Features
Finding the Foundation By TINA JIANG
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t is 6:00 p.m. and the security guards at Stuyvesant are telling students to leave the building. In The Spectator office in the SU suite, a group of students shut off the lights, attempting to hide from the guards. Minutes pass, and once no sounds can be heard, the students allow the lights to flicker back on. They return to the warm glow of their computers, typing away behind glazed eyes, determined to make sure The Spectator is published on time. This is only one example of the dedication of the past editorial staff of The Spectator. While states, and in some cases, continents, separate these alumni, they are all still held together by the journalistic spirit this paper instilled in them. In commemoration of their contributions in building the foundation of The Spectator, this article is dedicated to remembering their time on the paper and what they have accomplished since then.
Mark Schapiro (Sports Editor, Editor-in-Chief 1988-1990) When Mark Schapiro was the Editor-in-Chief of The Spectator, devastating news hit the Stuyvesant community; a student had been shot in gang crossfire in Queens. Feeling a responsibility to report on this tragedy, the editorial staff of The Spectator sent a reporter to cover what happened. The student was able to discover which gangs were involved and some of the members in the gangs. The student’s discoveries put her life on the line as she started to receive death threats, making her afraid to publish the story. Feeling as if he owed it to the deceased student to get the truth out, Schapiro decided to publish the article under the editorial board with no byline, meaning any blame would fall on him. A few days later, a police officer escorted Schapiro out of the school to safeguard him from potential threats from the gangs. The situation was soon fixed as the police became convinced that Schapiro was not in danger, but not before he got his first real lesson in responsibility. In addition to teaching Schapiro lessons, The Spectator also served as his second home. “The paper created a community, a family I guess,” he said in an e-mail interview. After graduating from Stuyvesant, Schapiro went on to study political science at Brown University. At Brown, Schapiro continued to be involved in journalism, but in the form of television as opposed to print. Looking back at this decision, Schapiro has some doubts. “Sometimes I think about the great days at Spec and wonder if I should have stayed with newspaper in college,” Schapiro said. After college, Schapiro worked for the Maury Povich Show, continuing a media career that had begun with The Spectator. The experience he had was quite different from what he had envisioned. “I came in to the show all idealistic, wanting to change the world,
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and the first show I had to work on was about sex addicts,” Schapiro said. Left dissatisfied, Schapiro quit and went to graduate school at the London School of Economics. After graduate school, Schapiro spent a few winters teaching skiing in Switzerland, and taught sports and languages to kids from all over the world at the International Summer Camp Montana in Switzerland for the rest of the year. The camp, filled with children and staff from around 55 different countries, inspired Schapiro to take the Foreign Service Officer exam, an exam candidates must take to become a United States diplomat. After passing, Schapiro joined the State Department in the spring of 2000. Schapiro has been a U.S. diplomat ever since then. His choice of assignment in the first years of his career was public diplomacy, with a heavy focus on engaging the Arab media from Syria and Pakistan. Currently, Schapiro is based in Washington where he is coordinating United States policy with Turkey. Most recently, he has dealt with Turkey’s presidential election and coordinated the two countries’ actions regarding northern Iraq and Syria. Though Schapiro has drifted far from journalism, many of the lessons he learned from working on the Spectator remain with him to this day. “Filtering is critical, because there is so much out there that is interesting, but not a lot that is actually important. I like to think that this idea came in some small part from my experience editing the Spec, figuring out what was important, how much space we had, and asking myself always why people should care to read what we put out there,” Schapiro said.
Susie Poppick (Features Editor 2002-2003) Murder is typically a taboo subject, but in journalism, “murdering my darlings” is a phrase used to describe taking away sec-
tions that you’ve worked hard on, but still need to be cut. Susie Poppick, former Features editor, was first introduced to this concept and the surprising satisfaction it left her with while writing for The Spectator. “The result is always much crisper and it provides the same kind of satisfaction as cleaning my whole house,” she said. Poppick continued to “murder her darlings” at Yale University, where she wrote for Yale’s newspaper, the Yale Daily News. Poppick’s experience with The Spectator was a key component of her eventual climb to news editor of the Yale Daily News. “Many of the lessons The Spectator taught me about ethics, teamwork, story construction, reporting technique, and even copy editing covered most of the bases I would later learn, or relearn, in college and then in my graduate journalism program. In short, it laid the groundwork for me to love and succeed at journalism,” Poppick said. Poppick’s experience working for both papers involved many late nights during which she bonding with her classmates. “There were many similarities, though the lack of faculty oversight in college meant I had to learn self-sufficiency. But in college, just like in high school, I learned a ton from the experience, made great friends, and got further bitten by the journalism bug,” she said. Along with writing for Yale’s newspaper, Poppick interned at the Dow Jones Newswires and wrote pieces for the Wall Street Journal, in Brussels, Belgium, where she covered financial news. Poppick’s success overseas convinced her to work in financial consulting after graduating from Yale. After some time in this career, Poppick decided that she was unsatisfied with her position. “It turns out working directly in a field, and this field in particular, is sometimes far less fulfilling than writing about it,” she said. Poppick decided to quit her job and teach biology in China for two years. Looking back, this was a very scary choice for Poppick to make but the end result was more than satisfactory. “It was actually very scary for me to quit that first job out of college, but I’m glad and proud that I did because it allowed me to move forward right away into more interesting experiences and eventually the right
The Spectator Centennial Magazine
career path,” she said. Poppick soon missed both writing and her home, so she came back to the United States to attend Columbia University for a Masters degree in Journalism. After graduate school Poppick took a job at Money Magazine, writing about investing, behavioral economics, and tax. The first cover story Poppick wrote for Money Magazine, “Make Your Money Safer…and Still Get a Sweet Return,” was an idea she pitched after reading economist Robert Haugen’s work on how less volatile stocks could produce higher returns. The article, which started out as a small idea, dove into how decreasing risk could still get you a good return, and became a success. Over time she also started getting more involved in leading data-driven projects like mutual funds reports and the magazine’s “Best Places to Live” franchise. That work, along with the features and cover stories Poppick wrote got her promoted last year to senior reporter and this year to associate editor for the magazine’s brand new website, Money.com. It seems that the journalism bug Poppick was bitten by in high school will continue to drive her for years to come. Despite the wobbles in between Poppick is confident she has made the right decisions. “If I had just followed my fears, I might still be stuck in a job that made me unhappy deep down, just because it paid well and looked good on paper,” Poppick said.
Sarah Outhwaite (Opinions Editor 2003-2005) Entering high school at a time when the September 11th attacks had just occurred, Sarah Outhwaite was heavily influenced by the political talks regarding the controversy surrounding the air quality in lower Manhattan. Wishing to tell the world about her opinions, Outhwaite joined The Spectator as an Opinions writer and began to write pieces about the ambivalence of the air quality reports of the time and her belief