In this video, 5 of our bravest journalists take on the Fresno Fair Food banquet. They brave the prices so you don’t have to! The Rampagers also conducted some exclusive interviews for your viewing pleasure.
Logan Payne returns this semester as the Editor-in-Chief. He has worked his way up from the reporter position, and will lead the newsroom with his best foot forward. He will also help the incoming reporters with their stories, photos and videos. Before joining The Rampage, Logan was involved with the Roosevelt Theater Company for four years where he wrote, directed, acted, and worked backstage for many productions. Logan has grown very familiar with the cutting room; hours slip away when he video edits due to his perpetual perfectionism. He is well-versed in the art of film and knows that every frame shown and every note heard makes a key difference in the bigger picture.
His Youtube channel is where he promotes most of his personal projects. This isn’t his first time in a newsroom either; he’s put together many news packages for Roosevelt High, CART, and The Rampage over the years and is more than comfortable with conducting an interview or being the handyman on set. Logan can’t work on anything without being meticulous, and this eye for detail makes him a wonderful asset to the team.
This is Logan’s fourth semester with The Rampage, and he likes to spend his time on campus productively. When he’s not in class, he’s in the library catching up on schoolwork or building a narrative with his team in The Rampage newsroom.
Josiah Poynter is a 21-year-old journalism major in his fifth semester at Fresno City College and his fourth in the Rampage. He was born and raised in Camarillo, CA (go PVCS Lions) but has lived in Chicago and now lives in Fresno.Josiah previously held the positions of both the Entertainment and Sports Editor, Managing Editor, and is now the Editor-in-Chief. He loves journalism and has excelled at writing, even winning a writing contest in second grade against high school students. He has been a part of a newsroom since 2020 going all the way back to his high school in Downers Grove, IL with the award-winning Omega; his high school newsroom. Along with working his way up to EIC, Josiah has won four awards with the Rampage and one in high school all for journalism.Moving forward into the future, Josiah knows journalism is calling. He takes pride in knowing his voice and his writing can shape the news landscape and be the voice for people for many years to come. He wants to take on bigger issues that affect local communities but is excited for what the future may have for him. Josiah also has a weird obsession with semicolons, which you can find in the majority of his articles.When he’s not in the newsroom, Josiah is enjoying life. He takes one day at a time and prefers relaxing and going out with friends than anything else. Some of his hobbies include being a movie buff, nerding out about all things in the nerd-media landscape, watching and learning the ins and outs of sports, and constantly trying to convince his girlfriend he’s Batman.
Apollo Soto is a 22-year-old linguistics major at Fresno State and the Opinion Editor at Fresno City College in his actual last semester at FCC before handling Fresno State full time (for realsies this time). Soto has many interests that he loves but generally sucks at focusing on one. He takes a loving interest in learning languages, writing, art, animation, and film. His previous experience includes taking classes at Santa Monica Community College for various animation classes before transferring over to FCC in the fall of 2022. At FCC he got to experience more writing, film, and journalism, where the Rampage staff of Fall 2024 grabbed him by his neck and sat him down (politely) asking him to be the Opinion Editor.
Apollo grew up in Kingsburg and was always drawn to the arts, taking AP art and English classes, with multiple years of Color-guard on his belt with basic editing. One of his biggest passions is learning about languages, and his future career goals is to teach English as a second language in various parts of the world.
One of his biggest aspirations is to change how languages are taught in America, to increase the retention of information in the further future, and so that it can be more enjoyable for students so that even when the class is over they find themselves wanting to learn more.
He hopes to accomplish this in his educational learning at Fresno State and through his experiences in future abroad studies.
Matthew Rodriguez was born and raised in Fresno California and throughout all 21 years of his life he has lived there. Growing up he was really into funny things like video games and movies. He didn’t keep up with the news that much. Along the way of growing up he found a love of animals, this led to pursuing a career as a veterinarian.
Although when faced with the career he became unhappy with the study, and after a lot of thought he decided to drop it entirely. After spending some time outside of college Rodriguez would return to Fresno City college with a different career path in mind, filmmaking. Fresno City college didn’t offer a film major, so he’d major in journalism instead with the hope of transferring from City to some place that offered more in the way of film. But along the way he learned a lot of stuff important to journalism.
One of these skills is writing, which Rodriguez had to do a lot of due to taking a screenwriting course which focused on building a narrative structure and many journalism courses which focused on writing news stories or the way that they were written, and evaluating them. Working on the set of a couple films also gave Rodriguez valuable teamwork skills, like collaboration, communication, organization and general people skills like being cordial, open and a greater appreciation for the people who work alongside him.
Overall despite journalism not being his career goal, he has enjoyed what it has to offer, so much so that he has now become an editor for the Rampage.
Victor Fontes is a 20 year old Journalism major who was born and raised in Fresno California. He plans on finishing his general education at Fresno City College and then transferring to Fresno State University to join their Journalism program, finish his four year education, and eventually become a breaking news broadcast reporter. He loves playing the drums in his band, has a passion for photography, and adores his 85′ corvette. From a young age he had always wanted to be on camera and under the spotlight but never knew how to get there. Many ideas from creating film to acting would come and pass with none sticking the way he visioned, but after high school and checking his options, he fell in love with the idea of journalism. Aside from being on camera he loved the idea of reporting and digging for a story to meeting and interviewing people, the creativity to write about what ever you want at times, and the down to the wire nature of it all. Since the very first semester of college he knew that this was his calling and his future has looked bright since then. He’s worked at The Rampage for a year and a half now, and is now working as the newly remade Lifestyle Editor and he cannot wait for the opportunities to be had this semester.