Mary Bitterman (pictured, top), chair of the PBS board of directors, addressed the future of public broadcasting at the inaugural James L. Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting at the USC Annenberg School for Communication on Thursday, Nov. 10 . The series honors James L. Loper (pictured, bottom), a respected industry executive who served as executive director of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and as president and general manager of Los Angeles public television station KCET. Loper has served on the USC Annenberg faculty since 1999 and started the School’s Program for the Study of Public Broadcasting.

Proving that good political coverage can make great television, USC Annenberg has announced the winners of the 2005 USC Annenberg Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism. Winners range from Hearst-Argyle Television to NBC News "Meet the Press with Tim Russert" to 6News in Lawrence, Kan. "At a time when the legitimacy of journalism is under attack, and when...

Communication professor Jonathan Aronson (pictured) has been named by USC Provost Max Nikias as the new executive director of the Annenberg Center for Communication . "As a researcher, writer, and scholar, Professor Aronson has developed a unique expertise in international communication policy and globalization, which makes him particularly well-suited for this position," said Nikias when...

USC Annenberg welcomes new undergraduate and graduate students for the Fall 2005 semester. Classes begin Monday, August 22 . In addition to nearly 200 new undergraduate communication, journalism, and public relations students, USC Annenberg is enrolling 19 new Ph.D students and nearly 200 students beginning coursework for master's degrees in communication management , global communication ,...

Scholars and students from around the country gathered Aug. 4-7 in Utah for the 2005 Alta Conference . Communication professor Patricia Riley served as director of the biennial conference, regarded as a "premier venue for argumentation research." The program featured a broad range of panel discussions and...

Print journalism graduate student Daniel Konecky has been awarded a $5,000 Bayliss Radio Scholarship for the 2005-06 academic year. Conferred by The John Bayliss Broadcast Foundation, these awards recognize students for their "academic achievement and extracurricular radio activities, their passion for radio and their desire to contribute to the overall advancement of the radio industry." This...

USC Annenberg associate dean Martin Kaplan and the Los Angeles Times have called for greater community involvement in the design of the park planned for Grand Avenue in downtown LA. In an op-ed published in the July 17 Sunday LA Times, Norman Lear Center director Kaplan wrote, "You commuters and loft-dwellers, you pedestrians and picnickers, you Westsiders and Valleyites, you school groups and...

Documentary film producer Phillip Rodriguez has been named a Senior Fellow of USC Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism . Rodriguez will collaborate with other IJJ fellows on films and other projects exploring criminal justice, issues of race and ethnicity, post-9/11 security and liberty, the U.S.-Mexican border and immigration. Rodriguez is founder of City Projects Productions . He describes his most recent documentary, Los Angeles Now , as an "evocation of Los Angeles at the end of its Anglo Century." More about Rodriguez Institute for Justice and Journalism