When Casey Rafter, current editor-in-chief for The Express, signed up for college media production, he was unaware that the class produced City College’s student-run online news source. Upon reflection, he said, that turned out to be a serendipitous mistake.

“I had no idea what I was getting into until the first day of class when I realized that I was now signed up for the school paper. So I learned I was a journalist,” said Rafter.

This is Rafter’s second semester as editor-in-chief of The Express. In his role as editor, Rafter has learned to manage a group of people for the first time and said he is really enjoying the experience. He has received positive feedback from his advisers.

“It is definitely a lot of investment, time and energy and everything,” stated Rafter, “especially with me working full time and having a wife. But I made it work, and it has been worth any sacrifice I’ve had to make.”

Spring 2021 is Rafter’s third semester with The Express. His first position as a staff reporter began in spring 2020, just before the pandemic hit. He recalls that it was less complicated to engage with sources for stories between classes and during lunch breaks.

“It was so much easier to access people that we took it for granted at the time. Now we have to rely on an instructor giving their students our information and hoping they will reach out to us or already knowing sources for stories,” said Rafter. “We have not been able to reach nearly as many student voices as I would like to. I wish we had a better channel directly to students.”

Just as the rest of the world has had to adjust to the conditions of quarantine, so has Rafter and his staff.

“Somehow last semester I was able to complete a full semester as editor-in-chief without actually seeing any human beings involved [in] The Express face to face,” he said. “I did Zoom calls, phone calls, things like that.”

Rafter, 39, is a 2002 graduate of Heald College, where he earned an associates degree in business administration. After working a decade at a desk job, he said he longed for something more and started going to City College fall 2013.

In 2019 he received an associate degree in communications but said he wasn’t ready to transfer to Sacramento State. He continued to take more courses at City College and stumbled into the Express, which has given him an opportunity to write, manage and lead people.

He said he has enjoyed writing since high school and worked as a writer and photographer for Lincoln High School’s newspaper, Zebra Tales.

Rafter will finish his stint as editor-in-chief for The Express at the end of this semester. He said he plans to transfer to Sacramento State in fall 2021 to pursue a bachelor’s degree in journalism.