The Communicatur is the student newspaper at Richland Community College. It is published monthly during the school year to provide students with information, entertainment and commentary.
The Communicatur welcomes contributions from students, faculty and staff. Letters must carry a full signature and phone number, but names will be withheld upon request.
Letters may be edited in the interest of space. The editor reserves the right to reject any letter. Opinions expressed in letters to the editor are the opinion of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of The Communicatur staff, Editorial Board, or Richland Community College faculty or staff.
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Editorial Board
- Linda Boles, Advisor
Communicatur History
The Communicatur is one of the oldest student organizations on the RCC campus. It was originally the creation of three students - Dennis Blaas, Randy Kirby, and Steve Pogue - who decided that the newly opened Community College of Decatur should have a student newspaper. They chose the name Communicatur as a word play on the name of the college.
The first issue ran on December 6, 1971 - a 4-page typewritten booklet-style publication. Since the college itself was located in the old Millikin Bank building in downtown Decatur, it was a fairly easy thing for the student editors to take the paper down to a printing shop located just north of Eldorado on what was then Broadway Street.
As the college grew, so did the paper, and when the college moved to Park 101 (the warehouse campus), the Communicatur seemed to come into its own. The booklet-style publication was transformed into the tabloid format that is still in use today.
In 1985, the paper received its official charter, and entered into a partnership of sorts with the Decatur Herald & Review. Students used the H&R facilities to do the layout - with the H&R doing the printing. In those days, the Communicatur was published every other week, and layout was done by hand because there were no computers to use. “Cut and paste” referred to cutting each typewritten article into columns and running the columns through a “hot wax” machine. Then, the paper was pasted together on storyboards and checked. Because the student newspaper office was so small, there was not enough room to do the layout there. So, layout meant that the entire staff had to go to the Herald & Review building every other Tuesday to work on the paper. They would stay there until the wee hours of the morning - when it was finished.
When RCC moved to its present location, the Communicatur got a bigger, more modern office—its present location in C165. In 1991, the paper got its first computer - a top of the line Macintosh, which student editors were told was the best way to go for desktop publishing. The new office also had a darkroom for developing photos. Because of adjustments to the new layout systems, and additional time needed to develop and print the photos, student editors decided to change the publication format to monthly.
In recent years, the paper has become more technology-oriented. The Communicatur is now sent electronically to J & S Printing out of Atlanta, GA. Photos are taken on a digital camera that was donated to the paper in 2003. The paper has grown from a circulation of about 50 to a circulation of around 500.
In 2001, the Communicatur officially became The Communicatur, and in 2002 student editors decided to add a knight to its masthead to try and resurrect the official but mostly forgotten RCC mascot—the Richland Knight. In 2004, student editors began experimenting with an online edition, and PDF versions of the paper are now available on The Communicatur Webpage.
