In February, received four awards at the Associated Collegiate Press Best of the Midwest conference in Minneapolis. The associated Colligate Press is an organization of student newspapers and other student media from across the country. They host several conferences throughout the year and encourage student newspapers to submit stand-out pieces to their Best in Show award.

We sat down with , Senior and editor-in-chief of Chimes, to hear more about the awards the newspaper recently received and all the exciting things happening at Chimes. While Parks admits that he had no interest in journalism previously, after his first semester working for the paper, he loved it and eventually applied for the position of editor-in-chief. This is now Parks’ second year in the position and fourth year working at Chimes.

Can you tell more about the four awards Chimes received this year?

Four Chimes staff, including myself, attended the Best of the Midwest Conference in February, where we submitted several pieces to their “Best in Show” award. At the conference, we placed in three categories and won four awards. Chimes won: fifth place in Publication Website, seventh place in Four-Year Weekly Newspaper, fourth place in Editorial and Commentary for Gwyneth Findlay’s opinion piece “,” and fifth place in Editorial and Commentary for my editorial “.”

Last year, we placed tenth in Four-Year Weekly Newspaper and we didn’t place at all in Publication Website. We’re excited about moving up in these rankings and definitely feel that Calvin’s recent investments in Chimes has helped us improve in quality.

Do you think any of the recent changes Chimes has implemented contributed to the improvements you saw in the awards?

One thing we learned after going to the conference last year is that several papers use a website service called “Student News Online.” We transitioned to using their services this year and have been able to improve our website look and functionality.

It has been nice to have a journalism professor (Jesse Holcomb) working as our advisor this year. Him being here this year has really helped us develop as a paper and improve our overall quality.

Calvin has been investing in Chimes over the past few years, between hiring a journalism faculty member and purchasing the student news online service. I think that kind of institutional investment in student journalism is really valuable and really important, but it is not something that happens at every institution. 

How do you feel these awards reflect the students at Chimes’ dedication to journalism? 

One thing we are trying to do more of at Chimes is tell the stories that only we can tell. For example, last year when Betsy DeVos became the secretary of education, we published a two-page spread about her, specifically highlighting her time at Calvin. When we went to the conference last year, that won the second-best feature story.

I really appreciate the respect the Calvin administrators have for student journalism and their commitment to let us be independent. They are committed to letting us tell the stories we need to tell and helping us do that. We definitely try to use our opinion section to let voices from all across campus, from a lot of different contexts, be heard.   

What are some changes that Chimes has implemented this year or readers can expect to see in the future?

One thing we did this semester was switch to a digital first publishing schedule. Instead of waiting to publish all our content in print on Friday and then posting it online afterward, we now post everything online throughout the week as stories are finished. The print edition will now act more as a “best of” this week’s content. This way we have more time to focus on the layout of the paper and also get stories out to readers faster.

We direct people to our website through Twitter and Facebook, and we also introduced a new  that we are very excited about. This will be another way to get stories to people who may not necessarily be on campus to pick up a print edition. That newsletter will include links to five of our top stories from that week.

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