CONGRATULATIONS TO THE CLASS OF 2010!

As part of the University of Southern California’s 127th Commencement Ceremonies, the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism celebrated the conferral of bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees to almost 900 students on May 14.

As Dean Ernest J. Wilson III congratulated journalism and public relations students, he asked them to treasure their connection to both the Trojan and Annenberg families as they move into their work lives.

“We hope you will contribute to the broader society you will find yourself in, but that you will also reach back – as you move through your professional career – to the younger people in the Trojan family who right now are just in high school and who you will meet over the course of your career,” Wilson said.

At the School of Communication ceremony, co-founder and CEO of Demand Media Richard Rosenblatt spoke to the students graduating with degrees in communication, global communication and communication management about communication, marketing, advertising, and entertainment.

"Think about messaging today," Rosenblatt said. "We know more people now use their phones for texting than telephones. How many people do Blackberry Messenger? Tweeting, Facebook, blogging, BBM, MMS, iPad, iPhone, applications? There are literally hundreds of different ways to communicate now that were never available before, and that provides an enormous opportunity for communication.”

He said the issue is figuring out how not to be lost in the clutter.

"So what you need to do in my opinion is think about how you use art and science," he said. "How do you take the data to figure out who wants the message, and how they want the message? People using an iPhone app are very different from someone using a Blackberry, so use the data to figure out what message to send them. Then use what you learned over the last four years on how to provide messages – how people and individuals and societies like to get messages, and deliver them. It’s what we call art and science, or bringing soul.

"Now what makes it so unique – graduating from the School of Communication – is you actually understand how to give messages. We never understood that and we made it way too 'techy.'"

"You were brilliant to get a communication degree because that is the platform of the future," he said. "so with that, I want to wish you all a happy graduation. Go on, be excited – this is the greatest time I have ever seen."

Dean Wilson said that students will benefit by being a member of the Annenberg family as they move out into the world and begin their own careers. He talked about the importance of their creativity, commitment and innovation.

"We hope that in the future when you go out in the world, it is your innovation that will help distinguish you because the field of communication is changing so rapidly and the field needs a new invention," Dean Wilson said. "What we’re hoping is you will use your entrepreneurial skills throughout your life. Whether you start your own business or whether you’re working for a nonprofit, how will you create new activities for other people around the world using your skills and your entrepreneurialism? We hope that you will also draw upon your leadership skills. You must possess the courage of your convictions, things we hope you learned at the Annenberg School."

At the School of Journalism ceremony, graduates in journalism, specialized journalism and public relations heard remarks from Harris Diamond, CEO of international public relations firm Weber Shandwick.

Diamond urged graduates to seek truth in their work, whether they’re pursuing journalism or public relations. Boundaries between news and commentary are blurring, but it is up to future journalists and public relations professionals to pursue “objective truths.”

Although we live in the information age, he said, “the idea of information itself is under assault.”

“The new paradigm holds that everything is opinion, everything is relative, everything is spin. Information is in the eye of the communicator. Communication is about controversy, not information,” Diamond said. “This is what I mean by the assault on information. The facts—the truths—that used to establish limits for PR and aspirations for journalism are under attack.”

Diamond, the first public relations professional ever to speak at an Annenberg School of Journalism commencement ceremony, joked that his remarks – coming from the PR side – might be unexpected.

“The flack, of all people, is lecturing you about truth,” he said, as his audience laughed. “And you haven’t even heard the worst of it. I’m also a lawyer.”

But public trust in journalism is not high, Diamond said. And that is a serious challenge for graduates – no matter which side of the communication business they’re on.

“If the information we are getting is unreliable; if the truth doesn’t matter; if facts don’t exist; if reality itself is a commodity anyone can manufacture; then communication is a service – whether provided by journalists or flacks – that nobody needs to buy,” he said.

He told graduates: “You have the power to reject this assault, to fight back, to take a stand.”

“What we need today, on both the journalism and the PR sides, is an ethical renewal, a return to the idea that objective information exists and that it sets the boundaries for what we do,” Diamond said.

Objective facts, he said, “set the boundaries of communication – whether we are journalists or advocates.”

