The Current in the Next Academic Year
As the new Editor-in-Chief I feel like it’s important to address some of the changes that will be coming in the near future and what they mean for The Current.
The biggest change that’s coming is an online focus. One of the visions I have for The Current is an enhanced online experience. The Current has been the voice of Green River College for the past 50 years and for it to continue to be, we need to move into the digital age.
The first step to this was to recreate our website from the ground up.
Our web editor, Kartik Sarda, did a fantastic job creating a sleek looking design for The Current’s website. The next step in the revitalization of this student run newspaper was creating a new app which would update with new stories.
Unfortunately the funding for our app, which was approved by the ASGRC, has not gone through yet and we are uncertain at this time when the app will be available to the public.
The motivation to release the app and the new website stems from the editorial staff wanting to be able to upload content in-between issues. A system such as that is what we hope will draw more readers to our paper.
Of course, there will still be a print edition of our newspaper. In my opinion a complete shift to an online newspaper would kill our readership, which is why I am maintaining the print editions of The Current.
Being handed this position is an honor and I hope to maintain what the previous editors have created, while still improving upon their groundwork.
My main goal is for The Current to have an increased presence on campus. I want my editing staff to be easily recognizable and easy to talk to. The Current is here to be a voice for the college and our door is always open to the community.
As the Editor-in-Chief my office hours will be from 8 am until 2 pm each day. During this time any member of the community may come and find me to discuss inquiries about The Current. Of course, anyone interested in an editorial position may come to my office and introduce themselves in person.
It’s unfortunate that I will have to replace so many editorial staff members, but with so many leaving I don’t have much of a choice.
There are five open editor positions at The Current. Managing Editor and Campus Editor are the first to open up, and campus editor is the first position I want to fill. Campus and Managing editor is the position I held, but I now realize that the two positions are too much to be filled by one person. The other open positions are Copy Editor, Sports Editor, and Ad Manager.
Campus is our biggest section, which is why I want to fill the position as fast as I can. Campus being the biggest sections means that it requires double the work of the other sections, and the editor needs to have a good amount of knowledge about happenings on Green River campuses.
Following Campus Editor, Sports Editor will need to be filled. Sports is an easy section to manage due to it’s size of two pages and availability of content. The only caveat for this position is having a wide knowledge of sports, which for many people, isn’t an issue.
Ad Manager is an important role at The Current because without an Ad Manager we wouldn’t have any advertisements to put in the paper. While having zero ads might appeal to some people, it’s how we afford to go to award shows.
Managing Editor is an interesting position as whoever is in that position is Editor-in-Chief lite. The Managing Editor and Editor-in-Chief work together to assign stories to the writers and run the newspaper. In the event that the Editor-in-Chief is out of the office, the Managing Editor steps in to run the office. Anyone may apply to be the Managing Editor, it’s also one of the higher paid positions.
And the last open position is Copy Editor. Copy Editors make the job of producing The Current a much easier task than it would be normally. Ideally we would like to have two or three Copy Editors so that one person isn’t shouldering all of the work.
The last thing that I want to make clear in this article is that The Current is an unbiased source of information and it will continue to be an unbiased source of information. From some of the responses I have gotten on campus, some people think that the editorials and opinions of our editors reflect what The Current actually feels. I would like to remind everyone that editor opinions don’t directly reflect what the newspaper thinks.
