2025 MDC Journalism Speaker Series Schedule Set
The Miami Dade College Journalism Speaker Series is back.
This year’s edition, the 17th installation in the series which was started in 2008, will feature journalists from the Miami Herald, Univision, WSVN 7 and WLRN.
Segments, which last 30 minutes and are posted on MDC-TV’s YouTube Channel, will be filmed in February, March, April and May.
“We are excited to hear from this year’s guests,” said Manolo Barco, the founder of the series and media adviser to The Reporter, the student newspaper at MDC. “Having them share their knowledge and experiences is a gift.”
Kicking off this year’s series is Joshua Ceballos, a local government accountability reporter at WLRN. He will speak on Feb. 11 at 11 a.m. at Wolfson Campus, 300 N.E. Second Avenue, Room 8503.
Before joining WLRN, Ceballos was a staff writer for Miami New Times, focusing on public corruption and how it affects the lives of real people.
Ceballos, a graduate of Westland Hialeah Senior High School, started his journalism career at PantherNOW, Florida International University’s student newspaper and website. He was the organization’s news director and investigations editor.
TODAY IN FLORIDA news anchor, Tavares Jones, will visit the MDC Journalism Speaker Series on March 13 at North Campus, 11380 N.W. 27h avenue, Room 4209 at 1 p.m.
The WSVN 7, Emmy-nominated journalist has worked in television markets in Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Arkansas. Tavares, a University of Florida graduate, has a dual bachelors degree in broadcast journalism and political science.
Miami Herald investigative reporter Brittany Wallman will be the third speaker in the series on April 15 at North Campus, Room 2131 at noon.
Prior to the Herald, Wallman worked at the South Florida Sun Sentinel in Broward County for 25 years. First as a local government reporter and then as a member of the paper’s investigations team, serving as editor.
In 2019, Wallman, a UF graduate, shared in the Sun Sentinel’s Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their coverage of the Parkland school shooting.
The speaker series’ final guest will be Andrés Giraldo, a multimedia journalist at Univision New England. A specific date has not been selected for the segment but he will speak at Hialeah Campus; his interview will be conducted in Spanish, a first for the Speaker Series.
Giraldo served as a photographer for The Reporter last year, winning two first-place awards for best news story and picture story from the Florida College System Publications Association in November.
“Being in [The Reporter] gave me many ways to see things differently and [allowed] me to grow my career toward what I wanted to continue achieving professionally,” Giraldo said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Giraldo, who has a bachelor’s degree in audiovisual communication from the University of Medellin in Colombia, launched People News, an Instagram page that posted weekly news segments of about 45 minutes throughout the outbreak. He managed a team of about 13 aspiring journalists, including correspondents in Colombia, France, Mexico, the United States and Venezuela.
The MDC Journalism Speaker Series was launched in February of 2008 to provide students an opportunity to meet and network with working journalists. To date, more than 82 journalists have participated in the series.
For more information, contact Manolo Barco at (305) 237-1255 or at mbarco@mdc.edu.
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