[2] In its first year (1978) Roadrunner was produced by an editorial collective that included Coupe, Robertson, Allan Coop, Alex Ehlert, Bruce Milne, and Clinton Walker and was only distributed in South Australia.

[6] Robertson later wrote: "Roadrunner survived for five years due to the combination of a posse of enthusiastic (and usually unpaid) contributors, a creative and understanding production crew, a sympathetic printer, the support of key music industry personalities and—perhaps most important of all—a small but dedicated readership".

[1] Notable contributors included: Keith Shadwick, Stuart Matchett, Ross Stapleton, Scott Matheson, Peter Nelson, Adrian Ryan, Keri Phillips, Craig N. Pearce, Larry Buttrose, Chris Willis, Toby Creswell, Mark Mordue, Richard McGregor, Richard Guilliat, David Langsam, Jillian Burt, Dennis Atkins, and Elly McDonald.

Roadrunner articles tend to be rough-edged and experimental, with a minimum of editorial intervention... the magazine was the first to treat Australian music as a force with its own history, geography and ideologies, although the other major rock papers quickly followed suit".

It also gave invaluable early coverage to new Aboriginal groups such as No Fixed Address, even before they made the classic film Wrong Side of the Road – indeed it put them on its cover.