SJMC Alumni Fuel the Heat

The Sports Issue

FIU Sports Communicators

SJMC Hosts (and wins) dotMiami

The FIU SJMC Alumni Magazine

VOLUME 2

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Letter from the DeanContributors

Globally Inclined

Meet your Professor: Diament

Tenure and Promotion

SJMC Events: dotMiami, HCC and LLK

Strategic Communicators

Cover Story: SJMC @ the Heat

Sports Journalists

Alternative Sports at FIU

Faculty in Sports

Current Student Highlights

Samuel Freedman’s“Breaking the Line”A Young Journalist’s Vision

Faculty Notes

Class Notes

PUBLISHER DEAN RAUL REISMANAGING EDITOR JULIET PINTOART DIRECTOR ELIZABETH MARSHCO-EDITOR CHRIS DELBONI

ALTAGRACE GUSTAVE CAMILO LONDONO

NATALIE MEROLA STEPHAN USECHE BRITTNY VALDES

STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER NATALIE MEROLA LAYOUT

& DESIGN ALTAGRACE GUSTAVE CAMILO LONDONO

NATALIE MEROLA STEPHAN USECHE BRITTNY VALDES SOCIAL MEDIA

COORDINATORS NATALIE MEROLA CAMILO LONDONO

COPY EDITOR CHRIS DELBONI CAMILO LONDONO

LOGO DESIGN NATALIE MEROLA

CONTACT BAYVIEW AT FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

BISCAYNE BAY CAMPUS3000 NE 151 STREET, AC-2 335

PHONE 305.919.5940 EMAIL bayviewfiu@gmail.com

FACEBOOK facebook.com/bayviewfiuTWITTER twitter.com/bayviewfiu

BayView is published by Florida International University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication and distributed free of charge to alumni, faculty and friends of the University. Reproduction in whole or in part without per-mission is prohibited.

If you are an FIU student and would like to take part in the next edition of BayView, pleasee-mail Ivette Diaz at idiaz@fiu.edu.

STAFF WRITERS &PHOTOGRAPHY

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The Contributors

Camilo Londono A student at FIU’s SJMC who’s majoring in journalism, Londono’s work is greatly influcenced by literature, music and design. After graduating in May 2014, he plans to attend graduate school for creative direc-tion. His interests include the visual arts, reading, playing tennis and skateboarding.Londono has published in the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post.

Brittny Valdes Valdes’ admiration for words along with her passion to discuss the issues facing her community have led her to pursue a career in journal-ism. Valdes, 25, has published in the Miami Herald, Sun Sentinel, and Palm Beach Post. In January 2014, she will be a reporter for the Scripps Treasure Coast newspapers. Valdes wrote the cover story about who works behind the scenes at the Miami Heat.

Dear SJMC Friends,

Please allow me to introduce the second issue of BayView magazine. Here at the SJMC, we are all about innovation, from our curriculum and courses and our award-winning faculty research, to the way we prepare the students to face a changing communications landscape by placing them at innova-tive organizations.

It gives me great pleasure to share with you that the Knight Foundation has chosen the SJMC at FIU as the site of its first ever Knight Innovator in Residence position! A generous $1.2 million endow-ment plus a $150,000 presidential grant from the Knight Foundation will allow our School to bring to campus innovators from the tech industry, who will bring fresh thinking and share with students and faculty some of the possibilities brought about by this new digital age of communications. The Knight Innovator in Residence will develop activities in teaching and training for both students and faculty, such as classes and workshops, and mentor students on innovative, entrepreneurial projects. We’re hoping that, besides bringing in fresh thinking, this endowment and position will have a transforma-tional impact on the School.

I’m happy to report that our innovative (and brand new) majors in Digital Media and Broadcasting are a big success. Our industry partnerships with the Discovery Channel and MasterCard, among other companies, have allowed students to get much needed internships and hands-on experiences along the way. We also started up BOLD, the student-run and faculty-supervised SJMC Strategic Commu-nications agency.

This issue of BayView, once again all done by the students under the supervision of SJMC faculty, focuses on sports communication. Please read it carefully, since it was put together by us especially for you. After you browse BayView, please take a moment to drop us a note. We’d love to hear from you!

Cheers,

Raul Reis

Altagrace GustaveA staff writer for BayView and a senior at FIU, Gustave is majoring in journalism, French and psychology. She is the president of the FIU chapter of Pi Delta Phi, the National French Honor Society and was also a press intern at the Consulate General of France in Miami. For her reporting in this issue, she went to Fort Meyers for the Quidditch Eagle Cup Match, held at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Natalie MerolaPhotographer and social media coordinator at BayView magazine, Merola’s photo-graphed talent, assisted in layout design, interviewed sources and coordinated strategic social media tools to capture the achievements of the SJMC’s current students and alumni. In her spare time, she sews and keeps up with the latest trends in fashion design. Betsey Johnson is her fashion inspiration and muse.

Stephan UsecheStephan Useche has been passionate about sports and journalism from a young age. She says swimming taught her the discipline to work hard for her goals, something that has helped her as a journal-ist. Working on the second issue of BayView was an experience that allowed her to explore different areas of communication, and also see how many other SJMC alumni have mixed their passions with their careers.

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G L O B A L L Y

I N C L I N E D Literally.

The SJMC’s newest arrivals bring a world of

knowledge to students.

By Altagrace L. Gustave

Ivette Diaz is the new marketing & communications coordinator for the SJMC, and despite her workload, she is still able to simplify exactly what she does. “In a nutshell, my job is to promote everything that pertains to the school,” she said. Diaz, an SJMC

grad, received her B.S. in journalism in 1996. She has more than 17 years of experience in journalism and in public relations, as she was the media and public relations specialist for the City of Miami Beach and has acted as the city spokesperson for various English and Spanish-language television, radio and print outlets. Diaz appreciates the SJMC’s abil-ity to teach students every aspect there is to know in communication. “We really are at the cutting edge of communication and teaching students journalism, advertising, public relations and digital media,” Diaz said.

Colombian-born Leonardo Ferreira, FIU’s new World’s Ahead Scholar in Interna-tional Communication, directs international programs at the SJMC. Ferreira’s goals include improving the quality of already successful study-abroad programs

at the school and increasing the number of programs, while enabling a more hands-on, affordable experience for students. Ferreira has a surprising reason for being at FIU, given his appreciation for diversity. “I wanted to come to a place where I am no longer that different,” he said. Ferreira has a master’s in telecommunications, a Ph.D. from Michigan State and also a law degree from the Universidad Nacional de Colom-bia, in Bogotá. Ferreira published a book in 2006, “Countries of Silence: The Story of Latin American Journalism,” about the disenfranchised populations of Latin America.

Ivette Diaz, Leonardo Ferreira, Kathy Fitzpatrick, Haki Halisi, Susan Jacobson, Victoria Shorten and Kurt Wise are the most recent members of FIU’s SJMC family, all with diverse backgrounds and experiences

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Though she has vacationed in Florida for years, Kathy Fitzpatrick has officially made the Sunshine State her new place of residence. As the new associate dean of graduate studies and research and a professor at the SJMC, Fitzpatrick has been in

academia for more than 20 years. One of Fitzpatrick’s goals is to introduce students to opportunities they normally would not know about, especially if they are interested in more globalized careers as journalists or as members of corporations, advertising/public relations firms, non-governmental organizations, the Foreign Service or other organiza-tions. Fitzpatrick said she is both impressed and optimistic about FIU and its SJMC family. “The intellectual capital here is amazing,” she said. “And everyone is eager to move the school forward.”

