This year is a major milestone for Camas High School (CHS) student-run newspaper The Camasonian. 2026 marks the 10th anniversary of The Camasonian’s primarily digital presence, as well as the 10th year that CHS English teacher Kate Gooding has served as adviser.
Prior to teaching at CHS, Gooding worked in broadcast journalism in Portland, Ore. as a television news producer for KGW and KATU. She had success as a broadcast journalist, but found the profession unfulfilling. She decided to switch to teaching and became a sophomore English teacher at Camas High School. It wasn’t until 2016 when former Camasonian adviser Sue Danielson retired that Gooding had the chance to combine her journalistic background with her passion for education.
When Danielson was the adviser, The Camasonian was printed as a physical newspaper distributed to classes monthly. Gooding made the decision to stop printing the newspaper and instead switch to an online format.
The first year was hectic, to say the least. Gooding was on maternity leave for the beginning of the year, leaving then editor-in-chief Trevor Hunt to figure out how to get the online newspaper up and running. He worked with partners in IT at the school district and took inspiration from other news websites to launch the official Camasonian website that fall.
By this point, Hunt had already been a staff member for a year. Danielson nominated him his freshman year, but he could not join until his junior year due to scheduling conflicts. During his junior year, Hunt served as the advertising manager for The Camasonian. This meant that it was his job to secure advertisement sales in order to fund printing each month.
“I had the opportunity each month to take a small team out to downtown Camas and other local businesses to sell advertisements in the paper,” Hunt said. “I also helped oversee the paper’s budget and purchasing of equipment like cameras.”
Hunt was promoted to editor-in-chief his senior year and quickly thrown into the fire of running both a newspaper and a classroom. He wanted to find a way to make the class educational while still keeping the paper afloat.
“The class aspect of The Camasonian was only in its infancy when I was editor-in-chief. It was very important, though, for us to have that educational component as a companion to the “on-the-job” learning-as-we-go aspect of writing, editing, and publishing content,” Hunt said. “I often thrive in those “trial by fire” environments and developed during these times a passion for learning by trial and error.”
Once Gooding returned from maternity leave, she and Hunt worked together to figure out what The Camasonian would look like going forward. They wanted to stress the real-world application of journalism, so they incorporated many different immersive learning tools to engage the staff.
“We went on field trips to local news stations, watched news documentaries, and held discussions on timely news articles to develop our interview, writing, and editing skills.” Hunt said.
Another first for The Camasonian in 2016 was the development of the first ever annual Camasonian magazine. Hunt and other returning editors wanted to honor the history of The Camasonian as a printed newspaper and came up with the idea of creating a magazine at the end of the year, compiling articles, facts, photographs, and art from the year.
“Little did I know what an undertaking this would be,” Hunt said.
The magazine took months of effort from Hunt and the rest of the staff, but ended up being one of the standout parts of his time at The Camasonian.
“We took [the magazines] to graduation at Doc Harris Stadium and passed them out to students and families,” Hunt said. “Folks were so excited to receive them and take away a memorable keepsake. Meanwhile, I was in my cap and gown getting ready to walk across that stage.”
The magazine still serves as a monumental part of The Camasonian experience for editors. Maggie Lind, editor-in-chief of The Camasonian for the 2023-2024 school year, highlighted working on the magazine as one of the most memorable parts of being in the class. She and fellow journalism student Macx Ong worked on volumes seven and eight of the magazine together.
“My favorite memory from The Camasonian is staying late after school to work on the magazine with my best friend Macx while Gooding and Hoffman (Gooding’s co-teacher) chatted away to keep us sane,” Lind said. “It made me feel like I was actually contributing to the school while giving me quality time with my classmates and Gooding.”
“We had a lot of fun with [the magazine], even when we were on a time crunch,” Ong said.
“I loved the time I shared with the staff while creating the magazine,” Rose Hinchliff, the 2021-2022 Camasonian editor-in-chief, said.
“I worked on the Camsonian magazine my senior year,” 2024-2025 assistant editor Evelyn Sun said. “There were a lot of obstacles, as there always are when working on a project of that magnitude, but I’m really proud of the final product and of all the teamwork it took to get there.”
The Camasonian has developed a significant presence on social media in recent years. The Camasonian YouTube channel was created in the fall of the 2022-2023 school year. That year, Ong served as video editor for the YouTube channel and produced a series called “Souki Tries” with Arts and Entertainment editor Kaeden Souki.
“The series started out with the concept of “Souki is awkward, let’s put him in unpredictable situations” and so the spotlight was usually just on me, but I absolutely loved any video where I got to play off of other people,” Souki said. “Macx was the producer of my video series that basically started The Camasonian’s multimedia presence and since he filmed and edited almost every video, I’d argue it’s more his series than mine.”
