Dear Readers:

Welcome to The Insider’s third issue!

The Spring 2009 issue of the Insider, Glendale Community College’s student magazine, is now online.

This semester has been uniquely challenging and we have taken several unprecedented steps to weather the financial crisis.

The two Language Arts Department classes that would normally provide the magazine staff: Journalism 107, magazine writing, and Journalism 210, advanced news writing, were cut. This might have been the end of the Insider, but it was not. Former staff members and new recruits rallied to provide content for the magazine, despite losing the incentive to earn class credit and a letter grade for their contributions.

Along with the classes, we lost an operating budget, which left us no publishing funds. As with the Fall 2008 issue, we accepted that there would be no print edition and instead focused on producing a comprehensive online magazine.

The results have been encouraging. The Insider has won several awards through the Journalism Association of Community Colleges [JACC] a prestigious organization that is composed of 111 member community colleges in California, Arizona and Nevada.

These awards include general excellence and online general excellence in both state and regional competition, first place in opinion writing for Olga Ramaz’s “X: 31 Years of L.A. Punk Rock,” third and fourth place in the profile feature category for “Carina Crash…is simply ‘amazing,'” and an honorable mention in the profile non-feature category for Fabiola Prieto’s “Voces del Mañana Call for Reform.” In only three semesters, the Insider has become a formidable presence in JACC competition, underscoring the need to keep our fledgling magazine going despite the state budget crisis.

This summer will bring a new budget and perhaps new opportunities for the journalism program and for the magazine. We at the Insider hope that the online stories at gccinsider.com present a pleasant diversion for your summer holidays.

-Jane Pojawa
Editor-in-Chief