Go, Gator: Goleman grad lands job at The New York Times

Education By Megan Jacobo, Reporter Thursday, July 16, 2020

Go, Gator: Goleman grad lands job at The New York Times

Christina Morales is living the dream, one she has held since childhood.
Now 22, the graduate of Barbara Goleman Senior High and the University of Florida is fulfilling a year-long fellowship at The New York Times in Manhattan, where she is reporting national breaking news.
Where she’ll next end up, she could not say, as the coronavirus pandemic has complicated her career plans.
“I just hope to continue to do journalism and help the community I’m covering through my reporting,” she said.
For the Times, Morales, of Hialeah, has reported on a time capsule found beneath a dismantled Confederate monument; the discovery of the remains of U.S. Army Spc.
Vanessa Guillen, who vanished from Fort Hood in Texas in April; a plane crash in Idaho and identity thieves who offer fake coronavirus tests to steal personal information.
Morales paid her dues, first with an internship at The Miami Herald covering government in Hialeah; then she wrote on immigration at The Oregonian and was a general assignment reporter at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Morales was among 10 women who were influential on their campuses and chosen as Glamour’s 2020 College Women of the Year.
“I feel honored to have been recognized,” Morales said. “It’s overwhelming for me to think that people found my day-to-day tasks, though big and challenging, to be worthy of recognition.”
Morales was selected as a young female leader in the media industry.
During her senior year of college, Morales was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Independent Florida
Alligator
.
While there, Morales said she was able to get news out quickly about the pandemic.
She got a taste of the stress of working in journalism as well as of the gratification that comes from providing a resource for readers.