“Being the editor for Souki’s YouTube series was definitely my favorite part of the job,” Ong said. “Every shoot was a blast, especially the blind-mute-deaf cookie challenge. I still have all the videos saved on a hard drive.”
“The most memorable experience in journalism [for me was] when I was recruited to start filming videos in Souki’s series,” 2024-2025 editor-in-chief Henry Falvo said. “Both the Boo-Bash video and the baking video were absolutely hilarious and very pivotal moments in both my journalism and school career.”
“My favorite episode of that was definitely blind, deaf and mute baking with Maggie and Henry,” Souki said. “Maggie makes for a great comedic foil to both me and Henry and I remember constantly forgetting she wasn’t supposed to talk and getting very frustrated that she wouldn’t respond to me.”
“Filming those videos forced me to break out of my shell and develop some on-the-fly skills that I would later need when I took on the role of editor-in-chief my senior year,” Falvo said.
The 2022-2023 staff also managed to get a podcast called “Camasonian Tea Time” up and running on the YouTube channel. Although the podcast was discontinued, other podcasts, such as 2024-2025 sports podcast “Ballin’ Out with Mikey and Oscar”, have since aired.
“One of the more memorable episodes [of “Camasonian Tea Time”] is one that couldn’t air. I’d had a delightful conversation with two journalists, Ellie and Henry, and Mrs. Leighton, but the raw audio was super distorted beyond being able to fix,” Souki said. “I think it would have been the most entertaining episode of the [podcast], so that’s really memorable because the producer — myself — dropped the ball super badly.”
The Camasonian Instagram account (@camasonian), created in 2016 when Gooding took over, has become perhaps the most well-known part of The Camasonian in recent years, amassing more than 2,000 followers.
“[Being on the social media staff] makes you become more creative,” current social media manager Elie Nava said. “For pitches, you have to go outside the box. Why would you do a video about Easter trivia when you could do Easter trivia dressed up as the Easter Bunny?”
Last year, Camasonian social team members Oscar Rabideau and Thor Brody came up with the idea for the beloved “What’s Up Wednesday” series, a weekly update of happenings at CHS.
“I’d say getting other people from the school to participate in the videos and celebrating people’s accomplishments [is my favorite thing about What’s Up Wednesday],” Rabideau said.
To Camasonian staff members, the most memorable part of the class tends to be the environment. Since Gooding took the reins in 2016, the class environment has revolved around teamwork and camaraderie, encouraging connection between students.
“The Camasonian class is such a collaborative space and definitely gives the impression that journalism takes a combined effort to achieve an ideal result,” copy editor and 2026-2027 editor-in-chief Elly Jensen said. “The Camasonian needs its writers and editors and social team and photographers. The loss would be felt without any of the groups that keep the Camasonian running.”
“Journalism surely has a certain vibe and reputation for being chaotic, but I do think being comfortable in chaos is a good skill for a young journalist to learn,” Souki said.
“Out of all the classes I took at Camas High School, the Camasonian was 100% the most welcoming and close-knit,” Ong said. “It made the class feel less like a class and more like a fun project that I was working on with my friends.”
The Camasonian impacts all who serve on its staff. Lessons learned from hours of interviews, transcribing, writing, and editing add up to years of memories made and moments in time captured. At the center of it all, since 2016, has been Gooding.
“Gooding is hands-down the person who made the biggest impact not only in journalism but my high school career,” Lind said. “She will always be my favorite teacher.”
“Gooding left the biggest impact on me, without a doubt,” Ong said. “She made me feel right at home in class and when I talk to her it’s like I’m talking to a friend and not a teacher.”
“I don’t think you can talk about the impact of journalism at CHS without talking about Ms. Gooding,” Jensen said. “The improvement of my writing and editing over the two years I’ve been in the class has been because of constructive criticism I’ve received from Gooding. She’s able to see if you aren’t pushing yourself as much as you can or trying as hard as you can, and she’ll call you out and tell you that you can do better.”
“I will be forever grateful that [Gooding] kept pushing me to do better and clean up my work because my writing would not be what it is now without her,” current sports editor Olivia Steele said. “She never stopped believing in me, and her belief in me helped me believe in myself.”
The Camasonian has a bright future ahead. This year, 18 of the 26 staff members will be graduating, meaning next year’s staff will primarily consist of students completely new to journalism. Even though the staff may come and go, the principles and lessons learned remain the same.
“What’s interesting is how much [the class] changes year by year,” Sun said. “Even though we do the same work, there’s always seniors graduating and new blood coming in, so the dynamic changes drastically. I always found it to be a community of interesting characters and good people, and as I move forward with my life, I hope to find more communities like that within and outside of journalism.”
“I wouldn’t be the same person today without it,” Souki said.
