Trump Won. Sundial Saw It Coming.
Now more than ever, we need journalism that is in touch with America.
Dear reader,
On October 31, the Columbia Daily Spectator published an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president. “As an editorial board, we are constantly in conversation with community members about current American realities, realities in which we as a diverse group of individuals also exist,” the editorial board wrote.
A week after Donald Trump won the election, they published another editorial, headlined “Trump won. How did we fail to see it coming?”
“Our myopic focus,” the editorial board wrote, “obscured the true feelings of the American electorate’s majority.”
So much for being “constantly in conversation” about “American realities.” Regardless, I applaud the opinion section’s earnest introspection—it’s noteworthy that they recognized their shortcomings as a section whose stated mission is to “reflect and direct campus and community discourse.”
Still, a legacy media that is out of touch with the American public is not only an issue at Columbia—it is a national one too. Kamala Harris ran a “flawless” campaign, said Joy Reid and Alex Wagner of MSNBC and Sunny Hostin of The View. Speaking about the Trump campaign, CNN’s Van Jones said, “We thought they were the idiots. It turned out, we were the idiots.” Across liberal newspapers, columnists expressed their shock that Trump’s message to voters ended up resonating with enough Americans to win him the election.
But at Sundial, we are part of a growing movement of new media organizations that recognize how journalism has grown into an increasingly elite and liberal bubble, disconnected from the communities it’s intended to serve. Weeks before the election (and throughout 2024), our writers and editors began pitching, reporting, and writing stories that reflected the political, ideological, and cultural diversity of our community—including this issue’s cover story. After the election, several of our writers were unafraid to offer biting critiques of our liberal bubble’s election reactions, which you’ll find in the “Notes” section of this issue.
This is not to say that Sundial exists as a conservative-coded counterweight to an overwhelmingly progressive campus. In fact, quite the contrary—while our staff includes both Harris and Trump voters, and both liberals and conservatives (facts we are proud of), a majority said they planned to vote for the vice president in this election.
What we share in common, though, is a belief that the media can bridge ideological distance; that echo chambers lead to intellectual mediocrity; that when certain ideas on campus are deemed too dangerous for discussion, everyone loses out. Even with our opinion pieces, the goal is not to instruct readers what to think—it is to introduce our readers to new ways of thinking and help them parse through complex and often underreported topics.
As we wrote in our very first letter from the editor this April, “Sundial will have values and principles, but not an ideological line.” These are our values and principles, and during this time of political reckoning, we stand by them now more than ever.
For the staff,
Jonas Du
Mr. Du is the editor-in-chief of Sundial. He is a senior at Columbia College studying political science and economics. Follow him on X @jonasydu