The SJMC has a lot of projects in the works for students and faculty, and Haki Halisi, the new director of development, is here to make sure the SJMC has all the fund-ing it needs to make these dreams become realities. These include projects such

as the Media Innovations Complex at the Biscayne Bay Campus, where students would understand the concept of an integrated newsroom and see what journalism has become in the 21st century. “Having that facility built while I’m here would be a major accomplish-ment, and it’s my job to raise the money to make that happen,” he said. Halisi, a Howard University alumnus who majored in psychology, has experience in communication: While at Howard University, Halisi was an editorial columnist for Hilltop, the school’s newspa-per, for two years. “I’m a word junkie.” he said.

A big concern for college students in communication is whether they will find em-ployment once they’ve walked down that graduation aisle and have received their degrees. A dream for many would be to get hired by The New York Times straight

out of college. Susan Jacobson scored a job with the Times three weeks after graduation, working with the then-new online media department there. “It was luck and preparation,” she said. Jacobson, a social media, new media and multimedia expert teaching Introduc-tion to Television and Multimedia Production at the SJMC, has a bachelor’s from the Uni-versity of Florida, and an MPS and Ph.D. from NYU. At FIU, she will also be teaching the Digital Publishing Workshop course that will be offered in spring 2014, an advanced web class where the students’ goal will be to create a cell phone app.

Victoria Shorten is a visiting assistant professor in public relations. Born in Ireland, she grew up in New York and Chicago and is now teaching three public relations classes at the SJMC. On Oct. 1, the student-run advertising and PR agency, Bold,

was launched at FIU’s Biscayne Bay campus and will be led by Shorten. As founder of Power PR International, she is preparing students for the PR world in terms of self-presentation, networking, brand building, advertising plans, social media and the pitching of ideas, all while working with actual clients for the sake of combining school work, col-lege and real world experience. Shorten has traveled the world but is still blown away by what she’s seen here at the SJMC. “They [the students] are just hungry to learn and are a breath of fresh air,” she said.

Kurt Wise is the new chair and associate professor in the Advertising & Public Re-lations Department. Wise, who grew up in northern Indiana and recently moved from Connecticut, is not taking the Miami climate for granted. “Last winter, I had

36 inches of snow in my front yard,” he said. Teaching since the mid-‘90s, Wise has been focusing on public relations for almost 20 years, and he is very impressed with FIU’s cul-turally diverse community. “This university’s student body illustrates globalization, and it’s probably one of the most unique universities in the country,” he said. Wise specializes in healthcare public relations. He says if advertising and public relations students leave FIU thinking like professionals, they will stand a much better chance of succeeding in their chosen fields.

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Mario Diament’s passion for journal-ism began early in his life.

“My father used to read me stories, mostly stories which took place in exotic places,” said Diament, associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Broadcast-ing. “It opened my appetite for being a for-eign correspondent, which is something I really wanted to do.”

Diament was a foreign correspondent for the Argentinian publication Siete Dias, reporting from the United States, Middle East and Europe. He was also the managing editor of Expreso magazine. Now, Diament teaches his students what he started learning as a young journalist in Argentina: how to tell a story, which he has done through remarkable periods in the history of Argentina, the U.S. and the Middle East.

In Argentina, Diament worked for La Opin-ion during the military dictatorship, where almost 10 percent of the journalists who worked with him “disappeared,” which was code for killed or kidnapped.

“I felt the importance of what it was like

to be a journalist because regardless of all the restrictions and fears, we kept inform-ing,” Diament said.

Reporting became more challenging for him during that period when the publisher and the managing editor of La Opinion were sent to jail.

“You live in a state of fear,” Diament said. “They could come in and take you without any reason.”

Diament took the managing editor posi-tion and knew that he was also at risk, especially when he attended daily meetings at military bases with generals.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to leave because they would close the doors and then any-thing could happen,” Diament said.

At SJMC in 1994, Diament founded the first Spanish-Language Journalism master’s degree program in the U.S., and later in life, he was able to successfully merge two of his passions: journalism and theater.He is now recognized as a world-renowned playwright, with numerous accolades to his name.

Diament is a three-time winner of the Argentores Award by Argentina’s Soci-ety of Authors, the winner of the 2002 Carbonell Award for Best New Play for “Smithereens,” among others.

His works, like “Tierra de Fuego,” have played around the world, and “A Report on the Banality of Love,” which opened in Paris in May 2013.

“Being a journalist and a playwright work together. One enriches the other,” Dia-ment said. “To have the eye of a playwright is very important for a journalist because it gives you an unconventional view of reality, and to be a journalist when you are a play-wright is very important because it forces you to see the reality and not to avoid it.”

Meet the Professor

Photo provided by Mario Diament

By Stephan Useche

Interested in culture and people, Diament traveled the world in the search of stories and experiences

“Tenure is the most labor intensive time for a professor ...”

By Camilo Londono

For SJMC professors David Park, Juliet Pinto and Maria Elena Villar, the word “tenure” is about to take on a new

meaning. The three professors are con-sidered pioneers by SJMC Dean Raul Reis, as they’re the first to receive tenure in 18 years, which he calls “a pivotal period” for the SJMC.

“This group is the first one to really step up to the plate in terms of research,” Reis said.

“We really are expecting a lot from them.”

Professor David Park said he can’t wait to continue doing work on privacy theories about social media and how these affect employments.

It’s the challenge he enjoys. “Tenure is the most labor intensive time

for a professor,” said Park, who grew up in Wisconsin and is third generation faculty in a family of professors. His grandfather taught at Northwestern University and his parents were also faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

After obtaining his bachelor’s degree in African and African American studies from the University of Minnesota, Park decided to further pursue his educational career. It wasn’t until he read a book by Herbert Schiller, an American media critic, that Park

ter’s degree in marine affairs and policy and a doctorate in communication. Reis says that the tenure of the group will not only set the standard for other profes-sors under review, but it will also heighten the level of mentoring across the board. “These three are really the first of a new generation here at FIU,” he said. “I’m look-ing forward to developing both health and environmental communication programs. Pinto and Villar will be very important in this process.”

For Professor Michael Sheerin, change is no impeding force. The Massachussets native has gone from working as an immu-nohematologist at Mt. Sinai to creative and art director at production and art agencies.

Sheerin credits his change in careers to a “sudden urge” to express his artistic ability.

Sheerin gave up “the best job of his life” as a special effects producer for Manhat-tan Transfer to be full-time faculty at FIU in 2002.

“I’ve always been a teacher,” Sheerin said. “Its nice to see that progression in some-one who knows nothing about a topic to them knowing so much that they can get a job doing that.”

Sheerin was instrumental in getting the SJMC up to date when it came to both software and infrastructure. He felt these would be key in further developing core programs at SJMC. “I saw the need to implement classes that are basics in the real world of production,” Sheerin said.

With his recent promotion from assistant to associate professor, Sheerin is excited to continue teaching students about expe-riences that they’ll encounter once in the field.

“Some professors teach theory while I teach how to do things.” Sheerin said. “Knowing how to be able to adapt to change is crucial to survive in production.”

realized what field he wanted to go into: “The field of com-munications: one of the most important and influential fields in the world,” he said.For professor Maria Elena Vil-

lar, it was while work-ing toward her master’s degree in public health at the University of Miami that the impor-tance of interpersonal communication was

reinforced. “Building personal relations is the ground work for more important things, like mentoring,” Villar said. She feels like she, along with her two other colleagues, is a mentor and hopes to be able have input as to where the SJMC is going.

