Independent Journalism and the Academy: An Interview with The Columbia Independent

Editor’s Note: Digital Editor of The Dartmouth Review Lintaro Donovan (TDR) interviewed the founders of Columbia University’s The Columbia Independent newspaper, James Tsukada (JT) and Jonas Du (JD), on February 23 via Zoom. After releasing its first issue in January of 2023, the Independent has received attention in the broader Ivy League as the newest iteration in a long tradition of independent, unorthodox, and often conservative campus journalism.

TDR: Describe yourselves. What is The Columbia Independent?

JT: My name is James Tsukada. I’m a sophomore at Columbia, studying tentatively history and math. Jonas and I were both deputy editorial page editors at The Daily Spectator’s [Columbia’s daily newspaper] opinion section. We both joined the Spectator at the same time. We were in the same training class. The opinion section focuses on promoting campus discourse and representing a diversity of viewpoints. Jonas and I are both really into that.

The opinion section is a platform that a lot of people read, and we felt like we could really have an impact on campus in terms of the articles we recruited. Jonas very notably recruited a pro-life student to write an article about the pro-life movement on campus that got a lot of buzz. 

We learned a lot there [at the Spectator]. The Independent is something that I started with somebody else who’s not as involved now. And Jonas joined essentially at the very beginning as well. At first, we didn’t really know what it was going to be. We didn’t know if it was going to conflict with our commitment to the Spectator.

We first had ideation during our finals week in mid-December. And, from there, we had dinner with a bunch of people, a bunch of students and a professor. From then on, over winter break, we had meetings over Zoom.

At a retreat for Columbia’s John Jay Society, through Zoom, Jonas and I worked on and finished the first issue. The first day we got back to campus, we printed 10,000 copies of the issue and distributed them to every dorm.

JD: I’m Jonas Du. I’m a sophomore in Columbia College, studying political science and economics. We joined the Spectator in the spring of 2022. We joined the Spectator to be a part of campus discourse. Columbia is special because we have an intellectual culture here. People care about talking about the issues. People like to stay engaged, and, most importantly, people read the newspaper. Columbia’s obviously a very liberal place, with a lot of activism and political involvement. A lot of the discourse tends to favor that thinking. I mean, if you scroll through the opinion pages [of the Spectator], you’ll see a lot of articles about union membership and social justice and Harlem.

Those are good, but they reinforce the bubble that a lot of the students are in. When James and I came on board, we were those people who are really trying to push the boundaries of what people are talking about. One issue we consistently encountered was more right-leaning students being hesitant to work with us and the Spectator, even if we knew them. Part of it comes from historical perceptions of the Spectator and experiences with editors being hostile. Another issue we encountered was that unorthodox pieces wouldn’t get true engagement in the sense that if you walked up to a random person in the dining hall, the chances that he read the article are very slim because the Spectator is an online-focused publication. The only time that people would really engage with articles was when they were posted on Instagram.

When James approached me with this idea of starting this new print-focused publication, where it would be only opinion content, and with the goal of trying to get people to talk and think about important issues, I really wanted to be a part of it.

TDR: What type of college newspaper is the Independent? Would you describe your organization as political or conservative?

JT: We’re very purposeful about not labeling ourselves as conservative, even if a lot of conservatives would like that. We want to be just as uplifting of a liberal voice as we would be of a conservative voice—but just coming at it from a different direction. Most people on the Spectator, probably more so than the average Columbia student, are left wing. If we’re sort of the converse of that, that’s fine, but it doesn’t mean that we’re going to be any less harsh or any less scrutinizing of conservative viewpoints or liberal viewpoints. 

We’re very purposeful about not labeling ourselves as conservative, even if a lot of conservatives would like that. We want to be just as uplifting of a liberal voice as we would be of a conservative voice—but just coming at it from a different direction.

A former editor of The Dartmouth Review explained to us the landscape in which The Review was founded. Seeing that, at Columbia, we are not in the same situation, we just wanted to fill a niche that we saw as unfilled. Neil Gorsuch founded this newspaper at Columbia called The Federalist, which was a conservative-leaning alternative to the Spectator, but it’s now a satirical newspaper.

JD: Regardless of the ideology of a piece, we want to give it a platform as long as it’s well argued. We’re seeking to fulfill a similar mission to the opinion section of the Spectator.

TDR: How do you keep the Independent from becoming just another provocative student political organization?

