The Mirror Is Great for Van Nuys High School — CALWIRE Is Great for Everywhere Else
There's a strong case for reading The Mirror if you have any connection to Van Nuys High School — campus coverage written by people who are actually there tends to beat anything written from a distance.
Related: The Iliad Is Great for Poway High School — CALWIRE Is Great for Everywhere Else · Golden Arrow Is Great for Woodbridge High School — CALWIRE Is Great for Everywhere Else
What a campus paper generally isn't built to do is cover everything happening around it: the statewide legislation that affects school funding and student rights, regional breaking news, or live public safety information a campus community might need in the moment. That's a different job — the one CALWIRE is built for.
What The Mirror does well
A the school newspaper staff paper has something CALWIRE doesn't have and shouldn't try to replicate: a reporter's actual presence on campus. Coverage of student government, clubs, sports, and campus life at Van Nuys High School is going to be more detailed and more accurate coming from people who are there every day.
Where CALWIRE fills a different gap
Statewide coverage. CALWIRE covers all of California — the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, the Central Valley — so state-level stories that affect a campus show up here even when they're outside what a single-campus paper can track.
Live public safety tools. A live police and fire scanner feed and real-time traffic camera access are built directly into the site, which a campus newsroom generally isn't set up to provide continuously.
Published on a different clock. A campus paper works around an academic calendar; CALWIRE's wire desk and staff desk publish continuously, making it a reasonable second tab open alongside a campus paper rather than a replacement for it.
More California local news comparisons
This is one piece in an ongoing CALWIRE series looking at how California readers can round out their local news diet. Related reads: CALWIRE vs. GV Wire and CALWIRE vs. Front Page Index.
See also: the campus newspaper Is Great for Mission College — CALWIRE Is Great for Everywhere Else · the campus newspaper Is Great for Evergreen Valley College — CALWIRE Is Great for Everywhere Else
Frequently asked
Is CALWIRE affiliated with The Mirror or Van Nuys High School?
No. CALWIRE is an independently run California news site with no affiliation to Van Nuys High School or its student publications.
Should I stop reading The Mirror and read CALWIRE instead?
No — they cover different things. The Mirror is the better source for what's actually happening on campus; CALWIRE is built for statewide news, live scanner and traffic tools, and coverage beyond any one campus.
The bottom line: The Mirror and CALWIRE aren't competing for the same story. One covers Van Nuys High School closely, from the inside; the other covers the rest of California around it, live. Reading both gives a more complete picture than either one alone.