“Our school is at a moment of growth. We are trying to figure out who we want to be and where we want to go,” said Villar who feels

tenure allows professors more freedom to voice their opinion.

Professor Juliet Pinto agrees and says ten-ure was a culmination of all the hard work she’d put toward her education. “It’s an extremely laborious process,” Pinto said. “You really have to earn it.”

Raised in Pennsylvania, she credits having chosen her field of study to her lifestyle as a child. “I grew up in a family in which being physically active was the norm, so I decided to major in physical therapy,” said Pinto. She admits that she had to go through “twists and turns” before realizing that environmental science would be a bet-ter fit for her. After getting her bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Bos-ton University, Pinto went to the Univer-sity of Miami, where she received her mas-

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Kathy Fitzpatrick, Daniel Perlmutter, Mark Rosenberg, Raul Reis, Alejandro Alvarado and Allan Richards.

Hispanic Communication Conference 2013

The Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Cen-ter for the Advancement of Women in Communication, officially inaugurated in May 2013, launched an active program of seminars and webinars. The first Women Leaders webinar took place in May 2013, with Aminda “Mindy” Marques, execu-tive editor of the Miami Herald. Next was a seminar at the Center’s new on campus facility, co-hosted by the Pub-lic Relations Student Society of Amer-ica. Three SJMC alumni (Rosanna Fiske, ICAP ’05; Heather Radi-Bermudez, BA ’06 & GSC ’12; and Rafael Brazon-de Fata, ‘12 ) spoke to students about what to expect in a job at an advertising or public relations agency. The second Women Leaders webinar in October 2013, featured Lisa Knutson, Chief Executive Officer at E.W. Scripps Company. That same month, journal-ist and History Miami educator Sylvia Gurinsky spoke to students and faculty, giving a historical overview of South Florida women in communication. The Center is planning a new series of semi-nars for 2014.

said Molina, business leader of innovation management for MasterCard Labs. Susan Jacobson, assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Broad-casting and one of the organizers of the event, noted the opportunity dotMiami presented for SJMC and praised the col-laboration with MasterCard.

“They [MasterCard employees] are super professional, very upbeat and creative indi-viduals to work with,” Jacobson said. “If they are an indication of the kind of folks who work at MasterCard, our students will be very lucky to work with them.”

MasterCard Latin America and Caribbean was searching for solutions that could potentially enhance its products’ presence among a younger audience. So the com-pany went straight to the source with the dotMiami event hosted at the Kovens Cen-ter at Biscayne Bay Campus.

DotMiami brought together MasterCard employees and FIU students from SJMC and the School of Business.

“They [MasterCard] are much more than a financial company,” said Raul Reis, SJMC dean. “They are also about communication and innovation, which are things that are extremely important for us.”

The event consisted of participating teams having a five-hour period to come up with a solution to one of the challenges pre-sented by the company. During each of the presentations of the proposed solu-tions, the teams used different methods

dotMiami to describe and promote their innovative solutions, including PowerPoint presenta-tions and short films that illustrated the benefits of their solutions and apps, includ-ing one called U-Life, which was the win-ning solution. The app proposed would be connected to a student’s ID and allows for rewards, security, Masterpass, e-com-merce, concierge and on-and-off campus purchases, according to Natalie Merola, an SJMC student and a member of the dotMi-ami winning team.

Merola, along with Miguel Pando, a finance major, worked together with five Master-Card employees representing the team #Generation I.

“It was a lot of fun, and we just thought ‘you know what, why not just be our-selves,’” Merola said.

Paulo Molina agrees.

“The employees see the value of having a place where not only they get to know the students, but also get to know each other,”

FIU students Natalie Merola and Miguel Pando joined with MasterCard Lab to win dotMiami.

Photo by Stephan Useche.

The School of Journalism and Mass Com-munication hosted its second annual His-panic Communication Conference on Nov. 7-8, 2013. The theme of this year’s confer-ence was Bridging Culture and Behavior.

Scholars and professionals were invited from all over the country to discuss the state of Hispanic communication. Topics addressed included consumer behavior, the environment, health, media, politics and the future of Hispanic communication research. To conclude the conference proceedings, an in-depth dialogue was held regarding the challenges ahead for improving the quality and relevancy of research geared toward

Hispanic communication. Among the distinguished scholars and pro-fessionals were: Dr. David D. Perlmutter, Dean of Texas Tech University’s College of Media & Communication; Dr. Federico Subervi from Kent State University; Dr. Manuel Chavez from Michigan State Uni-versity; Dr. Kent Wilkinson from Texas Tech University; Dan Restrepo, a former Special Assistant to President Obama and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council; Isabel Valdés, one of the top leaders, speakers and authors on Hispanic marketing in the U.S.; Dr. Sindy Chapa from Florida State Uni-versity; John S. Knight Journalism Fellows, Mary Aviles and Adriana García, from Stan-ford University; Dr. Fernando Figueredo, Miami Dade County’s Director of Com-munications and External Affairs; Russell Bennett, Vice President of Latino Health Solutions at UnitedHealthcare; Dr. Pedro “Joe” Greer from FIU’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine; Ileana Varela, host of FIU-Univision’s radio talk show, “A tu Salud”; and reps from the Public Relations Society of America and the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies.

By Alejandro Alvarado Kopenhaver Center Fall 2013 Events

Text and photo by Stephan Useche

By Maria Elena Villar

SJMC GRADS MAKE THEIR MARK

IN THE SPORTS INDUSTRY

Strategic Communicators in Sports

Gabriel Gabor, senior international communications consultant for Major League Soccer and Soccer

United Marketing, and Marisabel Munoz, senior director of international communi-cations, have mastered the task of strate-gic communication.

“I’m a kid in a candy store. I have a dream job. I have a dream career,” said Gabor, SJMC class of ‘88.

Gabor represents both companies: MLS, which involves 19 U.S. teams, and SUM,

He lives in Davie, Fla., where one day he might be working an MLS all-star game and the next the Mexican National team U.S. tour.

Gabor keeps a potent social media presence, where international journalists from abroad can reach him 24/7 to ask about updates on the different teams and play-

ers. He also takes trips to Latin America to keep a connection with the audience and reporters from those countries.

Munoz agrees that it’s important to reach as many audiences as possible because MLS games are broadcast in more than 180 countries.

“We try to do media tours as much as

possible to continue to spread the word about the league,” said Munoz, class of ‘02.

Munoz has always been interested in soc-cer, so she jumped at the chance to intern with MLS when she graduated from SJMC with a print journalism degree. She quickly moved up within the company to become the contact for international media at

MLS and SUM.Social media plays a crucial role by keep-ing contact with clients and audiences.

“We have Twitter handlers in two lan-guages. We interact with our fans, with media members,” Munoz said. “It’s part of what we do. Everything that is announced goes out through those different chan-nels.”

Munoz said that reaching global audiences means understanding context and apply-ing cultural distinctions for strategies.

“The relevancy of a pitch is important. Ithas to be different,”Munoz said. “It has to be something that is hot topic in social media and people are really going to go behind it.”

By Stephan Useche

Marisabel Munoz and Gabriel Gabor at the newly renovated Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janerio, where the 2014 World Cup Final

will be played. Photo cortersy of MLS.

