USC Annenberg's School of Journalism announced the launch of an online digital news Web site created to fill a void in local and national news while providing news and commentary across multiple platforms—audio, video and text. The new Web site, www.NeonTommy.com, is a student-managed, edited and produced publication under the leadership of Annenberg Digital News director and journalism professor Marc Cooper.

NeonTommy.com was conceived and built in just two months, with the intention of developing an interactive digital publication that offers reliable news and commentary and competes in the real-world mediasphere.

“We have modest intentions to make this site a living, thriving, significant news source in the online media world,” Cooper (pictured, right) said. “We are becoming a real publication and not just a student project. We assume that students are now working journalists from their first day at Annenberg. At the graduate level we could say that we are immersing them in real life journalism from orientation week.”

The site’s design is in beta mode, with a final product scheduled to be completed in August. But the content is online, constantly being refreshed, updated and expanded, and ready for its new audience.

“The birth of NeonTommy.com is a great step forward for us at the Journalism School,” School of Journalism director Geneva Overholser said. “We have been able to make wonderful progress in multimedia storytelling with Annenberg Television News, Annenberg Radio News and our documentary lab, Impact. Now, with NeonTommy.com as the voice of Annenberg Digital News we have completed a great ensemble of media learning laboratories that enable our students to do journalism on every platform. I’m grateful to Marc and to the students who, through their engagement and excitement, are making this happen.”

NeonTommy.com co-editors Brian Frank and Chris Nelson, both second-year graduate journalism students, have developed an editorial staff of more than 30 that includes senior and associate editors, beat reporters and columnists who cover immigration, race, national and international news, culture, the environment, music, sports, film and more. The staff, which also includes full-functioning graphics, copy-editing and fact-checking departments, is mostly comprised of graduate students, but undergraduate students are also contributing. Mid-career professionals from Annenberg’s M.A. Program in Specialized Journalism are also contributing their efforts.

“I am proud and pleased to see the work that our journalism students have done to make NeonTommy.com come alive as a valuable resource in the ever-changing news and information landscape,” USC Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson III said. “A hallmark of USC Annenberg’s education is to produce women and men who are entrepreneurial leaders, embracing innovation in all areas of their studies and career. Taking the lead in developing this Web site, building it out with the best reporting, writing and multi-media from across the School and launching it in a timely, efficient way, is a remarkable achievement and clearly demonstrates exactly those attributes we want to impart to our students.”

Cooper said the NeonTommy.com staff has taken the best of the old media’s organizational and editorial standards.

“We’ve taken those standards and tried to make them as agile and applicable as possible to the warp speed of the new media,” Cooper said. “We have a complete internal editorial system.”

NeonTommy.com draws from the best work of several specialized journalism efforts across the school—Annenberg TV News; Annenberg Radio News; Impact, a television news magazine produced by students; and Intersections, a multimedia journalism project covering south Los Angeles and other communities underserved by mainstream media. NeonTommy.com’s staff will also report on national and international news.

“The transition into multimedia journalism is absolutely necessary for students to learn the practice,” Cooper said. “NeonTommy.com is first and foremost a publication that draws from all of the grad students that are already working online. It provides a place for them to be published or broadcast.”

A second phase of the site build-out will start immediately and incorporate functionality that will meet the growing demand for multimedia content, forums and other interactive tools.

Annenberg Digital News director Cooper comes to NeonTommy with rich, recent online editorial management experience. During the 2008 presidential campaign he served as Senior Editor of The Huffington Post and editorial director of HuffPost’s cutting-edge OffTheBus citizen journalism reporting project.