NAHJ Selects Two Reporter Staff Writers For Their 2015 Student Project In Orlando

Two staff writers from The Reporter were selected from a nationwide search to participate in the National Association of Hispanic Journalists 2015 Student Project.

The Excellence in Journalism conference will be held in Orlando on Sept. 18 – 20 and will host hundreds of student and professional journalists from across the country.

Tomás Monzón, 21, and Brayan Vazquez, 20, who both spent last year honing their craft at The Reporter will be joined by 10 other student journalists who were selected during a national search. The project offers the students a week-long training in multimedia journalism. Students will report for the convention website, The Latino Reporter Digital, creating a digital newspaper, a television newscast and radio programs and packages.

“It’s truly a privilege to be part of this year’s NAHJ Student Project,” Vazquez said “I’m honored to partake in this great opportunity to learn from journalists in the field. This opportunity will allow me to work on areas still foreign to me. I will work on multimedia packages with a strong online presence. These are some of the things I want to dominate and the student project will teach me just that.”

Vazquez, a 2013 graduate of Olympic Heights Community High School in Boca Raton, has been with The Reporter for the past year. He has written columns, news stories, briefs, taken photos and is currently working on the paper’s new online website scheduled to go live this fall. 

He is studying computer science at North Campus. Vazquez, who came to the United States from Mexico when he was 11-years-old, is interested in social issues that affect people of color such as the school-to-prison pipeline and the implementation of private correctional facilities that house undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and worldwide.  

Monzón, who was valedictorian at South Miami Senior High in June of 2012, has been active in the journalism arena since high school. He worked with Teenlink South Florida for a year writing movie reviews for their print and online publication and he attended two workshops funded by the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, one at the University of Miami in 2011 and another at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in 2012. He graduated from the Wolfson Campus Honors College this past May.

While at The Reporter, Monzón built a varied portfolio during the past two years. He served as the paper’s forum editor, was a senior news writer and produced multimedia stories. His stories have ranged from a colorful feature on a media services coordinator who also doubles as a wrestler to the more investigative and hard-hitting news such as a public safety officer who resigned after facing termination.

Born in Argentina, Monzón migrated with his family to Miami in 2001 to seek refuge from a deteriorating economy in his homeland.

He will be attending Florida International University this fall studying computer information systems. Monzón aspires to work as a multimedia journalist for TIME or Newsweek as well as a computer systems technician for a government agency or private business.

“Through The Reporter, I learned and heavily practiced the skills of interviewing, researching, combining different sources of information and editing my writing for the College audience,” Monzón said. “These skills will become invaluable assets in my future career as a journalist.”