Really has been 139 years, hasn’t it

Lili Brown spoke with our friends over at Spectator to better understand their Managing Board’s restructuring.

Yesterday, Spectrum released Spectator’s new Managing Board, and some clear structural changes have been made to a long-standing newspaper and tradition on Columbia’s campus. This will be Spectator’s first year without the formal title of “Editor-in-Chief” heading its Managing Board; instead, this is the beginning of a board headed by an “Executive Editor.” The new position covers a large domain of titles and responsibilities: the individual in charge of all editorial processes is now also the President of Spectator Publishing Company, which seemingly adds a business aspect to what was previously a mostly editorial position.

To discuss the motivations for and the process of this marked change in Spectator’s organization, Bwog contacted the inaugural Executive Editor, Michael Ouimette, who filled in some of the holes not addressed in the formal Spectrum release.

Michael, who served as Publisher of Spectator on the 138th Managing Board, sees the structural changes to the board to fit the fact that Spectator now offers more diverse content. Between its traditional journalistic aspects and productions of Spectator Publishing Company — such as Courses@CU — Spectator is dedicated to providing as much information as possible to Columbia students. According to Michael, the best way to address the newfound scale and diversity of Spectator’s content is to unite all of the aspects of the newspaper under one position. This also contributes to a more unified main goal of Spectator: to provide information to students.

Michael recognizes that the changes might be confusion considering his business and publishing background within Spectator, but the Executive Editor is to be solely an editorial position. He states, “Though I am coming from a publishing role, this should not diminish my role in an editorial position.” The main difference here in responsibility is that of a broader allocation of resources; the Executive Editor is now also the President of Spectator Publishing Company. Under the Executive Editor, the resources will be allocated from an editorial standpoint, given that this power has shifted from Publisher to Executive Editor.

His newfound position was overseen by Spectator’s “Turkeyshoot Board,” which is comprised of current Managing Board members who are not returning to the staff and are in charge of the editing process of Spectator.

The new position and structure was not a “spontaneously generated idea,” and has been in discussion in Spectator circles for the past few years. This fall, the decision was approved by Spectator’s Board of Trustees as well as the Turkeyshoot Board. Michael also pointed out that The Harvard Crimson and The Daily Pennsylvanian, Ivy journalistic counterparts, use a similar structure to that of the new Spectator Managing Board.

With regard to other changes in the board, a question posed in the comments section of the Spectrum’s release noted the removal of a multimedia/video editor from the Managing Board. In previous years there has been a separate multimedia/video section of Spectator. However, Michael explained that in restructuring the Managing Board, they would like to see videos embedded in all other various sections of Spectator. Each section of Spectator will have its own multimedia editor.

In the wake of lots of change and the beginning of a Spectator run by an Executive Editor, Michael is “most excited to up the news Spec releases” and continue to expand their content.

Ch-ch-ch-changes via Shutterstock.