100th Issue Of The Reporter
More than six years after merging the three student newspapers at Miami Dade College into one publication, The Reporter is printing its 100th edition on Feb. 14, 2017. The first issue of The Reporter was printed on Oct. 4, 2010. Today, the paper, in its seventh year, boasts a circulation of 10,250 and has won two National Pacemakers and 88 Florida College System Activities Association awards. Former students from the paper have gone on to work and intern at the Washington Post, The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Dallas Morning News, the Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, WSVN 7, NBC 6, Axios and a bevy of other newspapers and TV stations. Below we present to you our top ten stories throughout our existence.
— Maria Elena Vizcaino
The Reporter Issue 1
Date: Oct. 4, 2010
Volume, Issue: Vol. 1, Issue 1
Author: Lazaro Gamio
Position at The Reporter, Years: Art Director, 2010-2012
Current job: Visual editor for startup news website Axios.
Story description: When the three student newspapers at Miami Dade College, The Falcon Times, the Metropolis and the Catalyst, were merged in the fall semester of 2010, the student journalists from those papers had about a month to create a new product. They worked diligently and fearlessly to create The Reporter. At the forefront was Lazaro Gamio, who created the visual look of the new paper and its logo.
Quote: “It was really exciting to get the opportunity to build something from scratch. It was amazing to have very deep level of creative control, and because I had to come up with everything, I had to learn how pretty much all of it works: how stories get written, how they move through the editing process and how they actually make it into production. So, it was just a very rewarding experience overall…At the end of the day, we all had faith it was a good paper and we just put it out, and we hoped for the best.”
Headline: Obama To Speak At North Campus Graduation
Date: March 29, 2011
Volume, Issue: Vol. 1, Issue 11
Author: Alex de Armas
Position at The Reporter, Years: North Campus Bureau Chief, 2010-2011
Current job: Morning anchor at WSVN 7.
Story description: President Barack Obama announced as commencement ceremony speaker for the North and West Campus’ graduation ceremony on April 29, 2011.
Quote: “When I got the news that President Obama was speaking at our graduation, I remember thinking ‘wow what an honor.’ No matter what your political preferences are, I think it’s still an honor to be visited by the President of our country. For a story like this, I made sure to talk to our campus president about what it meant for the campus… I also made sure to get some information as to how this happened. For that information, I spoke to Juan Mendieta, the spokesperson for the college. It was also important to know what past references Obama had made about community college, and the importance he gave community colleges. I made sure to reference that in my story as well. Other than the facts, a very important element to any story…is emotion and reaction. I made sure to include that as well. My goal for this story was to give you everything you needed to know about the president’s visit but also to capture the emotion from people who agreed with him politically and those who didn’t. “
Headline: Head Coach Dismissed; No Direct Reason Given
Date: Nov. 8, 2011
Volume, Issue: Vol. 2, Issue 6
Author: Melissa Adan
Position at The Reporter, Years: Kendall Campus Bureau Chief and Briefing Editor, 2010-2012
Current job: Reporter at NBC 6.
Story description: One year after helping lead the Lady Sharks to a National Championship, Head Softball Coach Carlos Caro was dismissed without explanation on Oct. 25, 2011.
Quote: “Someone in the school tipped us off…When I went to go check it out the players were heartbroken because [the coach] was kicked out…They really liked this guy. So that’s weird why would you take out a guy for no reason. We requested [his personnel] file, that was the next step…It was very difficult because you felt there was something more to it and you want to uncover the truth. To this day, I still have so many questions I want to ask. I want to find out and follow up with his softball players…What’s important is we were able to find out he was dismissed. We did our due diligence and kind of [showed] the scene.”
Headline: Head Coach Resigns After Allegations
Date: March 28, 2011
Volume, Issue: Vol. 2, Issue 11
Author: Monique O. Madan
Position at The Reporter, Years: Editor-In-Chief, 2010-2012
Current job: Municipal government reporter at the Miami Herald.
Story description: Basketball Coach Matthew Eisele resigned from his post on March 3, 2011, after he allegedly called one of the players a “dumb ass” and threatened to remove him from the premises.
