The faculty adviser for Campus Current, AACC’s student newspaper, plans to retire from the college at the end of this semester.
Journalism and communications professor Sharon O’Malley, who joined the AACC faculty in 2016, said she will continue to teach part time here and at the University of Maryland, where she worked from 1993 to 2016.
“I’m ready to slow down but not to quit working altogether,” said O’Malley, who said her decade working with the newspaper has been “intense. … It’s not really the kind of job you can keep forever.”
Still, she said she is proud of the newspaper and especially of her former students who have gone on to journalism jobs at places like CNN, Bloomberg and The Hill newspaper. She pointed to one student who won a fellowship to the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism graduate school with no journalism experience except as the editor-in-chief of Campus Current.
“So many of them have gone on to really, really be successful,” O’Malley said. “And if I had just even a … little bit of influence for them in their lives and their success, I am just so proud.”
Other memorable facets of her decade at AACC, she said, are the many national awards Campus Current won from organizations like the College Media Association and Associated Collegiate Press. Campus Current also won the Student Government Association’s Club of the Year award twice, and O’Malley was its Faculty Adviser of the Year in 2018.
Once, she recalled, she stayed up all night with the editor-in-chief and graphic designer finishing the newspaper’s largest-ever edition in May 2018, which was 24 pages. Most months, the newspaper is 12 to 16 pages.
“The advertising manager came in at 9 and asked, ‘What are you all doing here so early?’” she recalled. “We were just getting ready to go home to sleep.”
Campus Current’s staff in the past has topped 20 or more active members, but lately few students have volunteered to work on the paper, which historically was published in print once a month and online most weekdays. The staff also had a robust social media presence and published a weekly online newsletter until last semester.
Over the past couple of years, O’Malley said, fewer students have shown an interest in working on the newspaper, which can require long hours and nearly constant deadlines.
“The quality of the students and the quality of the paper are still good,” she said, “but the capacity has really been limited for the past year or so.”
Wayne Kobylinski, assistant dean of English, communications and academic literacies, agreed.
“I think it’s been grinding on her because she’s had to deal with so much change and shoulder a lot more of the load in getting the work done,” he said.
Still, O’Malley said she has hope for the future of the newspaper.
“I’m hoping that Campus Current will come back stronger than ever, just reimagined,” O’Malley said.