JT: For right-leaning people, there’s a temptation to be a provocateur. That’s not what we want to do. At the same time, the uplifting of perspectives that are not in conformity with campus culture is going to provoke some people. We must find the midpoint between provoking people by exposing them to ideas they disagree with and clickbait, from being like, “Let’s trigger everyone!” It’s important to not self-censor, refusing to publish an article because we think it would be too controversial. At the same time, we don’t want to publish a lot of controversial articles just for the sake of generating buzz. 

There was an article in our first issue about pronouns. That piece was provoking, but it also did make people talk about their perspectives on pronouns and giving them in class. If we have pieces every once in a while that are controversial and generate buzz, but in a productive sort of way, I think that’s fine.

JD: We had seven other pieces apart from “Why I Don’t Give My Pronouns” in our first issue, and 80-90% of the discourse we saw on the Columbia Confessions Facebook page, on Twitter, on Sidechat, and via email was on the pronoun piece. A lot of that discourse was simply trashing the author and trashing the piece. When you have anything as controversial as the pronoun article, it’s going to dominate discussion. For a lot of far-left people, it immediately discredited the Independent in their minds as something worth reading in the future. We must be very careful about controversy—it is not necessarily a bad thing, but I don’t think it’s an end in-and-of itself. If our goal is to spur campus debate and to get people to read, our publication can’t pursue controversy for its own sake or label itself with a political ideology.

We must be very careful about controversy—it is not necessarily a bad thing, but I don’t think it’s an end in-and-of itself. If our goal is to spur campus debate and to get people to read, our publication can’t pursue controversy for its own sake or label itself with a political ideology.

TDR: How would you describe the focus of the Independent, content wise?

JT: We want to have a range of content. We have not implemented this yet, but we want to have different sections, whether it be a campus affairs section or a literary essay section. We don’t want to have just a bunch of polemical pieces. We want variety. The Independent is something that we slide under everyone’s doors. We want there to be something in the issue for each reader that will make him/her pick up the paper and read it.

JD: What we’re doing as we’re growing the publication is sort of honing in on what our specific editorial guidelines will be and what our mission is. Our focus is opinion, but we also have people who want to write more philosophical and literary-focused pieces. We want to publish things that Columbia students will want to read and care about because we do print for the entire campus.

TDR: How has the administration at Columbia responded?

JD: They haven’t. Columbia is a very pro-free speech school. Lee Bollinger, the famous First Amendment scholar, is our president. He’s shaped university policy to be tolerant and encouraging of free expression.

TDR: In what ways is the culture of Columbia unique from that of peer institutions?

JT: At Columbia, there are a lot of graduate students. We also have the School of General Studies, so there are a lot of older students who are taking undergraduate courses. Unlike Dartmouth and Stanford, we also don’t have a history of conservative student journalism. 

JD: Columbia has an idealized view of itself as a life-of-the-mind school, and that stems from the Core curriculum where everyone in the College must read certain works of literature and philosophy. There is very much a focus on intellectualism and academic debate here. With that being said, Columbia is still subject to the same issues that many other universities are subject to. Many students, perhaps even a majority of students, are simply disengaged and do not care about talking about these things. They’re here just to get good grades, get a high-paying job, and move on with their lives.

We at the Independent believe in the mission of the university to educate us as future citizens and to make sure that we’re engaged with the world around us and prepared to take part in larger conversations after college. There’s a big tension between the idyllic vision of Columbia as an intellectual institution versus the reality on the ground. Part of the Independent’s mission is to reinvigorate Columbia’s intellectual life by fostering discussion among students.

TDR: If you guys had complete control over higher education, what’s one thing about the culture in the academy that you would change? 

JT: I think everyone should have to learn Latin and Greek to be in academia. The classics should be emphasized a lot more. Reading works in the original language is very crucial. It’s a bad thing that less and less educated people know Latin or Greek.

JD: We need to radically rethink the way that we evaluate students in terms of grading. Most students are just here to go to classes, fulfill their requirements, get a good GPA, and then get a good job at consulting firms, finance firms, big banks, and the like. What do they do later with their education? No one knows.

There are people who do try to make more of their university experience beyond that, but doing so requires focusing less on grades. There should be policy changes across elite institutions of higher education. Schools need to encourage students to actually engage and enjoy the things that they’re learning as ends in themselves rather than as means to some pre-professional end.