Melissa Hernandez Email & Phone Number

Tampa, Florida, United States

• Work with a team of producers across platforms to provide coverage for 60 local stations on breaking news, national news and major events such as the 2022 World Cup, the Oscars and King Charles III’s coronation.
• Use real-time analytics tools such as Google Trends and Crowdtangle to identify trends on social media and search.
• Write explainers and SEO breakouts on current events such as the Trump indictments, student loan forgiveness and Supreme Court decisions.
• Brainstorm audience-first initiatives for major events such as the World Cup, the Oscars and the Women’s World Cup. The Oscars 2023 coverage plan resulted in 722K visitors, a significant boost from 2021 and 2020.
• In my first year, my stories were some of the top performing of each month.

Gainesville, Florida, United States

• Filed FOIA and public records requests to aid my reporting on state and government legislation.
• Interviewed, researched and wrote deeply-reported articles for Fresh Take Florida. My articles were picked up by news organizations at the local, state and national level. Most notably, the Associated Press, Tampa Bay.
• Worked with editors to edit, polish and fact-check stories before publishing.
• Conducted interviews with sources, public officials and organizations in a professional matter.

Gainesville Metropolitan Area

• Worked on breaking news, copy-editing stories in WordPress and crafted graphics and captions for social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
• Curated monthly KPI recaps using tools such as Google Analytics, Chartbeat and social media platforms’ in-house analytics tools.
• Led the initiative for a headline testing option for our newsroom. We worked with Google’s headline testing software as well as dipped into other WordPress-friendly software that could give our newsroom the ability to.
• Primary tasks included daily curation of original content, audience engagement, design, copyediting, and analytics.
• Launched an initiative to bridge our broadcast newscasts with the digital production team by optimizing our YouTube uploads. I measured KPIs monthly to see our growth in viewers.

Gainesville, Florida, United States

• Responsible for editing, fact-checking and publishing original Spanish stories for the student newspaper.
• Worked with a team of writers and translators to provide Spanish coverage to the Gainesville area. Our main goal was to expand The Alligator’s audience to be more inclusive to Spanish readers who make up a significant.
• Worked with other editors and leading staff, providing updates on Spanish stories and suggesting translation-worthy content.
• During my time at then-new El Caimán, I advocated for Spanish news to be included in-print. Our stories made the print paper a number of times during the semester, which was a huge goal for me as editor. During.
• Enhanced the audience engagement strategy by creating an Instagram, Spotify playlists and encouraging sign-ups. I was also in charge of managing the socials.

• Worked as a staff writer for the lifestyle, arts and culture section of The Alligator.
• Wrote weekly stories about the new business start-ups, restaurant openings and live events happening around the Gainesville area.
• Specialized in feature writing for entertainment stories.
• Worked to schedule photographers for the visual elements of my stories.

Gainesville, Florida, United States

English to Spanish news translator for El Caimán

Atlanta, Georgia, United States

• As a digital news intern at 11ALIVE, I worked with producers, newsroom managers and other digital content producers to service the Atlanta area with coverage on breaking news, local events and even national news.
• During the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, I aided and worked on reworking broadcast stories into web stories. I ran headline tests and optimizing SEO to provide coverage for the digital side of 11Alive. Some of my.
• Curated the daily newsletter during my time in the newsroom, enabling a heightened sense news judgment to pick the best stories to highlight for audiences.
• Clipped newscasts and uploaded them to YouTube with the appropriate optimization to enhance WXIA’s ever growing YouTube presence.

Gainesville, Florida, United States

• Worked as a contributing writer creating helpful guides at Swamp Rentals, RentTally, 407apartments, RentTampaBay, and RentJAX.
• Research and wrote articles directly tied to FAQs about the community.

Editor at the College Magazine. Vice President of the UF chapter