54 Comments
fbv807: “Abby, Michael, and Steven announcing the exciting next phase of @columbiaspec at an all-staff meeting: it will be the first Ivy paper to drop its print edition in favor of a web-first journalism reality. Paper will print weekly starting fall 2014.”
Spec is currently holding a huge meeting in its office. According to a tweet from Finn Vigeland, former managing editor of Spec, and other sources, the Columbia Daily Spectator will be daily no more—it’s dropping down to one weekly print issue in the fall of 2014, and the Eye will become an online magazine. An encouraging quote from the editor at the meeting: “We will be even more daily”
Just in: @ColumbiaSpec will be going digital, focusing on web-first. First Ivy paper to stop printing daily. Will print one weekly issue.
— Finn Vigeland (@fvigeland) April 24, 2014
Peter Sterne’s article in Capital notes that it will be published every Thursday. It continues:
Abrams said the move was not forced by the paper’s current finances, but rather driven by the desire to “make the decision while Spectator is still in a strong place.”
“This is not something that we have to do,” she said. “It’s a choice.”
Furthermore, Jill Colvin, Senior Political Reporter at The New York Observer commented on the major decision:
This is a TERRIBLE decision: http://t.co/FTtPwM2LJq cc @erinmdurkin @Joy_Resmovits @kiragoldenberg
— Jill Colvin (@colvinj) April 24, 2014
Former Editor-in-Chief of Spec, Sammy Roth, of course vouches for Abrams’ plan.
EIC Abby Abrams announcing the decision: This is all about the journalism. More time/energy to spend doing great journalism in digital form. — Sammy Roth (@Sammy_Roth) April 24, 2014
And to share even more tweets — specifically those of former Speccie Vigeland — this decision is “not final.” All hail “#NewSpec.”
Important to note the decision is not final—CB says they wanted to talk with staff before they finalize with board of trustees. #NewSpec — Finn Vigeland (@fvigeland) April 24, 2014
Perhaps the most important hashtag in the game now isn’t #NewSpec (or even, dare we say it, #DesperateSpec) but that which Spec Sucks proffers:
Spec is not ded they are like voldemort. WATCH OUT AND CHECK THE BACK OF UR HEAD #spechasfallen — Spec Sucks (@spec_sucks) April 24, 2014
Update, 9:30pm: Abby Abrams sent an email at 9:23 to the entire staff about “Tonight’s staff-wide meeting”:
Hi everyone,
Thank you so much to everyone who came to the staff meeting tonight. Here is a summary of what we discussed for those of you who were unable to make the meeting.At tonight’s meeting, we discussed switching the daily paper to a weekly print production schedule, The Eye to a digital magazine, and refocusing our efforts on our digital presentation and on producing the quality journalism that sets Spectator apart. While we are extremely excited about this change, it is not finalized yet. Spectator’s board of trustees will vote on the changes at a meeting this weekend, after which, we will make an official announcement. We and the board of trustees felt it was important to discuss this pending decision with all of you before it was finalized. We know that it will require lots of planning and dedication from everyone at Spectator, and so we want to give you all as much time as possible to prepare and provide feedback before next semester.
These changes also mean that Spectator will re-allocate funds that we currently use to produce the daily print paper. Going forward, they will be used for digital enhancements to our website as well as to significantly expand Spectator’s work-study program. We feel very strongly that Spectator should be accessible to as many people as possible, and with this expansion, we are taking concrete steps to move toward that goal.Our once-weekly issue will come out on Thursdays and include a mix of content that will likely be distinct from the content we publish every day on our website. With more pages and a creative design, we will showcase in-depth news stories, weekend sports and arts coverage, and opinion content. We realize these are large changes and so many of you may still have questions or ideas you would like to discuss. We are always available to answer any questions you have and to talk about any of the things discussed in this email or tonight in the office. Please feel free to reach out to any of us or stop by the office in the coming days.
All the best,
Abby, Steven, and Michael
The Announcement via Finn Vigeland’s Instagram.
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54 Comments
@BC '16 I think switching to weekly print makes sense for Spec, but to lose the print edition of The Eye entirely? I’ll miss it. The Eye is the only print newspaper I’ve read for the past two years, and the print layout makes a huge difference in the experience of reading it. A print Spec more of an annoying folding puzzle, but I love sitting down on a weekend morning to page through The Eye. I doubt I’ll bother to read much of the content if it’s all online.
