Some would say that to name a campus newspaper Geococcyx californianus (Roadrunner, in translation) would be clever; maybe some would even say it was pompous and inappropriate.
I honestly always thought that “The Roadrunner” was a badass name for a student publication. It is the type of name that leaves an impression, way cooler than something like “The Orion” or “Sac Express.”
I still remember the first time I heard about The Roadrunner; it was Fall semester 2022, and I was in my English 2 class here at Butte College. My instructor, Delina Fuchs, assigned us to research different school resources, and I was handed the task to inquire about the Roadrunner Hub.
Not knowing much about the college since it was my first semester, I asked Delina, “What even is The Roadrunner?” to which she responded that it was the student newspaper. Her response left me confused as to why a student newspaper would be running a food pantry.
After a quick Google search, I learned that Butte has two programs with the same name, which disappointed me because a newspaper that gives out free food would be awesome. I learned one of the Roadrunners is a super cool campus resource that every student should definitely check out, and the other one was a campus newspaper.
As a journalism major, once I was aware of the existence of The Roadrunner, I knew I had to be a part of the action. I quickly scheduled an appointment with a counselor and got everything set so I could take Journalism 10 and be part of the team that made the magic happen.
A few weeks after enrolling in the course, instructor Kelly Fredericks mailed me a copy of The Roadrunner and a letter. The letter explained what journalism was and why someone would choose journalism. The copy of The Roadrunner was what excited me the most; it was a tangible piece of motivation. Holding that paper in my hand, I told myself, “One day I’m going to write for this newspaper.”
After reading both multiple times, I proceeded to hang the letter and the paper on my wall, kind of like a vision board, to keep my goal in sight. Even though that goal has been completely achieved, both the letter and paper still remain up as a reminder of how far this whole thing has come.
As Spring 2023 arrived, so did my time to join The Roadrunner. I still remember the feeling as I walked into the Learning Resource Center (LRC) for the first time, searching for room 140. The class was unlike anything I had ever seen before; it wasn’t really a class at all, but rather a meeting around a rectangular table where The Roadrunner staff would discuss ideas, articles, and work on the production of the paper.
When I joined, the team consisted of Emma Peterson, Alex Enos, Rebecca Gonzalez, Victor Borin, Nathan Paddock, Madison Gillen, Darius Marmol, Carlos España, Garrett Green, and Grace Wells.
Alexandra Enos and I were the only rookies on the team, and together we would grow, learn, and little did I know at the time, just a semester later, we would run the entire newspaper together.
Nothing about The Roadrunner as it stands today would be possible without those who came before us. Indeed, this is what the 55th anniversary is all about. Just as the pioneers of ’68 were crucial, so too were those who came just before the current team. Personally, as someone who had never really published anything beyond a high school yearbook, I am extremely grateful to have had such an amazing team. I would not have become the writer I am today without them.
By this time, The Roadrunner was a fairly typical student publication, producing a few issues a year without much fanfare. However, there was one thing I always felt was missing—a truly effective website. We did have a website, but for it to be considered good, it would need significant improvement.
As the semester progressed, I began to learn the ropes under the close mentorship of phenomenal writers like Darius and Garrett, and with extensive one-on-one editing sessions with Kelly Fredericks, I soon felt confident enough to start developing my own ideas for the paper. Being at the heart of the action, one thing I quickly realized was the potential for growth that The Roadrunner had; it was of an astronomical magnitude.
Sure, we did have some readers, but perhaps with a more eye-catching cover, we could attract even more. Yes, we had a digital presence, but with a cooler website, we could rival other school papers and extend our reach far beyond the confines of the campus.
After months of yapping into Kelly’s ear about the idea of enhancing our digital presence, the notion gradually became more appealing. By the fall semester of 2023, we decided to undertake the significant rebranding effort I had been advocating for.
The fall semester of 2023 marked a period of significant changes for The Roadrunner. Most of the original staff had moved on, with only Carlos remaining from the initial team. The new staff, now led by Alex and me as co-editors-in-chief, included Jackson Hulter, Teya Silkmen, and Joseph Cervantes.
The decision to have two editors-in-chief was not an easy one. Originally, it was only Alex, but as the website project was a significant undertaking and led by myself, we decided it would be best to divide the responsibilities. Alex would be in charge of the print edition, and I would oversee all our digital affairs.
The journey towards creating a new website was not an easy one. As you know, super cool-looking, user-friendly websites that appeal to young people don’t just fall out of the sky. Thankfully, Rich Cameron from the Journalism Association of Community Colleges suggested we check out SNO, and we decided to use their platform to build our website.
SNO is a platform for creating news websites, used by everyone from our brothers at The Orion to our parents at Chico Enterprise. The decision to use SNO was undoubtedly one of the most crucial factors that resulted in our website looking as clean as it does.
As fantastic and easy to navigate as SNO may be, it merely provided the tools necessary to build the platform; the actual work was all done by two people: me and Kelly.
