Manny Garcia Dean Candidate #4 School of Journalism and Mass Communication Thursday, September 1, 2011 10:30-11:30am Town Hall meeting for faculty, staff and students to get to know the candidate – Provost Wartzok will moderate this session Location: Biscayne Bay Campus: WUC 157 Modesto Maidique Campus: GL 150 (via video conference) For questions please contact: Gitta Montoto, Office of the Provost Tel: 305-348-2151, Cell: 786-232-1084 Updated 7/29/2011 9:04 AM Manny Garcia 1119 Hickory Way * Weston, FL 33327 * 305-934-1241 [email protected] Professional Experience: Executive Editor/General Manager, El Nuevo Herald April 2009-Present Job resembles more publisher/editor. Run web and print operations for the most influential Spanish-language newspaper in the hemisphere. Manage multi-million dollar budget. Restructured newsroom of 60 fulltime journalists and 100-plus freelancers to meet online/print goals. Created strategic alliances to boost coverage. Edit – in two languages - investigative projects. On my watch, our Spanish-language web/print reach has become the fastest in the U.S. Home-delivery circulation growing for first time since 2006. Created business plans, producing more than $250K in new revenue. Pulitzer finalist with The Miami Herald, a first for Spanish publication. Report to the Publisher. Senior News Editor, The Miami Herald January 2008-April 2009 Oversaw daily web and print operations, news bureaus, Sports and investigations. Managed $10 million-plus budget and a staff of 250-plus employees. Restructured news operations to be more fluid. Managed staff development and hiring. Drafted partnership contract with St. Pete Times. Rebuilt trust with community. Report to Executive Editor. Assistant Managing Editor/News, The Miami Herald March 2005-January 2008 Oversaw daily news and online operations for Metro and State and ran Investigative Team. Hired a team of editors and reporters. Restructured coverage teams to better serve readers on all platforms. Managed multi-million dollar budget and staff of more than 130 journalists. Oversaw coverage that won Pulitzer Prize. Special Projects Editor, The Miami Herald January 2002-March 2005 Ran Investigative coverage as player-coach. Managed multiple investigative projects, locally and nationally, including the Space Shuttle Explosion, which was a Pulitzer finalist. Prepared and led in-house training for reporters. Recruited staffers and interns. Assistant City Editor, Miami Herald June 2000-January 2002 Oversaw courts and cops team, assigning daily, enterprise and investigative reporting. Led our 911 coverage, which focused on terrorists who trained in South Florida. Led our Anthrax coverage, and continued to train, recruit and hire reporters and interns. Beat and Investigative reporter September 1990 to June 2000 Watched a killer executed in Florida’s electric chair to uncovering a coup d’état at Miami City Hall. My reports helped jail public officials and change Florida law. Key reporter on 2 Pulitzer-Prize entries, for Miami Voter Fraud Scandal and the Elian Gonzalez raid. -2- Leadership: President/Investigative Reporters & Editors, Columbia Missouri. June 2011-present Member since 1997. IRE board member since 2004. Mentor to young journalists. Travel nationally and internationally teaching investigative reporting to journalists and students. Raised more than $50,000 for endowment and conferences. McClatchy Investigative Task Force, Sacramento CA Present Co-chairing company-wide initiative to re-invigorate investigative reporting across the entire company. Leading task force to prepare guidelines, budgets, training, best-practices and present a report on how to create a culture of watchdog reporting in every newsroom. Executive Mentorship program 2009-Present A Publisher-driven directive to pair up executives with young leaders and help them develop. My mentees and I develop each year a plan to grow the business, such as call center discussions to keep readers from dropping the newspaper. Visiting journalism professor, different schools and conferences 1997-Present Guest lecturer/instructor on investigative reporting, beat coverage and the psychology of developing sources. Taught at Columbia, Washington & Lee, Liberty, Bethel and Florida International University and in Argentina. Recruit students for internships. Knight Ridder Executive Leadership Program, San Jose CA. 2005-2006 Completed a two-year program designated to identify future publishers and executive editors. One chosen from hundreds of editors company-wide to be part of the program, which taught business literacy, leadership, ethical decision-making, innovation skills. Poynter Institute, Ethics Fellow, St. Petersburg FL. 2004-2005 Part of a two-year program where fellows practice ethical standards