Being part of a brand and representing it comes with the respon-sibility to share its concept and identity nationally and overseas.

“I’m a kid in a candy store. I have a dream job. I have a dream career.”

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Cedric Bess has learned about the importance of working with the client on a more personal level

and giving great customer service.

Bess, SMJC class of ’99, is a “guest rela-tions ambassador” for the New York Yankees, where he uses his public relations skills to take care of costumers, security and employees.

He goes out of his way to help the guests.

One time, he noticed a blind woman had lost her radio and could not listen to a

Yankees game. He stopped what he was doing and invited her into his office. Bess provided her with a radio, so she was able to enjoy the game that night.

“That’s part of my enjoyment of doing my job,” Bess said. “When I take the moment to help a guest with something as simple as making sure that she can listen to the game and enjoy it just like all of our other 50,000 guests, you make a difference in that person’s life.”

Cedric Bess posing in front of Yankee Stadium. Photo by Robert Caplin Photography.

“If we don’t handle that interaction the way the company feels the customer should be treated, that’s a major PR issue.”

Not surprisingly, one of the biggest impacts social media has had in sports communication has been

the speed with which fans and media per-sonnel interact with each other. The efficiency which social media delivers information to end-users is integral part of media communication.

But what separates a great social com-municator from the rest?

For SJMC graduate Jill Boucher, the answer is simple: common sense. As a graduate assistant for media relations at FIU Athletics, Boucher’s work takes the merging aspect of media to a new level.

“My team [at FIU media relations] does all of the media, including going out to look for stories, using Facebook, Instagram and Twitter throughout the day to keep the public updated as to what’s going on,” says Boucher, class of 2013. “We even have to come up with promotional ideas to better engage the fan.”

Boucher sees social media platforms not only as a way to communicate with fans but also as a means to attract money.

“Not only is social media free, it’s the fastest way to advertise,” Boucher says.

Much like Boucher, Gabriel Gabor, class of 1988, works in public relations for Major League Soccer and says Twitter is one of the most useful platforms to get in touch with someone.

“I have talent contacting me through Twit-ter all the time when they need work,” Gabor says.

Both Boucher and Gabor say that social media has globalized news with an imme-diacy that has transcended other media.

“Keep in mind that anything you post is immediately seen by someone,” Boucher says. “The public can, and most likely will, scrutinize what you say.” Her advice: think before you tweet.

Getting Social with the FansBy Camilo Londono

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SJMC alumni fuel the

The Miami Heat is more than a franchise - it’s a family.

A family that reaches beyond the players on the court and into a number of depart-ments behind the scenes that help make basketball season a favorite time of the year for Miami sports fans.

“In the professional sports environment, you have the emotions of winning and los-ing, which are big emotions,” said Ian “DJ Irie” Grocher, the team’s DJ of 14 seasons who graduated from SJMC in ‘99. “To go through those things together and also climb the top of the mountain together - think about it - it really helps cement the feeling of family because we were at the bottom, and now we’re all the way at the top.”

DJ Irie - the first official DJ of any NBA team, ever - is one of five former SJMC students featured here who work with the Heat and are proof that FIU is kick- start-ing individuals into the careers of their dreams.

“It [the SJMC] was a huge start to my career,” said Irie, whose internship at 99 Jamz, Miami’s local hip-hop radio station, launched him as a nightlife icon and led him to the Heat. “I don’t think I would have even gotten my foot in the door without

the internship.”

Like Irie, former SJMCers Ed Filomia, Patri-cia Woolley, Benard Worrell, Christopher Rivera, Katherine Carballo and Karla Ruiz-Gomez are now a part of the Heat family, too.

When Ed Filomia began with the Heat, the media production department was a one-man-band, and he was the one man.

Now he is the senior director of arena broadcasting services, and he’s been with the Heat for 16 years.

In 2000, when the Heat moved into the American Airlines Arena, Filomia created Heat TV, the team’s in-house production department.

“We were the first team to have a DJ and the first to have a powerful TV production asset,” said Filomia, who attended SJMC from 1989-91. “Years ago we were the leaders, and now we’ve got people that are doing what we’re doing across the coun-try.”

Now, he oversees three departments and nearly 30 employees. Benard Worrell is one of them.

“I started in the glory days,” said Wor-rell, 33, who always wanted to work for the NBA but found his niche in produc-tion after his time at SJMC. “Then, Lebron comes in and everything changes. You take even more pride. It keeps us motivated and on our toes.”

Worrell interned for the Heat dur-

By Brittny Valdes Photos by Natalie Merola and Brittny Valdes

Patricia Woolley

“What I love about my job is the feeling of being a part of something big. We all believe in the Heat, and it is this sense of pride that unites our city.”

Heat TV, said he requires of the people he manages and the content he delivers. “We try to make it more interactive,” said Rivera, who took classes at SJMC in the summer of ‘97 in pursuit of a career reporting hard news. “It’s a differ-ent type of storytelling because when we do regular news, we’re indifferent. When working for a team, you are telling their story, and while doing so, we’re also selling a product.”

That’s why Rivera said young professionals should avoid bottlenecking a career.

“You have to get in somewhere and get the expe-rience because if you don’t get those experiences, you’ll never know whether this is for you or not,” he said.

Karla Ruiz-Gomez, class of 2012, never imagined the Heat would be for her.

“To be honest, I never thought I would be work-

ing in sports or news,” said Ruiz-Gomez, associate producer and editor for Heat.com. “This should be a good lesson for undergraduates to keep their options open since you never know how things might turn out.”

Her biggest accomplishment was editing the remake of Pitbull’s “Feel This Moment” music video. It played at the start of each home game throughout the 2013 post-season.

But Ruiz-Gomez admits that every day with the Heat is as special as the days her work was front and center.

“What I love about my job is the feeling of being a part of something big. We all believe in the Heat, and it is this sense of pride that unites our city together.”

The idea of family is one of the core values of the Miami Heat, said Katie Carballo, 28, class of ’07, and producer and editor “Inside the Heat.” “We work, eat, stress, laugh and grow together each day. We make each other better and at the same time take care of one another.”

Sometimes, Benard Worrell simply can’t believe it’s his job. “At the end of the day, we say, ‘we’re sitting here watching basketball and this is what we get paid for.’”

ing his senior year. When graduation approached, he told his supervisor that with the Heat is where he wanted to be. He started in ‘04 as a produc-tion assitant and he’s now an associate director of broadcasting.

“Before I could finish the sentence he said, ‘Let me guess, you want a job?’” said Worrell, who now coordinates commercial breaks for the games’ Sun Sports Channel broadcast, produces halftime fea-tures, travels with the team as a graphics coordi-nator and selects two lucky interns each semester. “I definitely had luck, but it was a shot. And once I got that shot, I did everything in my power to stay there.”

But Patricia Woolley’s lucky shot came as unexpect ed as Ray Allen’s game tying three-pointer in game six of the 2013 NBA Finals. Woolley and a partner produced a video on former Heat player Dorrell Wright, now with the Portland Trail Blazers, as part of her senior project.

A couple of months after graduating in 2005, a man from the basketball operations department requested to see the video, and Woolley was hired for what would be the Heat’s first championship season.

“I was a fan. I wasn’t watching every game, but I liked them,” said Woolley, who started in ‘05. “It’s fun because I knew a little bit about them, and now I know so much more. Now I’m a part of a family.”

