Meta—adjective, originating from the Greek word for “beyond”—refers to something that is self-referential, self-aware, or reflective of itself.
In everyday language, “meta” is used to describe art, media, and ideas that recognize their own structure, often breaking the fourth wall to let the audience in on the inner workings—a sort of wink to the audience, saying, “We know what we are, and we’re playing with that.”
So how could a student newspaper, of all things, be meta?
A student newspaper becomes meta when it acknowledges not just the stories it covers but its role in telling those stories.
A meta student newspaper blends formats, pushes boundaries, and critiques the traditional expectations of what a newspaper should be—all while letting the reader in on what’s going on.
Now we’re left with the big question—Is the Roadrunner meta?
One big indicator of the answer comes from our publication’s response to the death of print.
As a journalist, I acknowledged that print is probably dead—so much so that last semester I advocated for doing a magazine instead of the traditional paper. But when we found out that local heavyweights like the Chico News & Review and Chico Enterprise-Record stopped printing, we brought print right back. Not because we needed to, but just because we could.
The move to do so was a direct commentary on the state of modern media. It was a way of saying, “Print’s not dead—it’s just evolving, and sometimes you gotta bring it back just to mess with expectations.”
And that’s exactly what we did—after such a successful magazine, who in their right mind would go back to doing print? No one, and that was the exact challenge we needed.
The big boy publications can’t even make a print version old people find worthy of picking up, so we decided to go a step further and make one students would want to read—and with hundreds of handed-out prints, it’s safe to say we did that successfully.
Another very “meta” aspect of the Roadrunner is the fact that we cover almost everything. From serious issues like calling out the administration, to things like love advice, local Sunday league drama, and even throwing in a picture of a tiger smoking a joint now and then.
The Roadrunner never pretends to be a traditional, buttoned-up paper. Instead, we embrace what a student paper can and should be—a mix of chaos, fun, and relevance to our community. We know what the “rules” are for journalism, and we break them on purpose—not for the sake of breaking them, but because we are aware of the space we occupy.
We understand that our role as a student paper at a community college means covering a range of topics that go beyond the campus.
Whether we’re talking about the Brazilian soccer league or the memeification of P. Diddy, we’re showing that a student newspaper doesn’t have to fit into a box.
The Roadrunner is meta because we not only deliver news but we also critique how news should be delivered.
At the end of the day, the Roadrunner is far from what a newspaper should be.
Maybe we don’t stick to the clean, traditional narratives that the “big boy” papers do.
We don’t follow their rules of being strictly serious or keeping everything to the facts with a hard wall between news and opinion.
Instead, we lean into what student readers want—a mix of real talk, fun, and yes, the occasional bold article calling out the people in power.
But maybe—just maybe—that’s exactly what makes us better than the rest.
We focus on what matters to our audience because we are our audience.
We’re not trying to chase profits or play by the rules of a dying industry.
We’re trying to inform our community, tell important stories, and have fun while we do it.
Maybe if those big-boy newspapers didn’t take themselves so seriously and actually thought about what readers cared about, they wouldn’t all be going bankrupt. Maybe they could even learn a thing or two from us kids.
This isn’t to say that I don’t understand a newspaper should be a reliable source of information. But we also understand that a student newspaper should be a reflection of the student experience—a messy, unpredictable experience full of experimentation and uncertainty.
The Roadrunner is meta because we know exactly what we’re doing.
We’re a newspaper that isn’t trying to be what a newspaper is supposed to be. We’re trying to be everything a student newspaper should be.
And maybe that’s why we’re thriving while the traditional papers are struggling to keep up.
