Editorial: The Year of Transition
For the past 50 years, The Current has been serving Green River College as a trusted news provider. The academic year 2016-17 brings a hope for stability after many key changes took place in the college administration. Along the same lines, The Current also foresees a big transition in its functioning this year.
This time of the year is always tough as we bid farewell to our old staff and welcome the fresh faces. The Current has always had a vibrant atmosphere and this year we hope to continue the tradition. A noticeable change in our staff is the increasing diversity. Before the start of the year 2015-16, our staff had no international students. However, our current staff comes from a variety of cultural backgrounds. This is a proof of our success in increasing the radius of our audience.
The new additions include Mariya Mubeen as our new copy editor and Aiman Ahmed as the new sports editor. Riley Agnew commences this new year as the Editor-in-Chief, while Raghav Mandhana and Kienan Briscoe continue their previous roles as opinion and A&E editors respectively. Kartik Sarda has taken up the position of ads manager while also continuing as the web editor.
“I usually spend my whole day at the Current’s office,” said Mubeen. “The atmosphere is so friendly and I love working with the editors here.”
Leaving us are James Ristig – the previous Editor-in-Chief, Logan Hoerth – our beloved copy editor, and Alina Moss, who was the ads manager and sports editor. The three staff members that we lost were very experienced, and they will be missed. But this quarter, and year, is going to bring a lot of change and everyone on campus has to be ready for it.
During an emotional address to the newsroom, James said “The Current is made up of an eclectic group of people, and it’s the Editor-in-Chief’s job to bring out everyone’s strengths. I tried to bring out the best in my staff, and give them the respect and admiration they deserved.” Many of us at The Current feel that James managed to bring out the best in us, inspiring us to finish everything we had on our plates before deadlines came around.
As much as it has been said over and over again, thegrcurrent.com has been reworked and has a much more user friendly look and easy to understand user interface. Our main focus while redesigning the website was to make use of the immense diversity and talent that our campus has, so we started featuring campus events to help promote clubs and student life activities. Along with events, students can submit their own work to the website for free, or feature it on the front page for a small fee.
The Current had a launch party for a new app that was planned for release in spring quarter of last year. However, financial issues prevented us from releasing it on time. We are planning to release it later this quarter. Our news stories will be featured in the app and on the website before the print issues so that our readers can have updated news at one click.
We will also be collaborating with video journalism students to extend The Current’s reach in different forms of media. We are planning to develop specific web articles optimized just for the website which will also include video stories.
“It’s going to be exciting working closely with the video journalism program, it’ll bring back fond memories of high school.” said Agnew, who took three years of video production classes through high school.
“During the one year that I have spent here with The Current, I have not only made amazing friends but also learned things that I never imagined I would. Of all the things I am planning to do at Green River this year, continuing my job as the Web Editor and Ads Manager is one thing I am surely going to enjoy the most,” said Kartik Sarda as he stepped in the shoes of his new role.
Overall the coming year will have a lot to offer for students, staff, faculty, and administration and it is up to the entire Green River College community to work together. Last year, the current published several articles about how ‘community’ was being ripped away from the college (beyond the metaphorical removal of ‘community’ from the name), but now we have an opportunity to bring it back. Here is to a strong first quarter and an amazing year of growth at GRC.