Woolley is a producer and editor for Heat TV. She creates content for the jumbotron and other plat-forms. “We might do a video to hype up the players in the locker room that nobody sees,” she said.

Her department helped pioneer an iPad recruit-ment technique the franchise first used with Leb-ron James. Woolley said when management tried to recruit new players, they gave them personalized iPads with various videos pre-recorded for them: tours of the locker room, videos showcasing Miami, Pat Riley looking and talking straight at them.

“Since then, a hundred percent of the players we want, we got them,” Woolley said.

And that innovation is a prime example of what Chris Rivera, the manager of media productions for

Ed Filomia

Katherine Carballo

Ian “DJ Irie” Grocher

Karla Ruiz-Gomez

Christopher Rivera

Benard Worrell

13 / BayView

WHAT DOES LUCK HAVE TO DO WITH IT? By Brittny Valdes

Donovan Campbell said he got lucky when he heard about a sports broadcasting position at Channel 7 News.

“I didn’t even bring a suit with me,” said Campbell, who was visiting Miami from Texas to spend the 2006 Thanksgiving weekend with his family when he was called for an interview. “I ran to Macys and borrowed one of my dad’s ties and went.”

He got the job and has now been a sports reporter for WSVN 7 News for seven years.

Campbell graduated from SJMC in 1999 with a desire to be on TV, but said he wouldn’t have been so lucky if he hadn’t been prepared the day the chance crossed his path.

During his senior year at SJMC, while he was working as an editorial assistant for the Sun-Sentinel, Campbell says ESPN visited FIU to recruit journalism students. After a brief sports quiz, the recruit-ers offered Campbell an off-camera reporting job, and he moved to Connecticut to begin his career.

From there, he moved to San Angelo, Texas, in pursuit of his first job in front of a camera. It took him two jobs before becoming a full-time sports anchor in Miami.

Nicole Fernandez, a reporter for the youth sports network Generation Nexxt, says hard work met luck when she traveled to Colombia for vacation.

While there, she met the mother of Donovan Solano, a Miami Marlins player whom she was fea-turing for a freelance multimedia project at the time.

“I sat with his mom looking through his pictures, and she took me to a stadium to show me where he used to practice,” Fernandez said. “I wanted to do this. I didn’t know where it was going to lead to, but I wanted to do it because he had a good story.”

FX Sports posted her package on the company’s website. Later, Fernandez translated the story, and it ran in El Heraldo, a Colombian newspaper.

Fernandez graduated in 2011 and credits her senior year at SJMC for preparing her with the skills to report quickly and effectively.

Her first story to ever publish was about the University of Miami’s women’s basketball team. It came from a class assignment that got picked up by the South Florida News Service and pitched to the Miami Herald.

Steve Tello, senior vice president for Fox Sports Net, has been in the news business for three dec-ades and said passion - let alone luck - is not nearly enough to succeed in the industry.

“Who gets lucky? The folks who are relentless,” he said. “There are many talented people that you have to compete with, and what you have to do is make sure that you put something special in your work.”

Tello graduated from SJMC in 1979. His journey in journalism began as a cameraman at WPLG Local 10 News, where he worked while at FIU. Eventually, he moved on to ABC News and finally to Fox Sports in 1998.

In 2012, Tello received FIU’s School of Journalism Award. He was also a recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award at FIU’s second annual Torch Awards, a ceremony honoring distinguished and accomplished alumni.

When it comes to news, Tell says reporting is reporting no matter the subject. “I don’t see any differ-ence in a reporter’s role in news or sports,” he said. “The facts are the facts. It’s their responsibility to report the facts and understand what’s going on.”

Like athletes, sports journalists get lucky, too.

Steve Tello, SJMC class of ‘79, loves his job at Fox Sports Net.

Photo courtesy of FOX

Photo courtesy of Nicole Fernandez

BayView / 14

Alternative Sports at FIUText and photos by Altagrace L. Gustave

To the naked eye, a broom, Frisbee and sword have nothing in

common. But each of these tools plays an integral role in just some of the alternative sports in FIU’s athletic arsenal. Whether it’s catching a snitch, blocking an opponent or maintaining the right posture with a sword, these players feel the heat and are ready to whisk, take flight and cut through their competitors. Sean Pagoada, 23, a psychol-ogy major at FIU, is the presi-dent of the Florida Quidditch Conference, which facilitates competition between colleg-es and universities in Florida through yearly tournaments. A minimum of seven players are needed for competi-tion purposes, and FIU’s team recently reached that number.“It’s a contact sport and just as physi-cally demanding as any sport I’ve played,” said Pagoada, who has played competi-tively in both football and in track and field. Quidditch has seven players, consisting of

Quidditch, Ultimate Frisbee and Kung Fu sweep, fly and slice through the competition

four positions. There are three “chasers,” two “beaters,” one “keeper” and one “seeker.” Chasers make goals, beat-ers play defense, the keeper prevents the chasers of the opposing team from scoring, and the seeker’s job is to get what is known as the Golden Snitch, which would then end the game. Soccer, much? But 19-year-old Mary Cueva, a communication arts major,

compares Quidditch to rugby and dodgeball because of the aggression behind the sport, which she says surprises people.

“Every sport has a handicap,” she said. “In this case, you’re running around with a broom, but you actually have very athletic people playing a very

copetitive sport that is not at all ‘geeky’ like people think,” she said.

At BBC, Adam Welch, a faculty member at the Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, heads over to the soccer field behind the Hubert Library to play Ultimate Fris-bee on Mondays and Thursdays. Annik Adey-Babinski, currently doing her master’s in creative

writing, really enjoys the sport. “It’s been the highlight of my year, so far,” Adey-Babinski said. Nicole Linares, a 29-year-old

hospitality major with a minor in wine and beverage manage-ment, definitely knows that a lot of misconceptions exist when it comes to Ultimate Fris-

bee and what players do. “It requires a lot of coordination, speed and endurance, which people don’t understand because they think we just run around throwing a Frisbee,” she said.

After having swept and flown through the com-petition, it’s time for a little slicing, so to speak. Rose Wang, a Kung Fu

and Taiji instructor at FIU and at UM, is more than will-ing to share her love for her sport with students. She offers classes at FIU’s Recreation Center that are intended to add variety to the Cen-ter’s numerous class options. “I enjoy teaching at campus, talking to students who like knowing more about Chinese Martial Arts, choreographing martial arts with music for stu-dents in dance, theater or film areas, and sharing the health benefits from being a Kung Fu and Taiji art-ist,” said Wang, a Colorado State University alumna. 2009, in Shandong, China. To Wang, Kung Fu and Taiji are more than just sports. “They’re not only sports, they are art forms.”

It’s a contact sport, and just as physi-cally demanding as any sport I’ve played.

They’re not only sports, they are art forms.

15 / BayView

Brany Boza

did lead him to journalism, three degrees and a Ph.D. By chance, he met a journalism professor the day he quit college baseball.

“He asked me if I could write, and I said yes, and then he said, ‘well you should do sports journalism’,” Blevens said. “News seemed more interesting, though.”

Baseball took Blevens to a new field and career, but to Michael Sheerin, associate professor and director of SJMC Online, it led him to play a variety of other sports.

By the time he was 9, he made the transition from baseball to basketball.

“It quickly became my favor-ite sport,” said Sheerin, who decided to go to the University of Miami to concentrate on his academics, but sports was always a part of his everyday schedule. “I would go from one game to the car putting my bas-ketball jersey on and running across to the next field to play baseball.”