Quote: “It was a tip from someone in the sports world…After I made the calls and no one wanted to make a comment, and everyone was tight-lipped, I was like ‘We need to look into this a little bit more.’ I remember there was a lot of pushback for [requesting his personnel file], and I was able to convince them to let me go into the office and inspect the record…I definitely was scared, as a rookie reporter, I was a little nervous about getting into that kind of story, but at the same time, the adrenaline of knowing that I was exposing something that has a huge impact directly on students…When he left the College he was very upset at this article. He had actually asked The Reporter to take it down [from our website], and I was actually asked by the College administration to take the story down, and I think that was a test to our integrity because we decided not to take it down, and like any newspaper, right? Just because someone doesn’t like a story we don’t just take it down. So to me, to have encountered that in my early years was very rewarding to see, ‘Well, okay, this is a test of my character, and am I going to scoop down and say, you know what, I feel bad for him,’ and we’re all humans; of course I feel bad for him. But you can’t even start thinking that way. You need to put yourself outside of that box. He was upset that I had disclosed that he was stopped, I think it was [two] times, if I’m not mistaken, for DUI. I think that really put a rock, a stumbling rock for him in getting a new job. He was just furious…You know, people were actually reading our stories.”
Headline: Serrapio Calls Facebook Obama Threat “Funny”
Date: Sept. 11, 2011
Volume, Issue: Vol. 3, Issue 2
Author: Karla Barrios
Position at The Reporter/ Years: Editor-In-Chief, 2012-2013
Current job: Grant administrator for Inspire Cuba, a Miami-based nonprofit that carries out infrastructure projects in Cuba.
Story description: A Kendall Campus student used Facebook to threaten to kill former President Barack Obama. After the student, Joaquin Amador Serrapio Jr., was sentenced to three years of probation, he told The Reporter in an interview that he thought the ordeal “was pretty funny.” The judge ordered him back to court and eventually modified the terms of his probation. His lawyer argued that his client’s words were taken out of context by The Reporter and threatened to subpoena the paper’s editor.
Quote: “That was very intense couple of weeks for us. [The lawyer] kept calling us, and sending us messages saying he was going to subpoena me, and subpoena everybody…We ended up contacting this lawyer from the [Student Press Law Center]…It was pretty intense. I mean, I think it was not even my third week as editor-in-chief and we were already, you know, being threatened. Shortly after that, I was terrified of being at school because I was like ‘Oh My God! If this guy sees me, like, he’s going to hate me’… But it was also well-received. It was a good story… ‘Oh what am I going to write about at the school’s paper?’ That’s the last thing you think about writing; it’s the last thing that you expect. It was also definitely challenging. I was 17 years old. I wasn’t expecting to be [threatened with a] subpoena.”
Headline: Four Dead, Several Injured After Parking Garage Collapses At West Campus
Date: Oct. 30, 2012
Volume, Issue: Vol. 3, Issue 5
Author: Gregory Castillo
Position at The Reporter, Years: 2010-11, 2013-14 / Kendall Campus Bureau Chief and Photo Editor.
Current job: Multimedia producer at the Dallas Museum of Art in Dallas, Texas.
Story description: On Oct. 10, 2012 a construction accident at the West Campus’ parking garage construction site took the life of four construction workers.
Quote: “I was [in] the shower at my parents’ house and I started getting phone calls from people from The Reporter…I got in my car and I rushed over there. I mean I drove way over the speed limit…When I got close, I could already see a ton of fire trucks and police officers and a police officer made me pull out my credentials and then let me go. We parked really close to the Cuban restaurant…I started talking to people. There was an office building across from [the site] and a lot of reporters were kind of wandering around looking for people to talk to. I just remember seeing somebody, going up to them, and asking them a couple of questions, what they heard and, you know, one guy told me: ‘I heard this big boom and loud sound,’ and little by little I started piecing together the story from the things that I was able to get from different people. I was also going to all the press conferences the police and firefighters were putting out. I learned that you have to calm down and get it together, because you have a lot of adrenaline when you’re in a scene like that. You gotta focus on what your job is. At that moment getting the story and getting the photos was the most important thing, in an accurate and professional manner. I learned to relax and focus, even in tumultuous times.”
Headline: Brayan Takes The Train
Date: March 4, 2014
Volume, Issue: Vol. 5, Issue 2
Author: Gregory Castillo
Position at The Reporter, Years: Kendall Campus Bureau Chief and Photo Editor, 2010-11, 2013-14.
Current job: Multimedia producer at the Dallas Museum of Art in Dallas, Texas.
Story description: A feature on Brayan Vazquez, an undocumented student, who lived in West Palm Beach and took the train every day to attend class at North Campus.
Quote: “I started to talk to him, and I really felt like I wanted to do more. I reached out to Brayan and actually that first night we started talking I told him: ‘I’ll go over there. I’ll travel to your house. I want to see your journey.’ And he invited me to stay over at his house, and they’re really nice people…I think in times like these, that type of family just goes to show you that for the little bit that [some] immigrants have, they love it, they love being in this country and be a part of the American Dream. [The story] was a lot of work. We wrote that story with everybody’s input and it’s the longest story I ever wrote. That story ended up being repurposed and ran in the Miami Herald, and it got a lot of traction.”
