The U/Miami News Service began as a graduate-run news bureau at the University of Miami in 1991-92. It has expanded over the years to include undergraduate students and broadcast students who want more experience in print. All work is done in the new, cutting edge Newsroom, in the SoC international building.

The news service receives assignments from participating bureau subscribers. These subscribers are mostly local newspaper and magazines, including The Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel, Miami Today, The Miami Times, and the South Dade News Leader. Students work closely with Professor Tsitsi Wakhisi, the managing editor of The U/Miami News Service and a faculty member of the School of Communication. As students gain newsroom and classroom experience, they take on more responsibility throughout the year, serving as bureau chief, copy editors and assignment editors in the bureau. Stories are sent to subscribers by e-mail or fax.

Story assignments primarily focus on news features in South Florida. Topics range from feature stories to sports events to business profiles. During Fall Semester of the 1998-99 school year, for example, students wrote about Miami’s Oktoberfest, the holiday concert season program of the South Dade Community Choir, an Afro-Brazilian art exhibit on Miami Beach, a community college basketball coach recently honored by the Basketball Hall of Fame, and the settlement of a class action suit filed by the homeless.

The news service receives assignments from participating bureau subscribers. These subscribers are mostly local newspaper and magazines, including The Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel, Miami Today, The Miami Times, and the South Dade News Leader. Students work closely with Professor Tsitsi Wakhisi, the managing editor of The U/Miami News Service and a faculty member of the School of Communication. As students gain newsroom and classroom experience, they take on more responsibility throughout the year, serving as bureau chief, copy editors and assignment editors in the bureau. Stories are sent to subscribers by e-mail or fax.

Reporters also generate their own story ideas. Over the years, these stories have appeared in papers throughout Florida, the United States and Canada, including the Tampa Tribune, The Ocala Star-Banner, Crisis Magazine, and the Ottawa Citizen.

Students use their experience with the news service to get jobs as stringers and interns. Several U/Miami News Service reporters write for the bureau while doing stories and editorial services for The Miami Daily Business Review, The Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, the Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), The Wine News, and the Miami bureaus of The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek Magazine, Reuters, and Business Week.