Sheerin also coached the middle school softball team his two daughters attended, which he stopped doing last year when his youngest daughter moved on to high school.

He now rides his bike to work every day to keep active, and even though, he has been hit by a car and a bus. Sheerin puts his hel-met on every morning.

Grizelle De Los Reyes, instructor of advertising and public relations, practiced judo most of her life. She

was part of one campaign that took her FIU judo coaching team across the country and made national news.

“My team was putting in gas, and a carjacker was going to steal the car from them, but all the girls took him down. By the time the police came, the team was holding him down,” De Los Reyes said. “FIU made huge news, and they were interviewed live on ‘The Today Show.’”

De Los Reyes started judo back in Puerto Rico., where she was born. She switched to judo from basketball, which she had played from the age of 10 until her third year of college.

“I found it so challenging, going from a team sport to an individual sport,” De Los Reyes said.

Now, she keeps herself in shape by doing cardio at the gym and occasionally some weights.

Susan Jacobson also found different ways to keep active while living in New York City right after she graduated with a bachelor’s in online journalism.

“I wanted to exercise on a regular basis in New York, which was not always an easy thing back in the day,” said Jacobson, assis-tant professor in the SJMC Department of Journalism and Broadcasting.

When her friend talked to her about karate, Jacobson decided to join.

She earned a black belt during the seven years she did karate. After that, Jacobson spent summers playing volleyball at the courts of the Battery Park in downtown New York.

By Stephan Useche

Faculty in Sports

“You could see the Statue of Liberty, andit was a great place to play volleyball,” Jacob-son said.

For Alejandro Alvarado, his favorite sport has always been soccer, especially when he played against Jorge Ramos, anchor for Not-iciero Univision, and Fernando Fiore, host of the Republica Deportiva.

“This is the most beautiful sport played ever, and I couldn’t believe I was playing here in Miami,” said Alvarado, associate professor at SJMC and director of Hispanic Media Futures program. “It was a fantastic experi-ence.”

Alvarado played as a hobby for the Tele-mundo soccer team against other TV chan-nels like Univision and Mega TV. He also played the game in Mexico growing up.

Alvarado’s love for passion began duringhis childhood, and so did Frederick Blevens, who told his dad he wanted to play football. But his father told him and his brother that if they were not willing to hurt someone, they were going to get hurt.

So Blevens, a professor in the Department of Journalism and Broadcasting, decided to play a “non contact“ sport: baseball.

“I had no intentions on doing anything after college,” Blevens said. “I just basically went to college to play baseball.”

He had to stop his career after a series of injuries during his junior year of college.

“When you do something for 14 years, and you don’t think it’s ever going to end and then you realize you are never going to do that again, it’s a little depressing,” said Blev-ens, who ended up playing in baseball senior leagues all the way until age 50.

Blevens’ dream of one day pitching for the New York Yankees didn’t materialize, but it

Frederick Blevens recreating his pitching years for BayView. Photo by Stephan Useche

Professors are known by whether they are good teachers, if they are tough graders and, occasionally, by what they are rated on rate-myprofessor.com. But one factor some students fail to notice is the inner athlete in many SJMC professors and faculty.

Young Michael Sheerin drives to the hoop. Photo provided by Michael Sheerin

BayView / 16

Student HighlightsBrany Boza

Anthony Cave

Karol Mendez

Natalie Merola

As a fellow for News21 this summer, I braved 10 weeks of Phoenix heat at Arizona State University to report on educa-tion benefits for post-9/11 veterans. The fellowship actually started in the spring semester, as I participated in a weekly teleconference with Leonard Downie Jr., the vice president at large at The Washington Post, pitching story ideas and sending memos as I weaved through the initial stages of my reporting. Once I was on the ground in Phoenix, I, along with two other colleagues, looked through government accountability reports, called state veterans offices and visited lawmak-ers in California and Tennessee. Among the findings was that the Department of Veterans Affairs does not track gradu-ation rates for student veterans and more than half of the country does not waive residency requirements, so student veterans can pay the in-state tuition rate at a public university. My News21 experience taught me how to be a dogged, investigative reporter, beyond the Google searches and lavish, public relations welcomed events.

I am currently working as a marketing assistant for the Latin American division of a multi-national company called BenQ. They produce and develop various electronics, including projectors and computer monitors. It is my job to assist with all of the marketing materials needed in order to further promote the company’s products, and establish a stronger brand presence in South and Central America. Most of what I do involves graphic design, and the experience I got from my internship at SJMC definitely helped me be more prepared for the tasks that were ahead of me. While working as a graphic design intern, I helped our marketing director with various print and mostly digital promotional pieces for different events. which helped me get a feel for what it was like to design for someone.

I currently work with a start-up company called RedCap. We provide drivers for people who can’t or shouldn’t drive. I coordinate events for them, plan fundraisers and serve as a brand ambassador promoting our services. I have been involved in a few campaigns to promote “don’t drink and drive,” including a strong team at the Mothers Against Drunk D riving local walks. I also started a campaign with our drivers called: “Heroes also wear RedCap - RedCap to the rescue”. This has been a great hit in the recruiting process.Also, I work with Seat Fillers, Inc. in the production of local award shows. We are in charge of the fan pit and filling in the seats on the main floor with celebrities. So far, I’ve done the Billboard Award at the BankUnited Center in UM, Premios Juventud from Univision at UM as well, and Premios Tu Mundo from Telemundo at the American Airline Arena.

In 2013, I found great success using apps to connect with public figures. I never thought I could sit down and have dinner with the co-founder of Apple, travel expense-free to NYC to appear on NBC’s The Today Show for “The Cost of College” segment and rub elbows with punk rock couture’s fashion queen Betsey Johnson. When I reached out and brought co-founder of Apple, Inc. Steve Wozniak to FIU, I wanted students and faculty to feel inspired. Social media is a new form of communication. It is not so much the tool that matters, but the social relations or interactivity itself that creates dialogue with one another.I intrigued The Today Show when I tweeted about FIU’s internship and scholarship opportunities. My appearance on The Today Show allowed me to showcase FIU to the world. Tweeting original sewing projects and retweeting posts from fashion designer Betsey Johnson landed me a spot on her “Following” list. Johnson’s inspirational direct messages encouraged me to “stand out, have fun and take chances.”Everyone is only a hashtag or mention away!

SJMC assistant professor and intership coordinator for the Journalism and Broadcasting department, Lilliam Martinez-Bustos is out-spoken about the importance of internships and how early involvement can be decisive in a student’s career. “Students come in here freaking out during their last semester wanting to get an internship,” says Martinez-Bustos, who along with Professor Victoria Shorten, has been key in developing the SJMC internship program for students in order to make lasting relation-ships between students and employers. Martinez-Bustos credits her 23-year-long career as a producer to an internship opportunity at PBS early on in her career. “It was such a great gateway for me to meet contacts and mentors,” Martinez-Bustos says.Martinez is enthusiastic in letting students know that it is never too soon to start getting involved with potential employers, and she reiterates the importance of having internship experience before graduating. “I always tell students that are about to graduate to delay their graduation just so they can have an internship on their resume,” Martinez-Bustos says. “People with experience, especially in the communication sector, are really the ones they [companies] want.”

THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERNSHIPS

17 / BayView

Photo by Ray Boyle

Miami, Football & Civil RightsBreaking the Line

By Brittny Valdes

A Young Journalist’sVision

Barbara Corbellini Duarte in front of the White House during her internship with the Scripps Corporation in June. Photo courtesy of Duarte

“They didn’t live separate lives through the political movement. They played through their sport.

“The unstable market didn’t scare me, but going out to work on my first story for a newspaper did.”

By Barbara Corbellini Duarte

Author Sam Freedman visited classes at SJMC in September 2013.

story for a newspaper did. I joined the SJMC South Florida News Ser-vice, a program in which students write articles and produce videos for regional newspapers.I wrote about a Syrian girl living in Miami as her country exploded into civil war. She spent hours each day poring through news, gathering information to send to her family at home.

That story ran on the front page of the Miami Herald’s Sunday opinion section. I can’t describe how it felt to read my words in South Florida’s most important

Journalism has never been a path to big money. But it was even worse when I

chose it as my major in 2009, a time when newsrooms were cutting staff relentlessly. “But, why? I think you’d be a great lawyer,” I heard from almost every person in my family.

Why? Well, it sounds clichéd, but I wanted to make a difference. It felt like the right choice.The unstable market didn’t scare me, but going out to work on my first

newspaper. Then, within a few days, I received an email from a man who wanted to help the girl find a job.

“My story had an impact,” I thought. “It mattered.”

That was when I felt like a real journalist for the first time and when I knew I was in

it for life. Since then, I’ve interned at the Miami Herald, The Scripps Howard Foundation Wire in Washington, D.C.

the Naples Daily News in Florida and NBC News in New York.

What have I learned? That doing journalism is the same, no matter what the medium.

In “Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football that Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course of Civil

Rights,” author Samuel Freedman identifies a pivotal time in American black history that too often flies under the radar.

He said that by1967, Miami had the largest football stadium in Florida, the greatest con-centration of media in the state, and what one black weekly newspaper deemed the Super Bowl of historically black colleges and

universitites: the Orange Blossom Football Classic. The Classic was an annual game held at the former Orange Bowl stadium. It began at Miami in 1947 and established a vibrant - yet separate - football culture throughout the communities of Liberty City and Over-town.

But after the Classic’s 1967 game between the Grambling State University Tigers and the Florida Mechanical and Agricultural Uni-versity Rattlers, it would not remain sepa-rate much longer.

“I knew that there was a parallel universe of black college football in the South that hardly got noticed along very big, all white schools,” said Freedman, a New York Times religion columnist and Columbia Univer-sity Graduate School of Journalism profes-

sor, who visited SJMC in Sep-tember 2013 to share the story that took him six years to finish.

The wealth of corporations that sponsored and advertised this game, along with a higher rate of media coverage, led to the recognition of black excellence in football. It prompted the first integrated college foot-ball game and the first black quarterback. The game - which came a few years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washing-

ton in 1963 and a decade after the Mont-gomery Bus Boycotts in 1956 - was the first time both teams played for more than a winning outcome. They played for social justice.

“For a lot of young people, it’s a little bit of a surprise to realize how much segregation affected sports,” Freedman said.

The author hopes “Breaking the Line” will inspire future generations.. “The most important lesson is they [play-ers and coaches] didn’t live separate lives through the political movement,” he said. “They played through their sport.”

BayView / 18

Faculty Notes

SJMC faculty Juliet Pinto and Kate MacMillin have been working on a documentary about the impacts of sea level rise on the South Florida region. “Our low elevation and the lime-stone rock we have underneath us make our community one of the most vulnerable in the world to rising seas,” said Pinto. The 30-minute documentary, “South Florida’s Rising Seas,” will air in January 2014 on WPBT2

David Park, associate professor and director of the Global Strategic Communication program at SJMC, has been part of a team working on changes to the graduate program. These include the addition of classes that will enhance the graduate’s program curricu-lum. Currently, Park is also conducting research on digital and social media content and how these affect privacy in the workplace.

Chris Delboni, a journalism instructor, news director of the South Florida News Ser-vice and faculty advisor for the FIU chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, was invited in October 2013 to participate as a panelist of a day-long national conference at Columbia Journalism School––”Classrooms as Newsrooms: Teaching Journalism in the Real World”––to represent SJMC and SFNS along with four other nationally recognized j-schools in the country. Through Delboni’s leadership, SFNSonline.com won SPJ’s Mark of Excellence Award as the Best Independent Online Student Publication for Region 3. The newly revamped FIU Chapter won SPJ’s Outstanding Campus Chapter Award for its region. SPJ students at FIU are working hard to win the national recognition in 2014.

Lynne Farber, associate professor and adviser for PRSSA (Public Relations Student Society of America), is proud to announce that FIU’s chapter of the PRSSA now has over 100 members, a growth of more than 50 percent from last semester. She, along with the chapter’s students, attended the 2013 PRSSA National Conference in Philadelphia. PRSSA held workshops with top PR professionals to hone skills such as interviewing and office etiquettes, as well as raffling an “Intern for the Day” package with the Miami-based PR firm.

Journalism professor Neil Reisner headed to Mexico in early November to introduce 45 regional reporters and editors to data journalism. Sponsored by Fundacion MEPI, a non-profit investigative journalism project based in Mexico City, the three-day workshop covered how to obtain or create useful data, how to crunch it and how to apply it to local stories. Reisner and two other instructors provided hands-on experience with live data using Excel, Access and data visualization tools.“This type of rigorous journalism is lagging in Mexico and Central America,” says Reisner. “Some Mexican journalists and editors focus on in-depth reporting, the majority still relies on anecdotal news gathering, especially in Mexico’s provinces.”MEPI hopes the workshop will spur creation of regional data journalism hubs across Mexico.

19 / BayView

Margo Berman, professor of advertising in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations, is currently working on an e-book about finding one’s spiritual center. “Meta-Mind Yoga” will be published in both English and Spanish. Berman is currently working on a series of digital learning tools that encompass subjects such as copywriting, creativity, design, marketing, presentation, promotion, public relations and writing. Berman is the author of three books, the most recent being “The Copywriter’s Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Strategic Advertising Copy,” published in 2012 by Wiley-Blackwell.

Moses Shumow, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Broad-casting, is an instructor for the recent Digital Media track and is working on a few projects intended to focus on culture and how geography and culture intersect. Shumow, along with his Senior Multimedia class, created a website project for immigration, Culturemapped.com, where many of the different cultures in Florida are mapped in order to get an idea about where certain groups tend to populate in Florida. In December, Shumow will be present-ing at a conference in Martinique on English-speaking Afro-Caribbean populations about how this group fits into the Florida dynamic, which tends to be dominated by Hispanics.

Michael Scott Sheerin, in the Journalism and Broadcasting Department, was recently promoted to associate professor. He is also chairing the 2nd Media Art Film Festival and is the newly appointed director of SJMC Online. One of Sheerin’s goals is to initiate an online-only graduate program and to bring all SJMC online courses up to Quality Matters (QM) certification. Sheerin’s Multimedia Production II class is working on a community pro-ject about bicycle culture and safety in Miami-Dade. Titled “Ride Out Miami,” it will include videos of various bicycle events in the area, still images and audio interviews of key figures that play a role in the resurgence of bicycle culture in the country. The web-site will include GIS mapping of safe routes, accidents and more.

