It is public knowledge that The Mirror is an award-winning publication. The paper has won various awards including the Pacemaker Award which they’ve won thrice consecutively and multiple Best of Show Awards as well as other individual awards.

On March 3, Hawkins High School visited Van Nuys High School’s journalism class to explore the inner workings of the class and what it takes to achieve success as a paper. The students are currently working on further developing their own publication.

At the start of their visit, journalism advisor Mr. Ronald Goins introduced The Mirror Executive and Print Editor-in-Chief Angelina Gevorgyan. She then presented the rest of the class’s editors, including the Online Editor-in-Chief Baron Kim, the Associate Online Editor-in-Chief Cristian Mejia, the Print Editor-in-Chief Angelica Venturina, the Creative Director Beverly Regino, and the Photo Editor Samantha Ramos.

After this, Mr. Goins went on to explain the workings of the class and how it is organized like an actual publication. The staff writers and section editors write and edit their work, which goes through the Editors-in-Chief before its finalization and publication. 

The publication is essentially student-run, but everything is approved by Mr. Goins, who says he ultimately relies on the Editors-in-Chief. 

He mentioned that the paper does not get a lot of ads anymore and how initially, at the start of the paper, ads were frequent but now they’ve died down to a few once in a while or none. 

“The only difference between this and a real publication is that we don’t bring in any money,” journalism advisor Mr. Goins said.

Following this, Mr. Goins then began taking questions from Hawkins High’s students.

He explained that AI’s impact on society would be the topic for The Mirror’s next issue, and Angelina Gevorgyan went on to describe the process of putting out an issue. 

Gevorgyan started by saying that it takes about five to seven weeks to create the paper. Activities needed to create the paper range from brainstorming and planning to finalizing those plans and finding the angles for the stories. Then, for about two to three weeks, staff writers conduct interviews to get their stories together before taking them back to their section editors for editing and letting the editors-in-chief work their magic. 

“Then it’s up to sorting which articles are going online and which ones are going on print.“ said Gevorgyan

“Every print edition comes back with around 2000 copies, and there is a distribution day where staff members of The Mirror take the paper to every classroom at our school, conventions, and other schools,” Gevorgyan explained.

For the print edition, it takes about two weeks for editing. Afterwards, articles can be sent back to the writers so they can fix their mistakes. On the other hand, online stories take a few days for online editors to format. 

Baron Kim, the Online Editor-in-Chief, stated that the whole class uses SNO Flow to organize all stories. 

He went on to say that other software websites and apps The Mirror uses include Google Docs, InDesign, and Photoshop.

Kim mentioned that vnhsmirror.com was made using SNO, a WordPress theme, and in order to use WordPress, no coding experience is necessary.  Using the video tutorials available on WordPress, Kim, along with Cristian Mejia, the Associate Online Editor-In-Chief, built the Mirror’s website.

Hawkins High School students went on to explore other parts of Van Nuys High School after getting an exclusive inside scoop on the workings of The Mirror.