On Thursday Josh Schroyer applied for his first media pass and, in the wee hours of the morning of Wednesday Oct. 1, staked out a place from which he and the news team he was with could catch democratic candidate Barack Obama in action. “It was a really cool experience, actually,” Schroyer said. “CNN was there—all the major networks.”

Tonight at 7 p.m., viewers can catch footage of the speech—along with other features and footage—as CVN (Calvin Video Network) debuts the weekly news show "Channel 4 News” on the campus channel of the same name. “That’s something students have come to expect,” Schroyer said. “They expect a big, new project coming from CVN each semester—so that’s kind of our big project this semester.”

Comprehensive coverage

Channel 4 News is built along the lines of a major broadcast news show, featuring anchors Nick Vera and Kristen Schipper and weatherman Joe Sonheim, all Calvin sophomores.

And, as with a regular newscast, the on-set anchor team is augmented by news teams assigned to various weekly stories.The student-run show will present pre-recorded segments featuring the whole gamut of student activities, from cardboard canoe contests to rugby matches and student (and sometimes national) political events.

“We’re going to have the student weekly calendar,” Schroyer said. “We’ll talk about what upcoming events there are at Calvin.”

On-the-job training

The show, which is created Monday nights in the new CVN studio in the Commons Annex, also provides a good training ground for students interested in media production. “The news show gives new members from the club an opportunity to run all the equipment that we have,” Schroyer said. “And that’s one of our goals in creating the new studio.”

Calvin media productions professor Daniel Garcia praised the latest CVN project: “That’s what student organizations are for—to show that a class is just part of the process,” he said. “Student organizations are where they can take what they learned in class and project it to the community.”

CVN takes all comers

Many of the students who will be producing the Channel 4 News—and who swell CVN’s 30-strong membership—are not media productions majors.  “It’s a lot of people who can’t actually major in the field,” Schroyer described the club, “but it’s still something they’re interested in. So CVN is a way for them to get involved in video or broadcasting, even if it is just once a week.”