Kelly Fredericks is the advisor in charge of The Roadrunner and none of this would have been possible without her. She believed in me when I shared my vision of a website that would look cooler than The New York Times, and she did more than just believe—she worked alongside me to make it a reality.
When approaching the task of creating the new Roadrunner website, I had one thing in mind: I did not want to follow the rules. Most student newspapers are very boring, adhering to a step-by-step formula; typically, they are designed in red, white, and black, are neatly organized, and could hardly be distinguished from one another if someone covered the publication’s name. With all this in mind, I knew exactly what needed to be done to make our student newspaper the most unique—it was time to do like Mick Jagger and paint it black.
The idea of a dark mode website for a newspaper is probably as unorthodox in journalism as putting the milk before the cereal in the world of breakfast.
As word got out that we were going dark, I received a lot of heavy criticism. Some said no one would take a dark mode website seriously, and others claimed they would never read anything from a publication that didn’t have a white background.
While I understood that all of this could be true, and I do think it is valid to be cautious about something so innovative, I also believe that new heights can only be reached by doing new things, and I was ready to embark on something new.
Once my decision for the “dark mode” appearance was approved by Kelly, I became confident that I had her backing, and that we were going to make something fantastic happen. 
Weeks went by, and Kelly and I spent hours on SNO, testing out every little thing to bring our mock-up project of a newspaper into reality.
A very significant moment in our development of the website occurred when Kelly introduced another website that would go on to become our inspiration for The Roadrunner. The website was 2DopeBoyz, and seeing what they had accomplished was very inspiring, as they somehow made a dark mode website look clean.
With the 2DopeBoyz website in mind, we were able to plan a layout and color scheme that gave our website a modern dark mode vibe while still maintaining a serious journalistic tone.
Concurrently, while all of the website work was being done behind the scenes by Kelly and me, the show never stopped. The Roadrunner kept going, and during that time a very significant moment in recent Roadrunner history occurred.
Before the new website, the main focus of The Roadrunner was its print editions. Coming out a few times a semester, the print edition was the main event of the year, and the first issue of fall semester 2023 was one of the most iconic papers The Roadrunner has ever published.
The content of the paper was fairly standard, with several campus news stories, a few film/book reviews, and a good amount of sports articles—nothing too special for the most part. What made Volume 42, Issue 1 so memorable and controversial was its cover. Featuring a photoshopped mugshot of Butte College’s mascot, Dash, the newspaper, which was distributed on October 3, had a lot of people talking.
The story behind the mugshot picture originated mostly as a joke during a promotional photoshoot with the Dash costume. Teya Silkmen suggested it would be really cool if we did something crazy like a mugshot or a picture of Dash shotgunning a beer. Since we didn’t have any Coors Light around, we opted for the latter. Just two days before we needed to send the paper to print, we had no cover or back cover, but we did have some badass mugshot pictures of Dash.
From the moment I saw the final result of the photoshopping, I knew exactly what I had to do. I spent all night writing a fictional story about Dash getting arrested. The story, titled “Dash Detained,” along with other Dash-themed features like “Deranged Dash Facts,” made up the back cover of the edition and gave me an excuse to use the mugshot as the cover.
The thinking behind the cover was that something as absurd as a mugshot of Dash would attract more people to pick up the paper than ever before, and it did. The logic I used was that people would come for the shock value of the image and stay for the amazing content inside the paper.
Everything was done very last minute, to the point that there was never really a rough draft for most of the back cover. The “Deranged Dash Facts” and the “Interview with the Mascot” were both written directly in InDesign and sent to print. As a result, not everything that should have been considered was thought of, and we reaped what we sowed when we found out that not everybody was too happy with our cover.
Butte College, as an institution and a community college, is a place for everyone, and we have a large population of formerly incarcerated students. The question of how they would feel upon seeing the cover was never really asked, and looking back, I admit it was something we probably should have considered.
The end result of the indignation from a few students led Butte College to request that we clarify the editorial independence of the newspaper in relation to the college. This way, when we do questionable things, people won’t think it is Butte College but will understand it’s the student paper, over which the college has no direct authority. Achieving clearer visual differentiation from the college would necessitate a change in visual identity.
The need for a change in visual identity came at the perfect time since our new website was just weeks away from launch. The plan then expanded to not just rebrand The Roadrunner’s digital persona but the publication as a whole.
A key factor in The Roadrunner rebrand was our Instagram. The Roadrunner Instagram has continued to be our driving force through which we disseminate updates and articles we publish, but it was not always like that.
Before the rebrand, the Instagram account looked amateurish, full of badly cropped pictures, and had about eighty-something followers. The post-rebrand Instagram is very visually appealing, content-rich, with almost 1,500 followers and was a key factor in spreading the word about our new website.
The cool new post-rebrand Instagram didn’t come without its struggles and last-minute patch-ups, the biggest of which was the logo. Without permission to use Butte College’s logo as our profile picture anymore and just days away from the big website launch, I was faced with a new problem: the need for a logo.
The importance of a cool logo cannot be stressed enough. The logo is the first thing someone will see, and having an appealing logo can often be the difference between someone saying, “Yeah, this newspaper is rad,” and it getting lost in the ocean of look-alikes.