@Anonymous Abby said in the meeting that the format of the weekly is tbd. Means the eye lead could still be in there! Hopefully comments like this help her in that decision
@BC '16 Hope so! Bwog comments always feel like an echo chamber, but fingers crossed that they go for a more magazine-type layout than a giant origami spreadsheet for the weekly.
@Anonymous This is a wholly voluntary student activity,not work.
@Anonymous Did the advertisers catch on that 95% of print copies go unread? Thought Spec was making money on print.
@Anonymous This is not good news for people who are interested in writing, editing, journalism.
@Anonymous In 20 years, writers will read your comment and laugh.
@Yeah. Laughing already, actually. The reality is that print copies just sit in residence hall lobbies and the lerner racks. Nobody reads print. If cutting the time and energy required to create the redundant print copy means we’ll get better journalism digitally, I’m all for that.
@Anonymous I was excited to read this until I found out the only reason why they are doing it is to save money so the editors will now pay themselves an hourly wage. Great, take from the community to pay yourself.
@Girl Which of these should be explained to you: the concept of “work-study” or the phrase “only reason”?
@Anonymous I came here to see spec sucks’ triumph and victory parade.
I leave surprisingly disappointed. Is the resistance dead?
@kidcutter Best month ever! Joffery get poisoned and spec is dying !
@is it bad... that I didn’t even know speck was daily?
@Cindy Burbank When is Bwog gonna learn to mind it’s own gosh darn business? Y’all start treading in someone else’s pea bushes don’t be surprised when ya step on their carrots!
@Cindy Burbank Ya’ll can downvote me all you want. My niece Denise taught me how to keep my computer from going into hibernating mode! I can post back all night!
@Anonymous Successful troll is successful
@Bwog ≠ Spec I was just listing things that might attract prospective writers, mainly.
@Anonymous I may primarily read Spec online, but often it’s because I see an article in the print copy as I’m walking past that piques my interest.
@well damn I’ll miss using their newspapers as toilet paper with their shitty journalism
@Heisenberg Underrated downside to this move is that in three years, every single Bwog senior wisdom is going to have “Back in my day… Spec was a print newspaper”
@anon Spoiler alert: SPEC SUCKS
@? weekly issue is the linchpin holding this all together. a majority of readers read online, but to cover that minority that doesn’t you still need the print issue (albeit once a week).
@? just curious. why thursday and not another weekday (e.g. monday)?
@Former Eye Because that’s when The Eye ran its print edition so they can keep working on the same print schedule agreement.
@Wow Abrams So pretty much all that Bwog, (or even 9 Ways, or Lion) has to do is print twice weekly to deliver the death blow to Spec?
@Wow Abrams You think I’m sarcastic but imagine a freshman being offered the choice between working under the e-board which published “protesting is bad” and cut 4/5 of their print run vs. working on a web publication without all this mess
@Bwog ≠ Spec The defining differences between Spec and Bwog go far deeper than publishing print copies.
Just off the top of my head:
Bylines
City News, A&E, and Sports reporting
The Spectator office
And if you’re suggesting that an online publication would get into print publishing solely for the purpose of poaching prospective writers from Spec, you don’t know much about this game.
@Anonymous >implying that those differences make Spec better, or that people read those sections
@but Bwog does report on sports. See their current staff. They also regularly post about and review the arts. And they give many bylines. Granted, not for the little things or anything too incriminating, but on important or timely articles, there are always bylines.
@Bwog ≠ Spec Bwog writes about sports, but it doesn’t send writers to cover games or interview coaches. It doesn’t have beat reporters. It doesn’t report on the niche sports. It doesn’t give live updates on competitions.
I concede that Bwog has an arts section, but its scope is far smaller. Spec’s Weekend coverage includes events and shows all over the city, and it gets interviews and press passes from some big-name artists.
My Speccie bias is showing, but I just want to make the case that Spec has more diverse opportunities for students who want to write, and that’s not changing with the shift from print to web. I also don’t want to sound like I’m shitting on Bwog, either, because Bwog’s great at what it does best, namely campus news reporting and blogging.
@Anonymous It’s about incentives, I think. Web first is an important strategy but it doesn’t justify cutting the only print paper in the community to once a week. Print isn’t dead on college campuses, and there will be a lot of people waiting to legitimize whatever paper comes out from Monday to Wednesday if this goes through.
