Allison Malecha: Arts and Entertainment Editor of The Spectator

Name: Allison Malecha
Claim to fame: Arts & Entertainment Editor for The Columbia Daily Spectator 
Year: 2013
School: CC
Major: Comparative Literature & Society 

What does being the A&E Editor entail? A lot of coordination (luckily for me, not the sporty kind). Basically I oversee the budget of articles for my section each week, help set up the visuals, edit the articles a last time before they go to production and come up with headlines (which my associate editors also help with), make sure we still exist on the blog Spectrum, and write a lot of last-minute articles (or ones I just want to keep for myself!) when all this coordinating falls through. Oh and answering (or rather deleting) about a zillion emails a day. 

How much time do you spend at The Spec office? That all depends on how things take! I would say anywhere from 16-22 hours a week. The long end being if I have to stay until 4 a.m. on Thursday nights!

Describe the office dynamic/atmosphere. Where do I begin with the Speccies…. Let’s see, we’re all kind of nerds and largely sleep-deprived, spend Thursday nights (and other nights) drinking in front of a computer, and have plenty of in-office jokes to go around (RIP Twobear #1). Some people find their best friends at the Spec office, and some people keep it more business. I’d be of the latter category.

How and why did you get involved with The Spec? Like most Speccies, I worked at my high school newspaper and signed up freshman year at some fair. I started writing for the Style section and just kind of expanded from there.

What do you want to do after you graduate? I really have no clue—maybe magazine journalism, maybe publishing, maybe translating. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up a yoga teacher somewhere. I would like to do something that allows me to write, though, and Spec definitely helps me out—on the resume and in practice—on that front.