The McCormick Foundation announced it will award a $95,000 grant to Intersections: The South Los Angeles Report, a program of the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.
The award will be used to continue the news and media-mentoring program in South Los Angeles high schools -- Dorsey, Crenshaw, Fremont and Manual Arts -- during the next two years. The grant supports the efforts of publications such as Intersections that align with its non-profit mission of being committed to the progression of honest and democratized news media.
“These active mentoring programs at South Los Angeles area high schools increase the number of students who are knowledgeable about how news media works and how they can shape and create the news from a diverse perspective within their communities,” said Willa Seidenberg, associate journalism professor and director of Intersections. “The USC mentors partner with local young people to foster future citizens who know they can have a voice in how their communities are portrayed in the news media.”
Funding from the McCormick Foundation also helped launch the Youth Media Los Angeles Collaborative, which promotes the field of youth journalism in the Southland.
"The Intersections program is one of the shining lights in the collaborative," said Clark Bell, journalism program director at the McCormick Foundation. "Willa and her Intersections team have built a national model for combining talented high school and USC student journalists to cover community news.”
About Intersections: The South Los Angeles Report:
Intersections: The South Los Angeles Report is a community news website dedicated to covering South Los Angeles and surrounding areas, with contributions from residents, high school students and journalism students from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Intersections represents a new approach to journalism and news coverage. Community residents are encouraged to be active contributors in shaping news content, providing news items in a variety of forms, from video, photographs, opinion pieces, on-the-ground reporting, and entries to our community calendar. Our goal is to create a two-way conversation between residents living in South LA, Inglewood, Watts, Compton and other communities south of downtown Los Angeles and the journalists covering these neighborhoods. For more information, please visit www.intersectionssouthla.org.
About the McCormick Foundation
The McCormick Foundation is a nonprofit organization committed to strengthening our nation's civic health by creating educated, informed and engaged citizens. Through its grantmaking programs, Cantigny Park and Golf, and museums, the Foundation helps build citizen leaders and make life better in our communities. The Foundation was established as a charitable trust in 1955, upon the death of Colonel Robert R. McCormick, the longtime editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune. The McCormick Foundation is one of the nation's largest charities, with more than $1 billion in assets. For more information, please visit www.McCormickFoundation.org.
