News

Distraction Print, Online Announced as Pacemaker Finalists

Distraction magazine and its website, distractionmagazine.com, have both been announced as Pacemaker finalists.  Presented annually by the Associated Collegiate Press, the Pacemaker awards recognize collegiate publications for their content, design, photography, and graphics. The stakes were high in both categories; the judges narrowed down 96 magazines to 22 finalists, and 137 online entries to 30 finalists. Rori Kotch, editor-in-chief of the nominated issue, submitted the fourth and final magazine of the last academic year to the ACP. She credits the nomination to both the magazine’s content and covers, saying that [...]

2019-12-17T19:25:56-05:00August 31, 2016|Journalism|

Start The School Year With A Laugh…Or Three: PREP Season Begins With Comic Cure Ladies Night Out In Miami Shores

Students enrolled in the Public Relations Experience Program (PREP) ended their first week of classes with a night of laughter in Miami Shores. Comic Cure’s Ladies Night OUT was on Aug. 26 at the Miami Theater Center and served as the backdrop for a fun way to kick off a PREP semester filled with events throughout South Florida.  “Over the past year we’ve hosted more than a dozen events benefiting twenty charities and more than 140 comedians. That kind of impact can’t be done alone,” said Benjamin Leis, Comic Cure [...]

A Student’s Perspective of the 2016 Viacom Summer Internship Program in New York City

After a few grueling months of submitting applications and conducting interviews, the hard work paid off and I was accepted into the Viacom Summer Internship program in New York City. From May through August 2016, I became a member of the Digital Programming team at Nick Jr., a Nickelodeon pre-school television channel most famous for the hit show, Dora the Explorer. I was thrilled to be placed in a programming department, one of my top choices, and was eager to learn about its importance in the digital age.  On my [...]

Dangerous Assignments: How Journalists Stay Alive in Mexico

Her body was found on the side of a roadway on February 9, 2016—hands and feet bound and a plastic bag over her head. Only two days earlier, Anabel Flores Salazar, mother of two, had been snatched from her home in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, by armed assailants. Now she was dead. Murdered. And her story was a familiar one: A crime-beat reporter for the newspaper El Sol de Orizaba, Salazar had suffered the same fate of scores of Mexican journalists killed over the past few years for covering news about [...]

New Visiting Knight Chair to Work on Documentary with Students

David Abel, award-winning reporter with The Boston Globe and a documentary filmmaker, is the next Visiting Knight Chair for the Center for Communication, Culture, and Change at University of Miami School of Communication. During his time at UM, Abel will be working with students on a documentary film project reporting on the ban of private airboat use in the Everglades. The ban is part of a law passed by Congress to protect and expand the national park. Endowed by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Visiting Knight Chairs [...]

2019-12-16T18:42:47-05:00August 23, 2016|Journalism, Motion Pictures|

Indian Cinema in Miami

As the title of producer Sanjeev Chatterjee’s latest movie implies, Mi Amor is a Miami-based love story but not exactly the kind most people might imagine. With his first feature film, the University of Miami’s award-winning documentarian set out on “an unusual experiment” to revitalize the global appeal of Indian Bengali films on “a micro budget.” Written and directed by the critically acclaimed Bengali filmmaker Suman Ghosh and starring two of Calcutta’s top actors, Mi Amor was shot mostly in English, partly in Bengali, and entirely in Miami during two grueling weeks in May [...]

MFA Student Awarded WaveMaker Grant

April Dobbins, a graduate student in the motion pictures program, has been awarded a $10,000 WaveMaker grant for her Alabamaland documentary film. WaveMaker grants, administered by Miami-based non-profit Cannonball, recently presented artists with funding. Fourteen WaveMaker Grants winners were selected from more than 100 applicants. Each WaveMaker grantee was awarded up to $10,000 and $100,000 was awarded in total. Dobbins works full-time as the director of prestigious awards and fellowships in the Office of Academic Enhancement and is half-time in the motion pictures M.F.A. program.  She used the funds to [...]

2019-12-17T19:26:11-05:00August 9, 2016|Interactive Media|

UM’s M.F.A. in Interactive Media Students Win Sea Level Rise Challenge

The Interactive Canes Team, composed of students from the Interactive Media M.F.A. program at the University of Miami School of Communication, won first place in the AeroTech-Concursive Sea Level Rise Challenge. The contest, sponsored by the Old Dominion University Center for Enterprise Innovation’s (CEI) grant program GOV2COM and the Strome Entrepreneurial Center, asked innovators to devise a mobile application that would efficiently deal with the economic and life threatening consequences produced by sea level rise and flooding in Norfolk, Virginia. “Norfolk and Miami, like many other coastal communities, face similar [...]

2019-12-17T19:26:25-05:00July 26, 2016|Interactive Media|

The Miami Hurricane Wins 10 Florida Sunshine State Awards

University of Miami’s student-run newspaper, The Miami Hurricane, was recognized with 10 Society of Professional Journalists Florida Sunshine State Awards, including nine first place awards, on July 9 during the 22nd annual competition at the Firefighters Memorial Building in Miami. The Miami Hurricane, under editor Nicholas Gangemi, B.S. ’16, was awarded Best Student Publication and Best Website in Florida, competing in the college newspaper high frequency sub-category. The high frequency sub-category evaluates newspapers published five more or times per month. To win Best Student Publication, three issues of the newspaper [...]

2019-12-17T19:26:37-05:00July 13, 2016|Journalism|

UM Film Students Aim High, Go West: Canes Film Festival Winners Screen in L.A.

For a select group of motion pictures students, a once in a lifetime opportunity to screen in Los Angeles began after winning Canes Film Festival in May 2016.  Out of 85 entries submitted to Canes Film Festival, the School of Communication’s year-end film festival, five were selected by a jury of industry professionals to screen at the Directors Guild of America Theater in LA during the 11th annual Canes Film Showcase. While in LA, the student filmmakers spent two intensive days touring studios, attending Q&A sessions, and participating in an [...]