Wilson also acknowledged the period of “tremendous uncertainty” that graduates are about to enter. But he emphasized that Annenberg graduates will always have the support of their fellow alumni as they make their way.

“There are hundreds and thousands of professionals in important positions out there in the real world – beyond these wonderful gates – who will reach back to help you. Whether it’s in a newsroom, in a PR firm, in government – there is a Trojan family and there is an Annenberg family there ready to help you.”

Wilson described the benefits graduates have enjoyed during their years at Annenberg: “a sense of the excitement, the innovation, the entrepreneurship that is possible in your profession.”

"And I hope you have gained a respect for truth and ethics from your professors,” he said.

But with the benefits come an obligation, Wilson told graduates.

“When someone comes to you and says, ‘I need advice, some guidance, some human contact who will listen to my concerns,’ whether they are from our school or from the broader human community,” Wilson said. “Draw on what you experienced here to take time in your own life to provide guidance for younger people. To the extent you do that, you will make us proud of you.”

In all, more than 10,000 graduating Trojans celebrated Commencement. Thousands of family members and friends strolled the walkways chatting in the languages of more than 100 nations.

It was the last Commencement presided over by President Steven B. Sample, president of the university since 1991. He will pass the mantle to President-elect C. L. Max Nikias in August. Sample is widely credited with bringing about an institutional rise at USC that is unparalleled in American higher education.

Sample reminded all that personal excellence begins within the individual.

"In the final analysis, what determines a person’s ultimate success is not so much his professional abilities or political brilliance as it is his character," he said.

He challenged graduates to ask themselves three simple questions as they plan their futures: How do you feel about money? How do you feel about children, both those you will someday call your own and those of your neighbors as well? How do you feel about God?

"If you should be so fortunate as to find answers for yourself to these three questions, you will almost certainly gain a better understanding of the meaning of life, of your place in the universe and of how you might live in productive peace and harmony with your fellow human beings,” Sample said. “And that, after all, is what living well is all about."

View photos from the School of Communication ceremony >>
View photos from the School of Journalism ceremony >>

FELLOWSHIPS UNITE JOURNALISM, BUSINESS AND ENGINEERING TO EXPLORE THE FUTURE OF MOBILE NEWS

The job of inventing the future of news and how it is delivered will not fall solely to journalists.

That is the thinking behind a new fellowship program, funded by a grant to USC Annenberg, that brings together students from the Marshall School of Business, the Viterbi School of Engineering and Annenberg. The 12 graduate and undergraduate students – whose specialties include journalism, mechanical engineering, design, entrepreneurship, computer science, business and green technology – convened at USC for a two-week camp.

Their mission is to come up with new, workable ideas for mobile news devices. And not in the abstract. Students are partnering with leaders from the Los Angeles Times, Southern California Public Radio/KPCC, Freedom Interactive (which runs the website for the Orange County Register), and Spot.us to come up with ideas they can use.

“They’re playing a consulting role” to the news organizations, said Journalism Professor Dana Chinn, who is running the program alongside Tom O’Malia of the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Marshall. The program will run in conjunction with the Knight Digital Media Center News Entrepreneur Boot Camp.

Students will meet with the news organizations throughout the two weeks.

“They’re really looking forward to grilling the students. They really want the students to push them,” Chinn said. “They’re looking for that fresh eye and things they haven’t thought about before. They want to be challenged on what they’re thinking.”

When it came to focusing the News Entrepreneurship Fellowship program, organizers went straight to the question that is driving the news industry – how to deliver content effectively, Chinn said. At the center of that challenge are mobile devices.

“Everyone inside and outside the news industry is just scrambling to come up with how we really take advantage of how audiences are behaving differently because of all these devices,” she said.

While students aren’t expected to flesh out detailed business plans over the two weeks, organizers hope they will come up with workable ideas, Chinn said.

“These are ideas that will be rooted. There has to be a business model that will work – it has to be well thought out and at the same time fits into a news organization’s overall strategy,” she said.

News leaders are just as eager to hear what students decide is unworkable. The ideas they scrap are valuable, Chinn said. “They’re just as interested in those ideas and the time that will save them. They’ve all said they’re not looking for a magic bullet. They’re looking for an exploration and a discussion.”