Headline: Professor Hospitalized After Being Attacked In Parking Garage At Kendall Campus
Date: April 22, 2014
Volume, Issue: Vol. 4, Issue 14
Author: Guillermo Herrera
Position at The Reporter, Years: Forum Editor, 2013-2014
Current job: Research Assistant at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research institute based in Washington D.C.
Story description: Marc Magellan, a music and humanities professor at Kendall Campus, sustained a bloody nose, bruises to the head, and injuries to the jaw after he was attacked in a parking garage at Kendall Campus on April 15, 2014.
Quote: “I called the police, I think it was the campus security and they were very hush-hush. They did not release any details, and I got stuck in some bureaucratic procedure of trying to find out information. I had to file a report, like a request, and there was a lot of hurdles in the way in order to receive access to information. It came to a point that because of the fact we were a student newspaper, even though we’re very close to the origin of the incident, we don’t receive as much access as a local news station would be because we’re not as respected…It was very frustrating. I remember having a hard time finding reliable sources for the story at the time.”
Headline: Collada Retires After Accusations Of Academic Wrongdoing Surface
Date: Vol. 6, Issue 14
Volume, Issue: April 14, 2016
Author: Daniela Molina
Position at The Reporter, Years: Staff Writer, 2015-2016 and Editor-In-Chief, summer 2016
Current job: Journalism student in her junior year at Indiana University-Bloomington.
Story description: The director of the New Student Center at North Campus resigned shortly after being accused of having several employees complete work toward her master’s degree program and falsifying several of her employees timesheets.
Quote: “I remember I was actually in bed and I took a nap and I woke up to a phone call, and I was like ‘This is weird. I don’t know this number,’ and I listened to the voicemail and it was Tere Collada saying, ‘Hey Daniela, I was calling you back because I wanted to speak to you about the story you guys are going to run.’ From that phone call I was honestly so terrified. I was so scared. I didn’t know how I was going to handle the situation. Was I going to be friendly? Was I going to be extremely professional? I wasn’t sure. I’m so used to setting up interviews with the person I’m talking to, but this one caught me off guard. I prepped my questions, got everything ready, and spoke to [her] on the phone. It felt like I had really pushed myself to do something that I was honestly terrified of doing…It challenged me to ask questions I’m not used to asking and to pick out the right information I should write in the story. I didn’t want my story to be biased in any way, and I just wanted to tell the truth.”
Headline: Honors College Freshman Remembered As Spunky, Compassionate And Humble
Date: Nov. 8, 2016
Volume, Issue: Vol. 7, Issue 5
Author: Riane Roldan and Maria Vizcaino
Position at The Reporter, Years: Maria Vizcaino, Editor-in-Chief, 2016-2017, Riane Roldan, Arts and Entertainment Editor, 2016-2017
Current job: Sophomore journalism students at Miami Dade College.
Story description: A Wolfson Campus freshman was found shot to death in the driver’s seat of a car on the side of a Collier County road on Oct. 20, 2016. Also dead in the car were her father and 7-year-old sister. The kid’s mother was later found stabbed to death in the apartment the family resided in. Authorities said the father killed the family before turning the gun on himself in an apparent murder-suicide.
Quote:
Maria Vizcaino: “We found out while we were in Washington D.C. at a [journalism]conference. We started working from the hotel room immediately, calling and emailing Jael’s professors and friends. I was clueless approaching this situation. No one trains you to speak to people so recently after such tragedy. After a week of getting to know Jael through what other people told us, writing the story felt like a huge weight to carry on our shoulders. We attended the funeral on a Saturday morning, and became so emotionally invested that we mourned Jael ourselves. We kept telling ourselves in the newsroom it could’ve been one of us. It was hard. I don’t think anyone else understands what we went through. It was about teamwork, and I’m so glad Riane and I did this together because we had each other to vent and grieve.”
Riane Roldan: “Writing that story with my Editor-In-Chief Maria [Vizcaino] was probably one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. Jael and I were in the same Honors College program, so when I found out, it really hit home. I think the hardest part of the whole process was having to interview all of her family and friends, especially when they were still so freshly grieving. But ultimately, it taught me a lot about the kind of journalist I want to be. There were a lot of tears, all nighters and hard work that went into that story but I know at the end of the day that Maria and I did the best job we possibly could, and I’m really proud of the way it turned out.”
