Daniela Gerson (M.A. Specialized Journalism, '09) wrote a Sept. 19 article in the New York Times about her experience fainting and becoming temporarily paralyzed on a New York subway.
"I started to assure everyone that I would be fine," Gerson wrote. "But then I realized that if I shifted even an inch, an intense throbbing ricocheted through me. I told them I couldn’t move because of my back. A young woman with a familiar face lowered her head next to mine. 'Do you want me to pray for your back?' she asked sweetly. At first I wasn’t sure I’d heard right, but then I recognized her. What I really wanted was an extra-strong shot of some serious drugs, but it didn’t feel wise to say no to prayers."
One month later, after successful surgery, she would learn that a dislodged piece of spinal disk, a little larger than a jellybean and the consistency of lobster meat, was triggering all the agony.
"That sunny morning, as soon as I was inside the ambulance, the tears began to flow," she wrote. "Only then, safe from the crowds and cushioned by the soft padding of the stretcher, did I let myself feel the terror of being paralyzed in a place of perpetual motion."
Gerson is part of the first class of Specialized Journalism at USC Annenberg. Designed for experienced professionals as well as aspiring reporters with proven skills, the Specialized Journalism program arises out of a conviction that quality journalism today requires subject-matter expertise, advanced reporting skills and knowledge of how new communications technologies are changing the ways that people learn, think and behave. The program offers students a chance to move forward on all three fronts by putting the resources of a great university at their disposal.
She is a print and radio journalist specializing in immigration coverage. From 2006 to 2007 she lived in Berlin on a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, were she was based at the journalism collaborative Blockfrei and wrote for Spiegel Online International as well as U.S. publications. Her fellowship project was to research and report on the outcome of past guest worker programs and their influence on shaping new ones, a continuation of work she began as a 2005 Arthur F. Burns Fellow.
Before moving to Berlin, Daniela reported for three years on national and local immigration policy as a staff writer for the New York Sun, and freelanced for WNYC radio and the Brooklynite magazine. Prior to working at the Sun, she was editor of New Voices, a magazine for Jewish college students. Daniela is a graduate of Brown University, where she received a BA in International Relations and History.