Lorna Veraldi, associate professor for the Department of Journalism and Broadcasting, is currently teaching a new capstone course called Digital Media Entrepreneurship, where students will complete their first business plan semester projects in December. Veraldi is also working on research on free speech and school discipline, in conjunction with the work she is doing for the Juvenile Justice Committee of the Greater Miami Chapter of the ACLU.

Weirui Wang, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations, along with Dr. Sigal Segev, coauthored two papers recently accepted by the International Journal of Advertising and the Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising, two leading journals in advertising. In summer 2013, Wang presented four papers at two international conferences, which included the International Communica-tion Association, in London, England, and the International Association for Media and Communication Research in Dublin, Ireland. Dr. David Park, Dr. Juliet Pinto and Dr. Sigal Segev coauthored some of those papers with Wang.

BayView / 20

FeaturedAlumn

SJMC Alumni: Class Notes

Photo by Natalie Merola

Photo Courtesy of Sandra Peebles

Photo Courtesy of Maria Camila Bernal

Not everyone gets to work on the types of stories that recent SJMC graduate Maria Camila Bernal, a multi-media journalist and producer at NBC Latino, Channel 6, does. Bernal reports and writes multimedia stories covering a variety of issues. Bernal recently produced a story about record-setting free diver, Francisco “Pipin” Ferreras, who lost his wife, also a diver, as they both pursued a free-diving world-record. Ten years later, Ferreras will pursue a new world record, this time in honor of his late wife. Bernal interviewed Ferre-ras, and wrote and produced the story, which was very well received online. On the weekends, you can find Bernal overseeing content on the NBC Latino site as the station’s sole weekend producer.

Univision Noticias 23’s Health and Lifestyle Specialist and Emmy-award winning journalist Sandra Peebles loves to head to work every day and report about her favorite subjects: health and fitness. It was her passion for these topics and her commitment to living a healthy lifestyle that helped her get her current post, which she’s held since 2006.

“I love what I do because I am documenting the history of my community,” Peebles said. “When I sit down to write a script, every day, it feels like a kid with a coloring book. I love writing the story.” Peebles feels blessed to be a broadcast journalist and to be able to tell the stories of so many people in important moments of their lives.

Sandra Peebles | Class of 1989

Belkys Nerey | Class of 1990

CONGRATS! to Marilys Caraballo, who earned a degree in public relations from SJMC. She is now the new director of Client Services for The Weinbach Group, a leading Miami public relations firm and advertising agency. In her new position, Caraballo will serve as the lead team member on client accounts, execute marketing communications programs and strategize with clients to implement campaigns. “Marilys knows exactly what it’s like to work in a Miami ad agency. She’s spent nearly 10 years doing so. Plus, she brings network-television experience to the table,” said Daniel Weinbach, the firm’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Those of us fortunate enough to live in South Florida get to see her on the screen every day of the week from 5:00 p.m. to almost midnight on Fox’s WSVN Channel 7 News. The class of ’90 SJMC alumna and popular Channel 7 anchor, Belkys Nerey serves up the news Channel-7 style alongside co-anchor Craig Stevens. Although the Emmy award-winning journalist feels as if she just got there yesterday, Nerey has spent the last 19 years at Fox, where she started first as an intern during her undergraduate studies at SJMC. After graduation, Nerey worked at Dynamic Cablevision of Florida in Hialeah, her first job out of college. At Dynamic, she shot, edited, produced and reported all her stories. Then from 1992 to 1994, she took a job as a general assignment reporter for WTNH-8, the ABC affiliate in New Haven, Conn. “I was scared but excited. It was close enough to New York for the city life, but it was a satisfying and motivational first TV job.” Nerey loves what she does. “It’s not all unicorns and rainbows—there are going to be bad days, but if you have a passion for doing this, it is going to carry you through. It’s not easy,” Nerey said. The top words she uses to describe a strong news team: chemistry, experience, trust and fun. Nerey’s advice for broadcast journalists is simple, “If you want to be on TV, you’re in the wrong business. Join a reality show. If you want to be a broadcast journalist, you have to have the passion and just do it.”

Maria Camila Bernal | Class of 2013

Marilys Caraballo | Class of 2004

21 / BayView

Featured

Alumn

Photo by Natalie Merola

Pamela Silva Conde, class of ’03 with a degree in broadcast journalism, has established the Pamela Silva Conde Scholarships for first-generation college students majoring in journalism at the SJMC.

Two Pamela Silva Conde Scholars will be selected each academic year and must demonstrate financial need. Recipients will be awarded at the school’s annual scholarship ceremony. They must demonstrate financial need, be degree-seeking undergraduate students enrolled for a minimum of six credit hours per semester, and maintain a minimum 3.0 GPA to be eligible. The first Scholars will be announced in spring 2014 for the 2014-2015 academic year.z

Jeff Kleinman, who earned a Bachelor of Science degree from SJMC in 1986, with a major in journalism and a minor in political science, today runs the Miami Herald’s MiamiHerald.com as its day editor. Kleinman runs what’s called the Continuous News Desk (CND) in the middle of the newsroom at the Herald. The CND oversees the website, mobile apps, alerts, newspaper planning and social media.

Since joining the Herald’s staff in 1987, Kleinman has reported on transportation, crime, Miami City Hall, education and from Key West, Palm Beach County and Tallahassee. He became an editor in 1992, working with reporters in Broward and then running the night desk in Miami. He describes that experience as being one where he “kept the trains on track and running smoothly.” Kleinman also focuses on the Herald’s growing Twitter and Facebook accounts, editing breaking stories and working with college interns on the CND through the year.

SJMC alumni Bert Medina was named V.P. and general manager of ABC-affiliate, WPLG Channel 10 in Miami. In that role, Medina oversees the station and its digital channels, MeTV and Live Well network, as well at the station’s web and mobile sites and related applications. Medina was described by the president and CEO of Post-Newsweek Stations, which owns WPLG, as passionate for television, with a deep knowledge of the Miami market.Medina has worked with English- and Spanish-language television stations at the local and network levels for the last 27 years. Previ-ously, Medina held a variety of executive management positions during his 13-year tenure with Univision. He served as senior V.P. and operating manager of the TeleFutura Television Network, a unit of Univision Communications, where he propelled the station to the number two Spanish-language broadcast network (behind its sister network, Univision). Earlier, in Chicago, he served as V.P. and G.M. of Univision’s WGBO and TeleFutura’s WXFT, launching the latter as TeleFutura’s flagship station and positioning them as the number one (WGBO) and number two (WXFT) Spanish-language stations in that market. Prior to Univision, Medina served in several key executive positions during 14 years with Sunbeam Television Corporation.

“I love stories,” says journalism major Janey Tate, now a Tampa Bay area journalist who covers city hall for the Bradenton Herald. “What I like most about what I do is telling people’s stories that might not have been told,” said Tate, adding that she also loves to write profiles and features. “To me it’s no better feeling when you hit save and know you’ve written something that a person will treasure forever and many people can learn from or relate to.” The City Hall beat can be a bit more complex, though, than features and profiles. “I have to quickly catch people whom I need to speak to after meetings. If I need to take calls, I do so from whereever I need to. I’ve pulled over many times to take a call,” Tate said. She also takes advantage of new technology and social media to generate interest in her stories. “I actually like that part about the new way of communicating because it serves as a tease to my full story.”

Janey Tate | Class of 2012

Jeff Kleinman | Class of 1986

Pamela Silva Conde | Class of 2003

Elpidio “Bert” Medina | Class of 1984

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