Last week was a busy one! Spec’s editorial board endorsed candidates for Columbia College Student Council and General Studies Student Council. We’ve tried to outline beforehow the editorial board—to be distinguished from the managing board (the newspaper’s editors)—arrive at the final argument each issue. But readers may like to know that for student government elections, we have a bit of a special process. When writing an editorial, we usually have one boardmember make phone calls, do some reporting and fact-checking, etc. For the elections, though, we interview all the candidates, grill them on policy views, and then try to reach a consensus. Sometimes, that consensus is easily achieved. Other times, it takes more research, discussion amongst the board, and sometimes a formal vote. The eventual editorial then tries to accurately represent the board’s full view—not only in the choice of the candidate, but in acknowledging the pros and cons regarding each, as well as commenting on the issues themselves regardless of whom we endorse.

Endorsing can be difficult. If two candidates seem similar, should we really choose between one or the other, and how so? As we noted in this editorial, we sometimes feel a lack of faith in the council elections. Ultimately, we opt to endorse because, especially if two candidates are similar, an editorial can help us and potential readers distinguish the subtler differences between them. With that as a mission, in the end…endorsing can just be difficult.

An unrelated note: Commenting has returned! However, we had some slip-ups. The new commenting policy will use a security question system to help keep out spam (the original reason we took commenting down). But the new system in our first week turned out to be a bit too sensitive, so some comments that initially were accepted somehow were lost. Since a few of these were about a contentious opinion submission on Tibet, a few readers wrote in asking why their (critical) comments had been removed. We apologize but it was unintentional. The piece, incidentally, was written based on faulty information, and we formally retracted it, removing it from the Web site and issuing a note of explanation.

Comments should, now, remain published once they pass our anti-spam system. So comment away, and thanks for bearing with us.

The online edition of the Spectator will now see commenting on all of its articles once more. 

We made the decision to remove article commenting at the end of the Fall 2007 semester due to severe SPAM attacks on our website. Unfortunately, due to restraints within the online section and the complexity of our Drupal content management system, we were not able to address the issue until recently. However, we now have strong anti-SPAM systems in place along with new controls against anonymous commenting. All commenters must now answer a security question which — ideally — will only be answerable by humans. We’re currently in our test week, so there still may be many wrinkles to iron out.

Here’s a bit from our web developer as well:

After days looking at the archives, I think it’s wise to ban all comments with “Cool site”, “Good site”, “Nice site” and “* syte [sic]”. Of note, however, is that because 30% of the SPAM was actually gibberish without any links or advertisements, I’m led to believe your site was actually attacked without aim for commercial gain. This differs from the rest of your SPAM, that while malignant, has a commercial aspects besides just causing harm. Most of this purely malignant SPAM was posted on 1/17/2008…

Comment away!

I haven’t posted much lately. I haven’t merely been sitting around reading about journalism in The New Yorker. There was the tragic news of Minghui Yu, which demanded a lot of attention both as a concerned student and as a journalist trying to figure out what happened. There’s been a lot of late breaking news, too, like the Teachers College story and the empty but momentarily street-freezing bomb threat. When news breaks late, we have to decide whether to delay our printing of the paper, change the front page’s layout, spend time reporting, and finally have the paper come out later. It’s a case-by-case call, but what I look for in this case is to measure how much time reporting will take, how important the news is–and with that, how much will we lose by having the physical newspaper hit stands later–and, finally, whether we have enough original reporting (as opposed to citing the New York Times or Associated Press) to merit foregoing a simple update of the web site and reworking the physical paper. I originally wanted to comment on the NYer piece when it came out, but then the breaking news delayed that. I feel like the piece is a few years late anyway, so why not dive into it a little late?

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Have you noticed any gaps in our coverage lately? Yes, it happens even here in the Spec news department (hard as it may be for you to believe) and we want your help in figuring out our weaknesses.

Easily the most difficult task in running any all-volunteer organization is keeping together a staff each semester. This is all the more the case at a student org like the Spec, which has a daily product to put out each and every day. Every September, we receive a training class for of eager freshmen, many of whom over the course of the year satisfy their curiosity about journalism and understandably gravitate to other interests. Unfortunately, we have nothing to offer recruits except the thrill of seeing their name in print and a steady supply of V&T’s pizza. By the spring semester, we’re left with a hardcore crew of new Speccies who love journalism enough, or perhaps are simply masochistic enough, to put up with late nights, a brutal production cycle, and the admittedly tempestuous nature of (at least one of) the news editors.