The logo I created consists of a starry night sky with an eclipse in the middle and the name of the publication within the dark circle. The emblem that would come to represent The Roadrunner was inspired by a night drive I took with my girlfriend at the time. We drove to Forest Ranch to go stargazing, and during that drive, I shared my vision for the website we were about to launch. I envisioned it becoming an open space for ideas, a place where people could express their thoughts and be heard.
For instance, I hold some extreme environmentalist views—I believe Ted Kaczynski was a genius, and I think the Animal Liberation Front is commendable. I wanted The Roadrunner website to be a platform where someone like me could share their thoughts and perhaps find others who agree.
Inspired by the starry night and the conversations we had, I went home and, after many cups of coffee, I knew the logo I wanted to create. A good logo is one that has meaning and is also visually appealing.
With this in mind, I combined pictures of the sky that we had taken, which became the background for the emblem. The idea of the eclipse emerged accidentally after hours of playing around with editing apps, but it looked so good that I decided to keep it.
Now, with a new logo and a fresh Instagram, the anxiety of not being ready for launch day slowly turned into anticipation. As the big day approached, the realization that all those endless hours making sure every little detail was right were going to pay off started setting in.
Before I knew it, the big day came. It was a Tuesday, October 24th, to be exact. This date will go down in Roadrunner history, not just as a random Tuesday, but as the day The Roadrunner forever changed, the day we got a new digital home, and the day that the student voice at Butte College found a new stage—one where every voice could be heard and every idea could be spread.
This new Roadrunner came with a new objective: to truly be a newspaper by students, for students. While other student newspapers try to rival established mainstream newspapers, I decided that we were going to do something different, that we were going to consider everything with our peers in mind.
This new motto “by students, for students” is heavily reflected in our social media persona as well as our approach to journalism. It isn’t too often you’ll find a student newspaper that lets its students write about whatever they want, but at The Roadrunner, it is like that, and the result is truly special.
Our content ranges from insightful reports on school events like the Butte Film Festival and Decolonize, to thought-provoking pieces such as “Stealing Bread,” to more light-hearted items like discussions on cupcakes and Gypsy Rose.
The wide variety of our content directly reflects the diversity of students on campus. Everyone writes what they want, and the result is a very unique and authentic content spread. I am very grateful to Kelly for allowing The Roadrunner to be like this.
The new website came with new opportunities; it opened a door and broke down many walls. What once was just a college newspaper confined to a campus became a publication that has been read in every one of the 50 states (even Rhode Island) and has even garnered attention worldwide.
With over 5,000 stories read and multiple articles that reached over a hundred reads, I think it is safe to say that maybe it wasn’t that pompous to name a campus newspaper Geococcyx californianus. My vision of a platform where students could voice their thoughts and be heard has been met.
The numbers we’ve hit and the milestones we’ve reached go to show just how far a dream can go. Back in spring 2023 when I joined The Roadrunner, I could never have imagined I would orchestrate something as significant as this.
I never intended to be editor-in-chief; I never planned for any of this to happen. I could never have anticipated having such a phenomenal instructor like Kelly or such a supportive team of staff writers like the ones I have.
I am so grateful for everything that The Roadrunner has been in my life, and most of all, I am grateful for you. Without you, the reader, there would be no reason to write, no reason to report, no reason for The Roadrunner.
The goal of journalism is to be the fifth estate, to be the watchdogs of society, a voice of the people. In a world where young people often feel isolated from the world of adults, having a newspaper that keeps young people in mind is special.
The Roadrunner, as it is today, is definitely far from perfect, but I understand that the platform I created will outlive my time at the publication, and whoever comes next will have a badass website through which they can make fantastic things happen.
I guess it is fair to say that The Roadrunner has come a long way from being inside a basement at Durham High School, and I am very proud to say I played a part in this beautiful 55-year history of the newspaper.
Some might think it was pompous to name a campus newspaper Geococcyx californianus, but over half a century later, that same student publication is still alive and well, and by the looks of it, will be kicking strong for years to come.
As we finish looking back on our past, it’s essential to understand that the journey of The Roadrunner is far from over. We now turn our eyes forward towards the future—a future where new faces will come and tell new stories, and a future where innovation and creativity will continue to be the cornerstone of The Roadrunner.
As I sign off on this special 55th-anniversary edition, I come to understand that my time at The Roadrunner has not been just about capturing moments or reporting on events—it has been about building upon a legacy. One that was started before me and will outlive me. Here’s to many more years of telling the stories that matter and to remaining committed to serving as the student voice.
We will continue to do what we do; we will keep pushing boundaries, we will embrace new technologies, and we will cover diverse topics that matter to our readers. Our mission remains clear: to be a newspaper by students, for students.
Thank you to all our staff members and contributors who worked really hard to make this happen, and a special thank you to Butte College for their unwavering support and belief in the journalism program. Above all, thank you, the reader. It is always my pleasure to write to you. I am thankful you’re alive, and I love you.
