Spectator’s mission has two parts of equal importance. The first is external: to serve our audience by providing coverage, products, events, and services that inform and connect members of the Columbia, Morningside Heights, and West Harlem communities. The second is internal: to serve our staff by supporting their social, intellectual, and professional growth and development.

Increasing and maintaining staff diversity is central to fulfilling this mission. We strive to have a staff that is representative of the communities we serve. As such, our organization has committed not only to improving the scope and depth of our coverage but also to fostering greater diversity within our staff through our recruitment, training, and staff support infrastructure.

As part of this commitment, we conducted a mandatory and anonymous internal diversity survey in November 2023 to better understand the composition of our staff, following our 2022 staff diversity report and 2019 staff diversity report. Of the people on staff at the time the survey was sent out, 98.90 percent of the 389-person staff completed it. Response rates on each graphic represent the number of respondents to each question as a percentage of the entire staff, not the percentage of those who completed the survey. Not every question on the survey was required.

Where applicable, we broke down the results of the survey across two subsets of our staff: between leadership and non-leadership, and between our Journalism and Business & Innovations divisions. Our leadership consists of those who hold managerial positions on our corporate, managing, and deputy boards, which accounts for 28.61 percent of our staff. The remaining 71.39 percent of staffers are associates and trainees. By breaking down the staff into these groups, we can get a better sense of upward mobility trends in leadership. The Journalism division produces our written and visual reporting content, while the B&I division generates revenue, creates our digital products, and hosts and markets our public events. Journalism accounts for 78.73 percent of staff, and B&I accounts for 21.27 percent. Understanding cross-organizational demographic differences can inform how we recruit and train our staff across the whole of Spectator.

Across Spectator, the plurality of staffers were white, making up 47.98 percent of respondents. Within Journalism, the plurality of staffers were also white, making up 48.95 percent of respondents. In B&I, the plurality of staffers were East Asian, composing 42.11 percent of respondents. Within leadership, white staffers were the most represented, composing 38.83 percent of leadership respondents. Middle Eastern or North African staffers composed the smallest proportion of leadership, making up only 2.91 percent of respondents. Native American/Indigenous staffers were not represented in leadership respondents. The plurality of associate and trainee staffers were white, making up 44.49 percent of applicable respondents. Meanwhile, Native American/Indigenous staffers were the least represented, making up only 1.90 percent of respondents.

The Spectator staff is majority women, with women making up 74.79 percent of respondents. Journalism similarly demonstrated approximately three-fourths majority of women, with women composing 76.22 percent of respondents. Meanwhile, in B&I, women made up 68.42 percent of respondents. Across leadership and non-leadership groups, women made up 75.73 percent and 74.71 percent of respondents, respectively.

Across Spectator, 50.14 percent of respondents identified as heterosexual. The next greatest proportion was bisexual, with 18.90 percent of respondents identifying as such. Within Journalism, less than half of respondents were heterosexual, with 45.45 percent of staffers identifying as such. In contrast, 67.10 percent of B&I respondents identified as heterosexual. Within both leadership and associates and trainees, approximately half of respondents identified as heterosexual.

The Spectator staff was primarily composed of Columbia College students, who made up 54.79 percent of respondents, followed by Barnard students making up 30.41 percent of respondents, School of Engineering and Applied Science students making up 9.04 percent of respondents, and General Studies students making up 5.21 percent of respondents. Within Journalism sections, the proportion of Columbia College students was similar to that of Spectator staff as a whole, but the proportion of Barnard students was slightly higher, with Barnard students making up 34.27 percent of Journalism survey respondents. B&I also demonstrated similar proportions of Columbia College students to the whole staff population, but the proportion of SEAS students was larger than that of all staff, with SEAS students composing 28.95 percent of respondents. Leadership demonstrated higher proportions of Columbia College students than the all-staff proportion, with 59.22 percent of respondents studying at Columbia College. Associates and trainees generally demonstrated similar undergraduate class proportions to the general staff population but a larger proportion of GS students, with 6.23 percent of respondents in GS.

Sophomores made up the largest group of respondents at 35.16 percent. First-year students made up 9.07 percent of respondents. This survey was completed before spring recruitment.

Approximately one-fifth of survey respondents – 19.18 percent – identified as first-generation college students. The proportions of first-generation students within the Journalism/B&I and leadership/associate-trainee subsets remained largely similar to the proportion of first-generation students across our staff as a whole. However, Journalism demonstrated slightly lower representation of first-generation college students than B&I, with 18.18 percent and 22.37 percent of respondents identifying as first-generation for each subset respectively. Leadership demonstrated lower representation of first-generation students, with 14.56 percent of respondents identifying as first-generation. The associate-trainee subset demonstrated a higher representation of first-generation students at 20.62 percent.

Of survey respondents, 18.63 percent identified as low-income, with 17.13 and 22.37 percent of Journalism and B&I survey respondents identifying as low-income respectively. Leadership demonstrated a lower proportion of low-income students than the whole staff population, with low-income staffers making up 16.50 percent of leadership roles. Non-leadership staff demonstrated a higher proportion of low-income students than the whole staff population, with 19.07 of non-leadership respondents identifying as low-income.

Across the staff, 45.75 percent of respondents were on financial aid and 42.74 percent of staffers were not on financial aid, with 11.51 percent of respondents preferring not to disclose their financial aid status. Within both Journalism and B&I, more respondents received financial aid than did not. Within leadership, 54.37 percent of respondents received financial aid, and 33.98 percent of respondents did not. In comparison, 42.41 percent of associate-trainee respondents received financial aid, and 46.30 percent did not.

Of those who responded to the survey, 25.21 percent received work-study, and 70.14 percent did not, with the remaining 4.66 percent preferring not to disclose their work-study status. In Journalism, 26.57 percent of respondents received work-study, while in B&I, 19.74 percent of staffers received work-study. Across leadership, 43.69 percent of respondents received work-study, and across associates and trainees, 17.90 percent of respondents received work-study.

Since 2011, Spectator has run an internal work-study program for staffers, working to cover both federal work-study and college employment allocations. During fall 2023, Spectator provided work study support for 10.54 percent of staffers, providing larger proportions of work study to staffers in time-intensive leadership roles and with higher demonstrated need. This proportion is significantly lower than semesters past and present because of budgetary constraints that made associates on college employment and trainees ineligible for the program in fall 2023. Of staffers receiving work-study support from Spectator, 82.92 percent held leadership roles, and the remaining 17.07 percent of staffers did not.

We aim to foster greater diversity through initiatives that support our current staffers and welcome new talent.

In 2022, we established a formal position to lead diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at the managing board leadership level. This role’s purpose is twofold: to maintain a comfortable and productive environment at Spectator, and to ensure that Spectator’s products, content, events, and services are reflective of our values in order to maintain strong relationships with the communities we serve and minimize harm within our reporting and outreach efforts.

Since 2022, we have built a DEI committee composed of staffers across all sections and leadership levels, implemented more robust training and sensitivity programs at all leadership levels, created a system for DEI content advisory across journalism sections, streamlined all-staff communications regarding work-study processes, increased opportunities for staffers to voice DEI-related concerns, and established affinity groups based on race, ethnicity, and religion. We strive to continue building out infrastructure that supports staffers’ development and upward mobility at Spectator, with the hope that these efforts will improve and increase our diversity.

We welcome feedback from the community on this report and any issues of diversity and inclusion as they pertain to Spectator. Please reach out to us at editor@columbiaspectator.com and dei@columbiaspectator.com with any questions, concerns, or feedback you may have. We look forward to discussing with you.