Ashley Williams is on her fourth Zoom call of the day pitching her digital content-creation platform, RIZZARR, to potential investors. “Every company has become a media company in some way, but brands struggle to create content that resonates with younger generations,” she says to two investors from a Midwest venture capital firm that focuses on online marketplaces and software as a service...
Miki Turner remembers exactly where she was when she received an email from Reagan Griffin, Jr.: L.A.’s Citadel Outlets.
“I stopped to read Reagan’s email on my phone and there was a picture of him holding his USC acceptance letter,” said Turner, professor of professional practice of journalism. “I literally...
Sitting at her 25-inch iMac computer in her home office in South Pasadena, Kamala Kirk enjoyed an iceberg wedge salad coupled with smoked sausage, BBQ brick chicken and a sweet tea. The meal came compliments of SeneGence, whose newest skincare launch Kirk was attending online that same day. Prior to the virtual event, the brand also sent ahead beauty products, allowing the 40 editors and...
An exploration of culture and identity through a fusion of skateboards with traditional Iranian art.
Art has the ability to transcend national borders and language barriers, giving it a unique power to generate empathy. Any piece of art has this power, whether it be a painting, a sculpture, a photograph — or a skateboard deck.
While I was earning my...
Every summer from the time he was seven through 16 years of age, Ernest Owens would travel from his hometown of Houston to Marianna, Arkansas, where he would spend three months with his grandmother. She had grown up in the small town just an hour and a half east of Little Rock and “knew her way around town,” Owens said. She could walk into any room — any situation — and leave with a new friend. This is what she wanted for her grandson.
Emmanuel Martinez freely admits to something that would have been shocking in the world of journalism not too long ago: He’s good at math.
Dylan Valley was in Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport coming back from a fellowship conference in Berkeley, California to his hometown of Cape Town when he received an email that his virtual reality film, Azibuye – The Occupation had gotten into the Sundance Film Festival. “I started dancing in the terminal,” Valley said.
Harry Vaughn’s desk was covered with notes for his introduction and the question-and-answer session that would follow the 2020 Sundance Film Festival screening of Whirlybird by documentarian and fellow USC Annenberg graduate Matt Yoka. Vaughn (MA, specialized journalism (the arts)) and Yoka, (MA, specialized journalism) had a lot in common beyond their degrees. While they hadn’t met, or even known about each other before Yoka’s documentary was accepted into the festival, they were both native Los Angelenos, later learning they even attended high schools across the street from each other in La Cañada.