When we (Patricia Yang and Clarissa Jocelyn) started planning in Summer 2024 on where we wanted The Chimes to go this year, one of our goals was to make The Chimes’ presence known to the incoming and continuing classes. How would we be able to serve students if they weren’t aware of us? How would we be there for the students if our presence was in the shadows? Students deserved to know. Students deserved to be heard.
As leaders of one of Biola’s news outlets, we realized that we have the opportunity to be a resounding voice on campus, to be the place everyone looks to for their news. We get the chance to handle our community’s stories and image. It’s a thrilling experience, but one that demands much thought and care. We understand the great responsibility it carries.
This past year, we learned a lot about how to cover the stories that students needed to hear — whether they were informative, sensitive, urgent or personal. A lasting value we’ve learned from being plunged into journalism is collaboration. We witnessed the synergy within a team to cover a story narrated through both words and visuals. We witnessed the process of fact-checking and the two or three rounds of editing.
We also learned how to deliver news in as timely a manner as possible, expanding our presence on social media to better reach the community. Some of our favorite initiatives this year were starting short-form reporting through Instagram, creating Reels to capture stories in a different way.
As our leadership comes to a close this year, we look forward to what The Chimes will look like in the future as part of The Chimes Media Group, starting Fall 2025. We are so excited to welcome Thomas Rahkola as the new Editor-in-Chief, to pass on the torch and to support him on his journey in leading the publication. It will be a big responsibility to oversee the daily news, the magazine and the news podcast — but we have utmost confidence in him and are eager to see what he and his team will do.
We thank our team for the amazing work they have put in this year. We have come to be so proud of our staff this year, who worked together to make The Chimes the news organization that we see today. We commend them for their efforts, their persistence, their courage. We also thank our advisors, Michael Longinow and Chase Andre, for their continued support and guidance behind the scenes. We couldn’t have done this without them and our team’s synergy that has been core to the publication.
We also thank you, the Biola community, for entrusting us with your stories this year. It has been a privilege to serve you.
— Patricia Yang, 2024–2025 Editor-in-Chief, and Clarissa Jocelyn, 2024–2025 Managing Editor
