In 1968 The Communicator came out with its very first issue. This year marks The Communicator’s 45th anniversary.
When the paper started it didn’t even have a name, so there was a contest between the students on what the name should be. Since back then the college wasn’t yet The Falls, but just Spokane Community College, they decided to call it “SCC Communicator”.
“It was cheesy, but then it was the 60’s.” Said the former adviser, Jason Nix, of The Communicator.
Back then the paper looked as if it was written all from a typewriter and put on a long vertical piece of paper. The newspaper also didn’t have any pictures put in the paper for years. Nothing like the format that we have now with pictures and graphics.
No one is quite sure why or how the students created The communicator all those years ago.
“I think they wanted a sense of community. To learn about each other, but didn’t have that before the paper, so they thought why not do it ourselves?”, said Nix
The focus of the paper has broadened over the years. For the first few years the paper only wrote about news that was happening in the school or that involved them. Only towards the beginning of the 80’s did the paper start reporting news and ongoings outside the school.
Some of the headlines throughout every decade have been: “Pentagon Papers Defendant to Speak Here”-1973
“Richard Gere in Breathless”-1983
“West Side Story” Civic Theater-1993
“Off to War-SFCC students on the way to Iraq”-2003
“Children brought to U.S illegally should be allowed citizenship”-2013
The paper had some ups and downs throughout time but in 2006 it started to pull through. In 2005 the paper was still printed in black and white. Nix then decided to add some color to it.
“We revamped it to look like a professional newspaper,” Nix said.
In 2007 the website for The Communicator was created, and over the years videos and podcasting have been uploaded to the website. For two years in a row, 2009 and 2010, the paper won the ACP Pacemaker award, the highest national honor for student journalism. The paper also won the SPJ mark of excellence award which honors the best in collegiate journalism. They also won awards for their achievements that they did on the website. Even though the newspaper didn’t have a radio they would record stories in their audio room, put them on the web, and compete against four year colleges. And our newspaper, The Communicator, won.
For the future Mark Doerr, the current advisor for The Communicator, plans to continue the work that Nix has started and have the paper win more awards.
“I’d like to see the students publish an award winning college newspaper and website,” said Doerr.