O’Malia says his advice to the young entrepreneurs will be: “First, let’s go make some mistakes to find out what didn’t work. Then we’ll find out what does work.”

Collaboration among the three schools is vital for educating students in a way that prepares them for future innovation, said Chinn, who would like to see the fellowship program grow into a multidisciplinary course the schools could offer next spring.

“The world out there, especially on the Web and on mobile devices, does not just live on content or business or technology alone. It’s the nexus of all three that really is going to be important for students of all three schools to understand,” she said.

And entrepreneurship is a focus that will drive USC Annenberg for years to come, said School of Journalism director Geneva Overholser, who facilitated the grant and came up with the idea for the fellowship program.

“What we can do is create in these students a sense of what it is like to be entrepreneurs,” she said. “My overall goal is to make this concept of interdisciplinary learning a regular part of what we do at Annenberg. We all get off on our little islands and think, ‘I’m a journalist.’ But we need to figure out how to sustain ourselves. That’s not just about journalism – that’s about entrepreneurialism.”

Overholser and Chinn are quick to credit O’Malia with the entrepreneurial vision that continues to inspire collaboration between Marshall and Annenberg.

To O’Malia, the fellowships are a part of an educational model that is crucial for students’ success.

“Parochial land grab is not the best way to operate,” O’Malia said. “We don’t want to have silos and moats around our individual schools. The world needs the skill sets from multiple schools. We need journalism from Annenberg, technology from Viterbi and business from Marshall.

“Let’s keep these schools engaged and create projects that keep the three collaborating. Let’s create opportunities for people to cross barriers and share ideas. That, to me, is filling the moats and letting our students cross into new territories.”

The News Entrepreneur Fellowships began May 16 and culminates May 27 with presentations to the news organization partners.

Learn more about the Fellowships >>
Read about the Knight Digital Media Center's News Entrepreneur Boot Camp >>

VERIZON CEO SEIDENBERG TAKES THE 'LONG VIEW'ON DIGITAL MEDIA REVOLUTION

Ivan Seidenberg has made a career of building and envisioning the telecommunications of today, but he’s always kept an eye toward the future.

At the second installment of USC Annenberg’s “Art of the Long View” series last month, the CEO and chairman of Verizon Communications shared his thoughts on the pressing issues for telecom companies, consumers and content makers. Led by communication professor Jonathan Taplin, the forums aim to spark a conversation among global communication leaders, policy makers and academics about the long-term future of media.

As his company waits to hear whether it will be the next carrier for Apple's popular iPhone, Seidenberg told his audience that he sees enormous possibilities for next-generation networks, including 3-D programming, personalized high-definition video delivered to cell phones, personal media players – and even surgery done remotely via imaging and robots.

Seidenberg also shared his views on key issues facing his and other industries, including net neutrality, "bit hogs" and Internet piracy.

He even gave students a taste of the philosophies he uses to guide his own life. He distilled his 44-year career (which started with a job as a cable splicer’s assistant) into a few lines of advice, including: "Don't just reprocess what everybody tells you. Add some unique value to it.”

Highlights of Seidenberg’s answers to questions from Taplin:

On net neutrality, a principle that faced a setback in a federal appeals court earlier that week:

“The way I look at this issue is, we start out with the idea that net neutrality is a good thing. You should be able to get any information, go anywhere you want on the net, and you shouldn’t be hassled. We worry that sometimes issues surface where the cure turns out to be a lot worse than the disease… We’re concerned that the government wants to regulate every conceivable issue that could surface on the issue of access, when in fact the market is going to eliminate those barriers over time, and they’re doing it pretty fast…. We should have rules and principles around not [discriminating] getting to Web sites, but we have to be careful not to tell carriers how to run their business in order to manage the network.”

On Verizon gaining carriage rights to the iPhone:

“We have no answer to this question. We have expressed an interest to Apple about carrying it. We think our network could handle it. Apple kind of walks to its own beat and hasn't decided whether it’s going to make an iPhone for the 3G network that we run. So we’re working hard with them on getting up to speed on building a 4G phone. Whether they’ll do a 3G – there are reports in the paper that they’re working on it – and I hope that’s true.”

On Google and China:

“Google knew what it was doing when it got into it in the first place. That was a choice they made. The fact that they ran into this issue a couple of years into the process – they should have known that.”

