’m at it, here’s a Spec primer on how to get involved at Spec or how to get your story or side of an issue into the paper. Contribute to public dialogue! Point out our stupid typos! Call us…just to say hi…we get lonely.

Spectator’s news section is run by two news editors who oversee all content. There are five deputy editors under them who work with reporters (“beat chiefs”) to develop and assign stories. While we hear about stories in a variety of ways, the two most common are through email or through direct contact between the beat chief and the sources within the beat. Pitches are gathered on a weekly basis and discussed with the deputy editor, who hones them into story ideas and assigns them. While much of this occurs on a daily basis, the process has been somewhat streamlined into a weekly process, thus Spec benefits from hearing about stories further in advance.

In the last few years, our staff has grown to allow us to cover more stories. However, we simply don’t have the resources or manpower to cover everything. In general, we print stories about people, events, and issues that are new and/or affect the larger community. But we consider every story. We suggest, when emailing about a story or event, including the date, time, location, and a short sentence or two about why you think Spec should cover it. Additional information like, say, a press release or pdf image of a flier, are very useful but the basic details are most essential.

For a heck of a lot more information on all the sections and policies of the paper, again: visit our About page.