to better lead the newsroom and industry. Hand-picked by my executive editor to attend. Other activities: Pulitzer Judge, Columbia University New York 2008-2009 Judged Pulitzer in the Investigative reporting and Public Service. Vetted nearly 100 entries yearly to determine the top three finalists. COLPIN conference Buenos Aires Argentina 2010-Present Trainer and panelists, teaching investigative reporting to journalists in Latin America. -3- Awards and recognitions: Pulitzer Prize, investigative reporting, 1999 Key writer and reporter on breaking investigation that uncovered widespread voter fraud in the Miami mayoral election. The probe overturned the election results, changed Florida law and led to more than 56 arrests. Pulitzer Prize, breaking news 2001 Primary writer and anchor on the federal raid that removed Elian Gonzalez from his relatives’ Miami home and returned him to his father in Cuba. Anchored the story before dawn and reported and wrote through the entire news cycle, and into the next day. Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting 1999 Awarded the Harvard University Prize for work on the Miami voter fraud scandal. Investigative Reporters and Editor Award 2006 Honored for project that uncovered how criminals were repeatedly given a withhold of adjudication following arrests, meaning that rapist, child molesters, killers, and career criminals walked out of court without convictions on their records. Project changed Florida law. National Association of Hispanic Journalists 2006 For Justice Withheld Project Pulitzer Prize finalists, breaking news 2003 Key writer and reporter on investigation that uncovered why the space shuttle exploded. The reporting found that shuttle managers and engineers had long known that there was a problem with insulating foam detaching from the fuel tanks and striking the shuttle. McCandlish Philips Chair in Reporting, World Journalism Institute 2009 Memberships: Investigative Reporters and Editors National Association of Hispanic Journalists American Society of Newspaper Editors Education: Florida International University, Bachelor of Science in Communications, 1990 Skills: Bilingual, fluent English and Spanish July 14, 2011 Dear Julie, I want to tell you a bit about myself: I was born in Cuba and raised in Miami. My family left it all to give me a shot at the American Dream, and I am living that dream. Currently I am Executive Editor/General Manager of El Nuevo Herald. I took the job two years ago when the previous editor retired. Many colleagues said I was insane because after 18 years at The Miami Herald, I had risen to Senior News Editor – the Number Two post at the newspaper. But I knew I wanted to run my own newsroom. I made the right decision: We are one of the few newspapers that has grown year over year home delivery circulation; our reach online and print is tops for Spanish news organizations and among the highest when you include English and Spanish press. I have built up our web, video and radio presence. Our watchdog reporting has exploded. This year we were named a Pulitzer finalist with The Miami Herald – a first for a Spanish-language newsroom. In December, our publisher also named me GM, which I welcomed. I have helped implement initiatives that have produced more than $250,000 in new revenue so far this year without compromising our news integrity. But my passions are strategic planning, investigative reporting and teaching. I plan for the future, with a focus on innovations and development. It’s no accident that we have built our news quality, online and print traffic, even with shrinking resources because I have assembled a strong team from advertising, circulation, research, and marketing. I help oversee watchdog projects at my paper and The Miami Herald. I help plan, launch, guide and edit investigations in English and Spanish, on all platforms. I am President of Investigative Reporters & Editors, an organization that changed my career. I travel the country and internationally teaching investigating reporting, source building and showing students how to manage and juggle their first job out of college. I am a cheerleader. My goal is always to develop others. I love this gig. I have helped indict a police chief, union boss, sitting commissioner and public servants. My work has helped changed laws, helped free a man from a life sentence and overturned a rigged mayoral election. But at the core, it means little, if I cannot pass my knowledge to others. Back home I recruit for both newsrooms and the McClatchy Company. I believe in this profession; we change lives; we change laws; we make the world better. I am looking for a slot where I can nurture a team of students, challenge them, and have fun doing it. FIU gave me a shot when no one else would;