This flux over the course of the year has tremendous ramifications for the way we cover the news. While we wish every former newsie well on their Spec-less explorations of Columbia, we lament the knowledge that we lose each time we lose a writer or former editor, as well as the imbalance in our content that each gap leaves.

These gaps are more apparent at the beginning of the spring than any other time of year as the new news editors adjust to their new positions. To take one funny example, if you feel like you’ve been reading a lot about subways in the Spec lately, you’re right. It just turns out that one of our most productive rising star first year this year is new associate news editor Maggie Astor, our transit beat chief (meaning that’s her primary area of coverage), and she’s taken the beat position as a mandate to go nuts (if you still haven’t watched her multimedia project about riding all of New York’s subway lines in one day, look for it in our multimedia section now). Another of our tremendous new associates, Alix Pianin, has been closely covering a school, General Studies, which often in the past has fallen through the cracks of our coverage.

There is a darker underbelly to this phenomenon, which is that we lose the knowledge of those writers who we don’t retain. Our prolific SEAS beat chief stepped down at the beginning of the semester to focus on academics (boo!), leaving a noticeable void in our coverage of an important undergraduate college. In the ideal world, we’d also have a much bigger staff to keep us connected with both faculty members and student groups than we have so far this year. In the absence of staffers to fill those niches, the rest of our coverage also suffers as our writers and deputy editors take time and energy away from their regular pursuits to compensate.

Just to be clear, not all of these imbalances are inherently bad, especially when our prolific transit beat chief can make something interesting out of what could be a dry beat. However, problems emerge when we start to miss out on important stories simply because of insufficient staffing. Thus, as the novelty of our not-so-new jobs wears off, a major priority of those of us in the news section will be to evaluate and address the gaps in our coverage before we miss something too big.

Here’s where you–the loyal reader–can help us out. Have you noticed anything that we’ve covered insufficiently so far this year? Missed entirely? Drop me a line at jacob.schneider@columbiaspectator.com or just comment on this post and we’ll take a look.

We received a perceptive comment from a reader noting that we might be missing the point of this blog if we don’t comment on the process of developing our stories and describe how the big decisions are made. I think the note was right on. The design of this blog was to take last year’s news editor’s blog (almost solely dedicated to posts about process, and pretty successful in that regard) and expand that model with a broader scope (journalism in general) with more contributors (the entire managing board). So far we haven’t come through with enough posts on how we arrive at our final product. This is something we’ve already been discussing lately - blogging is a difficult endeavor, even Josh’s popular attempt became tedious once the semester spiraled into “Ahmadineamania” - but we will definitely try harder. Thanks for the feedback! (incidentally, check out this NYTimes piece featuring a Wal-Mart blog…it speaks to both an interesting media project by an American corporation and the difficulties of blogging authentically without sounding like pr)

On that note, I’ve been meaning to write about how we covered the plagiarism at Teachers College. Notice the title of this post uses specific language - “TC Plagiarism,” as opposed to “Constantine,” “Noose Victim,” or anything else that may get bandied about in other media outlets or almost certainly the blogosphere. As we saw it, the story here was that a Teachers College professor had allegedly committed plagiarism, copying without accreditation the work of a fellow faculty member and two students. Many newspapers and blogs played up the noose incident of October (it catches their readers’ eye, I guess), some even throwing in loose allusions to the possibility that Prof. Constantine placed the noose on her own door. When we first got wind of the story, we knew we had to be very careful about the information we received, where we got it, and how we reported on it.

