USC Annenberg Professor Erna Smith was recently featured in a PBS MediaShift article, which highlighted the work of journalism students traveling abroad.

 

For the past five years, Smith has advised groups of USC graduate journalism students who partake in Annenberg's Cape Town, South Africa summer program. Students in the program intern with Cape Town media organizations for eight weeks and provide coverage of the surrounding community.

 

The Cape Town program also allows USC students to organize workshops in Paarl to train local youth in media production, using equipment such as flip camcorders and digital audio recorders provided by USC.

 

According to Smith, the workshops are a consistent highlight of the program. “They always get the highest reviews from my students,” said Smith. Through the Cape Town program, both USC students and local youth are able to shed light on issues that affect the Cape Town community, the local economy, gangs and teen pregnancy, among other topics. According to Smith, this experience is often quite eye-opening for USC students. “A lot of what makes these international programs great is not the techniques and skills the students learn—that's a given—but it's what happens to their character and their outlook on life," Smith told Mediashift. "When you're a journalist, you need to understand the world is not just your world; you have to understand the larger world around you.” Even when students have finished the eight week internship, what they learn from the program extends far beyond Cape Town, according to Smith. “Anyone I've taken there is different when they come back,” said Smith. “Many are profoundly changed. They see where they are in this world of haves and have-nots. They really get that by the time they leave.”

 

Read about the experiences of the 2012 USC Cape Town Program interns here.