About
CommunityWire.Miami is an independent, community news outlet in the School of Communication at the University of Miami.
The news service, staffed primarily by graduate journalism students, provides informative and interesting coverage of the university’s nearby cities, including:
- Miami
- Coral Gables
- Doral
- Key Biscayne
- Pinecrest
- South Miami
- Sweetwater
- West Miami
CommunityWire.Miami also covers the Miami neighborhoods of:
- Brickell
- Coconut Grove
- Little Gables
- Little Havana
- Richmond Heights
- South Beach
The future of local news is dire
By Barbara Gutierrez
The United States has lost more than 2,500 newspapers since 2005, or 25 percent of the total number of papers in the country, according to a 2022 report by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
A new report released in November by the Medill School of Journalism found that the rate of newspaper closures has accelerated, now at 2.5 closures per week with more than 130 confirmed newspaper closings or mergers in the last year.
The result is that a growing number of Americans are living in “news deserts” without community newspapers or with newspapers with diminished staffs that make it nearly impossible for their journalists to be the watchdogs of the communities’ institutions—considered to be one of the bedrocks of a healthy democracy.
This situation has prompted the University of Miami School of Communication and several other universities,including the University of Florida and the University of California Berkeley, to release a statement in support of news initiatives that will help to promote local news coverage. The consortium of universities is working on a report on this subject that will be released in February at a Knight Media Forum.
“We believe that journalism is essential for good governance, which calls upon us as citizens to be informed and engaged,” said Karin Wilkins, dean of the School of Communication. “We appreciate these kinds of opportunities to collaborate to strengthen local and community news particularly. Research demonstrates that we are more likely to trust local news and to rely on community sources of information to navigate our economies, our health systems, and our climate actions. These programs, along with the compelling student work we currently support, give students opportunities to contribute to our communities as well as gain professional experience.”
The School of Communication offers a news service called CommunityWire Miami, where graduate student reporters are assigned coverage of neighboring cities and communities throughout South Florida, including Coconut Grove, Coral Gables, and Richmond Heights.
Their stories have appeared on the school’s website, the University’s student-run Distraction Magazine, and sometimes in local newspapers including the Miami Herald and Miami Today, according to Tsitsi D. Wakhisi, associate professor of professional practice who oversees the news operation.
Wakhisi is a veteran newswoman with extensive experience in community reporting and editing as a former Miami Herald Neighbors editor. She held various other newsroom positions at newspapers.
“Covering local news is important because the residents of these cities are no longer informed as they used to be,” said Wakhisi. “The local news media don’t have the resources to staff the cities and to make sure that all of those stories that matter get covered. Those small stories can make a difference.”
Wakhisi, who is writing a textbook on the coverage of local news, and other communication faculty members contributed to the consortium report coming out later this month. She said the report will look at the successes and challenges faced by the different institutions as they run classes and on-campus newsroom operations.
Some of those challenges include how to attract and retain readers in an age where many get their news from social media and other digital sources. The schools will also investigate ways to make news more accessible as well as integrating multimedia elements into the stories, said Wakhisi.
“Decades ago, the hometown newspaper would curate the news,” she said. “Now everyone is a news curator.”
CommunityWire reporters have covered community forums with local mayors with the mission of understanding that city’s needs and concerns, said Wakhisi. One such forum in 2022 explored how local cities were faring post-pandemic. The 11 students now enrolled in the program are interviewing local mayors on the topic of the “State of their City,” said Wakhisi.
Sabrina Catalan, a second semester graduate student who works for CommunityWire, has been assigned the city of Homestead, which is her hometown. In her reporting she has found stories that show the life of everyday people and places, including one about a small Mexican bakery called La Patrona.
“It was interesting to do this,” she said. “The owner was very passionate about passing his culture to the community through his bakery, and he is very conscious of people’s needs so the prices are not very high.”
Catalan said that in today’s environment local news should be more accessible. She said that covering Homestead has helped her become much more knowledgeable about the community she lives in.
“It is certainly more important to have news about people who live near you than national news,” she said. “Those stories matter. It is important to know about the people and issues that are around you.”
Our History
The Community Wire Service at the University of Miami
By Richard Watts
Journalism professor Tsitsi D. Wakhisi comes from decades of experience in community reporting and editing as a former Miami Herald Neighbors editor who held various newsroom positions at several other newspapers before joining the University of Miami as a journalism professor. Wakhisi said she thought it important to ground her students in community reporting.
“I think that we really need to help communities understand what’s going on in their community,” Wakhisi said. “So, we’re not just this ivory tower but we should be part of the community and letting the community know what’s happening because nobody else really is as community coverage declines from understaffed newsrooms, technological and revenue challenges.”
So in 1991, the School of Communication launched the “U/Miami News Service,” staffed by journalism graduate students. During the calendar-year master’s program, students wrote stories for a number of local media outlets, making them available through the wire service to partner publications at no cost – giving students valuable clips and newsroom experience.
In 2021, the School of Communication revised the program to include a mix of undergraduates and graduate students who offer multimedia stories to local media outlets, the college campus media and the news service’s website. The news service has been rebranded CommunityWire.Miami and students are covering nearby cities and neighborhoods, including Miami, Coral Gables, South Miami, Miami, West Miami, Pinecrest, Sweetwater, Little Havana, Coconut Grove, Brickell, South Beach, Richmond Heights and Little Gables. Stories are posted to the webpage and to community media partners such as Miami Today, Coral Gables Magazine and Legacy Miami Magazine. Some student stories can also appear in The Miami Herald, Wakhisi said
Contact Us
For more information, please contact:
CommunityWire.Miami
University of Miami
School of Communication
P. O. Box 248127
Coral Gables, Florida 33124-2105
Email: communitywire@miami.edu
Phone: 305-284-6943
Instagram: @CommWireMiami
Twitter: @CommWireMiami