Thanks, it’s been a great ride

By Daniel Gaona

Incredibly amazing is an understatement to describe my time working on the Aztec Press.

It was for four semesters, which amounted to 32 issues. During those 64 weeks of newsroom and field labor, I took more than 10,000 photos and wrote about 150 stories. My math isn’t the best, hence I am a writer.

Whatever the actual numbers might be, the experience was just remarkable. But, like anything else, it eventually comes to an end.

However, it is just my time as editor in chief for Aztec Press that is coming to a close. I hope my journalism career is merely beginning.

I could not have asked for a better conclusion to my tenure at Pima Community College. My remarkable faculty adviser, Cynthia Lancaster, and I traveled to San Francisco to accept two Mark of Excellence awards from the Society of Professional Journalists.

We didn’t find out until the awards luncheon that we won first-place awards in both categories. Aztec Press was named the region’s best two-year college newspaper and my colleague Liza Porter won for her feature series on non-traditional students, “Going Back, Moving Forward.”

Then, on May 4, we learned we were national finalists in both categories. Of 12 regional first-place winners, we were in the top three.

Since I joined the staff in Fall 2008, the Aztec has completely changed, in a good way. That’s even more evident with the awards we just won, and being a part of it all is great.

I never thought I’d be editor in chief and never imagined we would have a Web site, especially a high-quality one like we created. Both of those achievements seem surreal.

Ultimately, I was only responsible for a portion of the success in the past couple of years. It was truly a team effort that got the newspaper to where it is now and teamwork will be essential in maintaining that perfection.

The staff has been great and will continue to be great. I feel this is the prime time for me to take the next step in my career because the senior staffers can continue to produce excellent content and continue winning awards.

Plus, I know Lancaster is going to continue improving the newspaper because even at its best, it can always get better.

While I will move on, I still plan to contribute to the Aztec Press. It is something I can’t just leave completely behind. If you had staffers like mine, you wouldn’t want to leave them either.

I will miss the late production nights, designing pages and scrambling to get everything done. At times I stared at the screen and went blind. The memories are splendid.

My last thanks go to all our readers: it’s been a great ride. But my cohort D.J. Ochoa holds the torch as next year’s editor in chief.