Category Archives: J-Profiles

By Sean Boyle | UConn Jour­nal­ism | May 3, 2019 A self-pro­­claimed “email nerd,” Hay­ley Tafuro (UConn Jour­nal­ism ’16) is paving the way for aspir­ing jour­nal­ists to break into the indus­try and rise at a major sports sta­tion. While Tafuro always knew she want­ed a career cov­er­ing sports, she nev­er could have imag­ined report­ing to NBCCon­tin­ue read­ing “How Hay­ley Tafuro ’16 turned her pas­sion into an ascend­ing career at NBC Sports”

By Maya A. Moore, UConn Jour­nal­ism | April 26, 2019 Vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Stan Simp­son is skilled in the art of peo­ple, a char­ac­ter­is­tic that undoubt­ed­ly rings true when watch­ing the host of Fox 61’s Real Peo­ple with Stan Simp­son on Sun­day morn­ings. He wel­comes view­ers with his sig­na­ture “Alright folks,” in a resound­ing voice and wide smileCon­tin­ue read­ing “Mul­ti­me­dia triple threat Stan Simp­son mar­ries brand­ing and storytelling”

By Syd­ney Mazur, UConn Jour­nal­ism April 19, 2019 Meet Car­los Vir­gen, the dig­i­tal news direc­tor at The Day in New Lon­don, Con­necti­cut. He is not your tra­di­tion­al jour­nal­ist. Orig­i­nal­ly from Cal­i­for­nia, Vir­gen stud­ied graph­ic design and worked in a law firm until one day a friend who pub­lished a Los Ange­les inde­pen­dent alt-week­­ly hired him asCon­tin­ue read­ing “How The Day’s Car­los Vir­gen fell for­ward into dig­i­tal jour­nal­ism and an award-win­ning podcast”

By Abi­gail Brone, UConn Jour­nal­ism April 12, 2019 Tom Maroney nev­er planned to work as a jour­nal­ist, he just liked telling sto­ries and using a cam­era to do so. Maroney, a New York native, has worked as a cam­era­man at Fox 61 news for a decade. “As col­lege stu­dents tend to do, I took a leftCon­tin­ue read­ing “Cap­tur­ing news behind the cam­era with Fox 61 video­g­ra­ph­er Tom Maroney ”

By Sean Boyle | UConn Jour­nal­ism | April 5, 2019 Grow­ing up, WNPR’s Frankie Graziano always dreamed of cov­er­ing sports and nev­er wavered in his deter­mi­na­tion to become a reporter. Along the way, Graziano real­ized that his pas­sion for cov­er­ing sport­ing events was root­ed in the per­son­al sto­ries he got to share and the rela­tion­ships forged with sources and lis­ten­ersCon­tin­ue read­ing “Why WNPR’s Frankie Graziano ’11 looks for the human inter­est angle in every story ”

By Maya A. Moore ‘19 | UConn Jour­nal­ism | March 29, 2019 Claire Smith cred­its her mother’s infec­tious love of the base­ball and the endur­ing sto­ry of Jack­ie and Rachel Robin­son with inspir­ing her 37-year-long career as a sports jour­nal­ist. “I always knew that base­ball was a pas­sion, from child­hood,” she said. “I just fell in loveCon­tin­ue read­ing “How sports jour­nal­ism pio­neer Claire Smith of ESPN gets into ‘the mar­row of a story’”

By Abi­gail Brone |  March 8, 2019 Matt DeRien­zo began work­ing as a jour­nal­ist the day after his eigh­teenth birth­day. “I wrote a let­ter to the edi­tor of my local news­pa­per in Maine about a drunk dri­ver that hit and killed a friend of mine’s moth­er. I argued the bar that served the dri­ver should getCon­tin­ue read­ing “Hearst Con­necti­cut VP Matt DeRien­zo talks online news, local ver­sus cor­po­rate ownership”

Mar­ciano is the bureau chief of Con­necti­cut Law Tribune

As a jour­nal­ist, some sto­ries will be more chal­leng­ing than oth­ers, but that nev­er stops Tatiana Flow­ers, a young reporter and Hearst Jour­nal­ism Fel­low at The Hour in Nor­walk. Flow­ers found her pas­sion for jour­nal­ism dur­ing col­lege despite her ini­tial desire to become a vet­eri­nar­i­an. Writ­ing came nat­u­ral­ly, and even­tu­al­ly, she per­fect­ed her mul­ti­me­dia skills, includ­ing in videoCon­tin­ue read­ing “How ‘mis­trust’ of the news moti­vates Hearst Jour­nal­ism Fel­low Tatiana Flowers”