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At a penal at SPJ national convention in Orlando with Sandeep Junnarkar, interactive journalism program director, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism:

Making a Media Match: J-Schools and News Outlets

Journalism schools around the country are producing more stories than ever, but don’t always have access to high-exposure platforms. Many media organizations are stretched thin and could use help in producing innovative, high-impact stories. Learn how to make a successful media match from faculty at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, whose award-winning NYCity News Service has spearheaded collaborative projects with outlets of all types and sizes — including The New York Times, NBC News and The New York Daily News. A variety of journalism school decision makers, news professionals and students will talk about the challenges and triumphs that come with working together.

Trainers: Jere Hester, NYCity news service director, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism; ; Chris Delboni, South Florida News Service director, Florida International University

Chris Delboni, South Florida News Service director, Florida International University
Chris Delboni of Florida International University’s South Florida News Service is an award-winning Brazilian journalist who has been a foreign correspondent in the United States since 1993. She started her career as a magazine writer before becoming the Washington correspondent for Bandeirantes Radio Network. She was later hired by CBN Radio, a division of Globo Network giant. Delboni worked most of her tenure in Washington, initially as a general assignment reporter and later as a financial and business correspondent for Globo News TV, Globo Network’s 24-hour news channel. Delboni graduated in print journalism from American University’s School of Communication in 1992 and received a master’s in online journalism from the same institution in 2003. She produced, reported and edited stories daily for a variety of Brazilian mainstream media outlets — from newswire services and magazines to online news sites, radio and television before moving to South Florida, where she began teaching journalism and new media reporting in 2007 at the University of Miami School of Communication and worked with the Knight Center for International Media. In September 2009, she became the first news director for the South Florida News Service at Florida International University. Delboni is now an instructor at FIU and continues to build SFNS. She also has a column online at O Estado de S. Paulo, a major newspaper’s website in Brazil, where she writes about Miami and the Brazilians who chose to call it home.

Jere Hester, NYCity news service director, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
Jere Hester is Director of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism’s award-winning NYCity News Service, which produces multimedia special reports and feeds student stories about New York neighborhoods to news organizations around the world. Hester and J-School Interactive Journalism Program Director Sandeep Junnarkar have led collaborations with The New York Times, NBC News and The New York Daily News — most recently “Stop the Mold,” which chronicles the scourge of mold in New York City public housing. Hester was previously City Editor of the Daily News, where he helped run the paper’s award-winning coverage of the 2005 transit strike and the 2003 blackout, among other major stories. Since 2009, he’s written a pop culture column for NBC Local Integrated Media. He is also the author of “Raising a Beatle Baby: How John, Paul, George and Ringo Helped us Come Together as a Family.” Hester received his BA in journalism and politics from New York University in 1988. A lifelong resident of Brooklyn, N.Y., he began his journalism career as an intern at the Downtown Express, where he rose to editor before his 15-year stint as a reporter and editor with the Daily News.

Sandeep Junnarkar, interactive journalism program director, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
Sandeep Junnarkar is the Director the Interactive Journalism Program Director at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is the former New York bureau chief of CNET News.com, and has specialized in writing about technologies used in different industries. In April 2003, his three-part report on the security risks of online banking was named “Best in Business Projects among Real-Time Publications” by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Junnarkar helped to create online editions of The New York Times, working as breaking news editor, writer, and Web producer when the paper went live on the Internet as The New York Times on the Web. Junnarkar is founder and editorial director of http://www.livesinfocus.org, a multimedia web site that features stories on underreported issues. The site received a New Voices grant for 2008-2010 from J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In recent years, Junnarkar has served as a judge for the National Magazine Awards and Online Journalism Awards. He has given talks or led discussions about Social Media and Online Journalism at The Council on Foreign Relations, Columbia University’s Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, and the Online News Association. Junnarkar was president of the South Asian Journalists Association from 2008 to 2010. He received a B.A. in Social Science from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

With FIU students, alumni and faculty

Categories: Editor's Note