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Particularly with the visit of Washington Post editor Len Downie just days away (whose speech we should have up online soon, for those who are curious), some of us at Spec followed closely the development of the rival New York Times‘ now-infamous story detailing (sort of) the romantic/professional ties of Republican candidate Senator John McCain with various lobbyists. The piece, which broke the story and was followed quickly by a Post article the same day (and which Downie admitted the Post needed before running their piece) took close to a year to develop. It drew instant backlash - to the point that the actual news was lost on some. Here, the Times editors respond to readers’ questions on everything from reporting logistics to the ethical merits of the decision to run the piece without what some would call key evidence. These Q&As with editors can make for great reads - at the same time, one can sometimes feel the judicious calculations made by the Times in how they pick and choose their response. Note, for example, a question about the Editorial side’s endorsement of McCain and whether it conflicts or has any relation to the News side’s work. While it may have been a coincidence, the Times was well-served by having the politics editor answer that one - after all, by its very nature, that editor could not speak for the Editorial side.

Also, an aside: Stephen Colbert’s hilarious segment on the “bad…bad journalism” exhibited by the Times. As one former Spec editor mentioned, maybe the “newspaper of record” simply got this one right, regardless?

Now, the actual point of this post. Thinking about the McCain story makes me think of the state of the media in general. If the Times can be discredited so well, so quickly, on a piece that took months of reporting, fact-checking, and editorial review, it seems anything can happen. Regardless of how one feels about the piece (I’m still iffy on its validity, myself), it speaks to the power of the press today, when watchdog journalism carries with it the perils of instant vilification in the blogosphere. The mainstream media, however small or traditional (read: reactionary) its role in the world, must feel threatened by all this. The Times also reports on an alternative form of media, Wikileaks.org, being shut down by a federal judge, drawing comparisons to the Supreme Court Pentagon Papers case. Ironically, the article reports:
“The feebleness of the action suggests that the bank, and the judge, did not understand how the domain system works or how quickly Web communities will move to counter actions they see as hostile to free speech online.”
Perhaps the Internet will save journalism? Perhaps.

I’ve been slow to post lately - there’s been a lot going on. The Spec is happy to welcome Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. to Low Library Saturday night for our annual Blue Pencil lecture event. Mr. Downie, long-time top dog at the Post, will speak at 8:30 p.m. He’ll describe his views on the journalism industry and talk about diversity in a newsroom, the war in Iraq, and top stories making the news cycle. Semi-formal attire is requested.

It’s Valentine’s Day, which means we’re a little low on staffers tonight - while some of us call Spec our significant other, many Speccies are actually out on dates - but we’re hoping the Weekend section (a perennial late-nighter) will match The Eye, which PDF’ed at 3:30 a.m., a record for the year (possibly longer). Of course, the late breaking story on, well, Barnard pipes breaking, kept us in the office for a few more hours. But last night the News team came together in excellent fashion, as the editors coordinated with Photo and a number of reporters on the scene (read: knee-deep in sewage/murky water).

On a more sober note, reports are streaming in of a gunman opening fire on an Illinois campus today. It’s sad, perplexing news. We here at the Spec have to figure out whether - and if so, how - to cover the tragedy. The precedent is technically set by the Virginia Tech incident of last year. What we’ll do now is ask ourselves if this compares, if there’s a local angle, and if we have the logistical support to cover it. While we’re all shocked by the news, this might be one for our readers to follow in the Times and Illinois papers, CNN, or Google News.

Yesterday we were graced by the presence of Edward Keating, photographer extraordinaire and two time Pulitzer prize winner. He served as a huge motivation for many photographers thinking of photography as a career. Guest speakers are really a great way to interest staffers and making meetings more dynamic. I look forward to having more guest speakers come to the Spec office and maybe even extend our invitation to people outside of the Spectator.

I have been highly impressed by what a huge leap the online section has taken with multimedia projects. The slide shows with and without audio are very well put together and have a very professional, NYT styled appeal. Multimedia mainly focuses on expanding what is on print. Question is, should they go beyond that? The photo department just created a new position (photo multimedia deputy) to help expand and give online (with emphasis on multimedia) more of its own identity. Alanna Vaughns, the person who was chosen to take on this new role that has yet to have a solidified identity, will provide photo’s outreach to multimedia projects since we are so involved in it. The question of identity is a bigger one now that we have people who focus solely on multimedia. For now I see multimedia as just continuing with expanding on print content with the occasional side project. But the future holds many possibilities for this section, especially since this format of reporting is where the future lies and has so much untapped potential. Hopefully with the addition of the new deputy, we can focus even more on multimedia and fully develop its respective personality as part of the Spectator, representing each section and maybe even beyond that.