Let’s not talk about what Bwog and Spec “are.” If Spec can make such a drastic change, who’s to say that Bwog isn’t the best positioned actor (and with less tradition and less structure to worry about) to make a drastic change of their own?
@Anonymous I’m exaggerating about a “death blow”…Spec has been able to raise tons of money when it needs to…but come on. Give me a single example of a paper (even one that was going bankrupt) that was strengthened by going web only.
@Bwog ≠ Spec Do you really think there’s room for another daily paper to establish itself on this campus? Where will it get the startup money? Where will it get its writers? Between Spec, Bwog, and the Lion, the news around here gets covered pretty thoroughly.
The market for print is already shrinking, which is one of the reasons why Spec wants to get out of it. The majority of readers are online now, and I really doubt that a brand-new publication could find any staying power where Spec couldn’t.
@Formerly MB? Someone’s never heard of multimedia journalism…
@Formerly MB Leave it to a guy who got on the MB for making youtube videos and a Barnard student who never even served on MB to kill a 100 year plus tradition. No wonder their coverage this year sucks as well.
@Formerly MB? If you were, in fact, formerly MB, you probably haven’t been keeping up to date with Spec MB that much at all. Steven Lau didn’t “make YouTube videos” — he made the multimedia section actually produce consistent, quality content (and this was after a year of shitty multimedia “leadership” under 136, and a multimedia team that was barely holding it together). And lol at the way you said “Barnard student” as if being from Barnard made you automatically less qualified. Abby has been one of the best reporters Spec has ever seen, with brilliant coverage as a deputy news editor on sexual assault and student wellness with an extraordinary amount of professionalism, and she has her shit together.
But really, I don’t even need to justify this to you. Fuck off. This is a good decision on Steven and Abby’s part.
@Formerly MB “quality content”≠journalism
@Formerly MB? Someone’s never heard of multimedia journalism…
@Formerly MB lol and it is probably all speccies downvoting my stuff
@Anonymous Former Speccie trashing Spec = legitimate. Current Speccies defending Speccie = illegitimate. #Logic
Also, you lose all credibility when you imply than being a Barnard student somehow makes Abby less than deserving of a leadership role at Spec. Stop embarrassing yourself.
@Anonymous it’s the same way a student at university of phoenix is less deserving of a leadership role
@recovering speccie “professional”
I worked with Abby when she was news deputy and all I have to say is that she is one of the most unpleasant people at Spec I have dealt with.
Steven is cool though.
@Sammy Roth I’m not sure who I’m responding to, but Abby is one of the most pleasant, kind-hearted, and compassionate people I’ve had the pleasure of working with at Spec. She’s the kind of person who would never dream of trashing a fellow student in an anonymous blog comment.
@A. Svokos Abby and Steven are great, you are sucking (and I hope trolling?)
@Anonymous This is a joke, right? The future of journalism is online — good job to Spec for being among the first to acknowledge that. You can’t innovate effectively if you tie yourself to the past by being afraid to kill traditions.
@I agree
@The real question here Is whether this will increase Peter Sterne’s chances of getting a qt Spec gf
@yo i heard he has a spreadsheet w/ all the female journalists on campus on it
@Anonymous Why? There has to be a better way to cut costs. Daily to weekly is a massive drop-off. Why not just stop printing on weekends or some other compromise?
I think it’s embarrassing that the university with arguably the best journalism school in the country can’t sustain a daily undergrad printed paper. 4
@Anonymous Something tells me you don’t read Spec. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the fact that SPEC DOESN’T EVEN PRINT ON WEEKENDS LIKE YOU SUGGEST IN YOUR POST.
@Anonymous this isn’t about cutting costs, it’s about evolving. when was the last time you picked up a physical copy of spec?
@Anonymous Two jumps in a week
I bet you think that’s pretty clever don’t you boy?
Flying on your motorcycle,
Watching all the ground beneath you drop
You’d kill yourself for recognition,
Kill yourself to never ever stop
You broke another mirror,
You’re turning into something you are not
Don’t leave me high, don’t leave me dry
@Let me be the first To predict that Spec eliminates the weekly issue in (relatively) short order . . .
@Heisenberg Weekly is the smart play. Saves money compared to daily, can print decent content and not space fillers on slow news days, and maintains print version to impress parents and donors. Win-win.