Third time’s the charm

Aida Garcia returns to co-advise City Times and Legend magazine in 2016

Denise White

As the fall semester comes to a close, the City Times newspaper staff can look forward to some changes for next semester. Aida Garcia will be taking over as one of the new advisers as Roman Koenig steps down from full-time to adjunct instructor.

This won’t be her first time leading the school’s newspaper, and will in fact be her third semester in recent years.

“I have a lot of experience in journalism, for both print and online,” Garcia said.

She was a senior editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune for 23 years as well as a manager editor of a bilingual website called San Diego Red.

“She does a lot of work for local organizations on both sides of the border for communication and journalism so she brings that diversity to the table too,” Koenig said.

Celia Jimenez, who is the current photo editor for City Times and was previously a student under Garcia in spring 2014, also brought up diversity.

“I think Aida will bring more diversity to the paper,” Jimenez said. “When I was on City Times with her, we made a Spanish section.”

Koenig also noted how Garcia makes an effort to reach out to students.

“I’ve also seen that she really cares about the students’ success,” Koenig said. “I’ve seen her work with students one on one, especially those who are facing more difficulties.”

In terms of the direction of City Times for 2016, Garcia goes on to explain how she wants it to continue to be a relevant news site for the City College community.

“It’s student led and I will support the direction the student’s want to take,” Garcia said. “As an adviser I’m there to provide the tools and the guidance to produce the best journalism as it can.”

Garcia also notes that she would like to offer more video clips, interesting blogs and photojournalism series for the City Times website.

“It’s an invitation to the students to define the media that they want to use to tell their stories,” Garcia said.