On what people will be doing on their cell phones in the near future:

“One simple way of thinking about it is, we had this view of 100 megabits to the home and 20 megabits to the handset. That’s a lot of bandwidth to the handset. What would they do with it? We didn’t know. But Google and Apple figured out how to fill it up pretty quickly… this fourth generation is going to produce 10 megabits on average, and peak speed could be 15 megabits. You only need six to seven for a high-definition TV phone. You have the capability of getting HDTV resolution on a little screen. The last two minutes of the Laker game, or someone sends you medical records – there are all sorts of things you can do with it. Every interaction with your friends is video. Video texting instead of just texting. The whole model changes, and the whole human interaction changes.”

On why video options are about to get a lot more personal, but why people shouldn't expect "a la carte" pricing:

“We offer 500 channels. We put it in a bundle and charge $99. Some people say I don’t want 500 channels and we say, ‘Well, that’s what we’re offering you.’ Look, that’s going to change. The Internet will break this down. A la carte is too extreme. There will always be a need for bundling certain things…. We have to get to a point where the model changes and becomes more consumer-driven than industry-driven. The industry drives the architecture of the products we serve. Over time, I think the consumer will drive the architecture of it.”

On how Verizon made the prescient decision to develop fiber-optic delivery to homes:

“I think every student in here and every faculty member would agree that you never have enough bandwidth. There is always a need for more speed and more capacity. We started out with the idea that we were a telephone company – basically a copper architecture that wires into your home and has limited capability…. For us it was a simple situation of survival. Do we do it now, or do we do it later?”

On seeing the future:

“What we’re good at is building the network. When we look back 10 years, we said, ‘What do we think people are going to do with this bandwidth?’ We got it all wrong. They've done much more with it. I don't think there's anything you can't do…. The trick for us is to get this technology out there and let others innovate on top of it and create the uses for it. I don’t know if this is actually possible, but I’ll make it up. If you simulate an operating room, someone could actually do an operation using a robot. They could be sitting here in LA, and the operation could be done in Chicago. There seems to be no limit to what the imagination can drive people to do. The important thing is not have the people who build it define what the uses will be.”

On building America’s economic future:

“We have to figure out how, as a country, to get our confidence back. With the real estate and the housing bubble, we lost 5 million jobs…. The problem is we haven't given the country confidence that we’re focused on helping people in Detroit, helping people in the service industry figure out how we’re going to transition from the work we used to do to the work we need to do, going forward. We need to get on this issue, and it’s not simple. Because not everyone is going to be a knowledge worker in 20 years. We have to figure out smarter ways of giving people jobs that give the country confidence that we have jobs at all levels of the spectrum. So everyone doesn’t have to be a Ph.D."

Life advice and how to be a successful innovator:

“As students, learn what you love and be the best at it.”

“Another thing I always tell my employees is someone always is watching you. It took me a long time to realize someone is always watching me. Everything you do on the job, off the job -- people watch. People watch how you talk, what you say, what your statements are. The third thing is don’t be high maintenance. Guys like me, if you’re high maintenance, we get rid of you. We’ll transfer you here and there and give you lots of other projects.”

“You’ve got to be a little bit flexible and a little bit lucky, and you have to go where the work is. I’ve been in the business 44 years with the same company. I moved eight or nine times. I’ve had about 25 jobs and coincidentally, 17 or 18 of those jobs – I was the first one in that job. So I sort of moused around and worked on things that people said, ‘We don’t really know what you want to do here, but go do it.’ So you take some chances and do some things. So when you’re young, you want to create your own thing. When young people come into our office the first thing they tell us is we’re all dumb and they know all the answers. The answer is not to tell them not to do it, but to create the structure. So if you’re a person who empowers other people, you’ll find you’ll be empowered by the organization…. When you make the team better than you are individually, when you make yourself part of something bigger, you win. It works every time. I guarantee it.”

The "Art of the Long View” forums are a way not only to build partnerships that cross industry and university lines but also to explore long-term consequences and plans for the communication revolution," Taplin said. "It’s a service that no one else is providing, at a time when the pressure to focus on quarterly earnings is more intense than ever."

“We seek to provide a counter-narrative – a forum to discuss the future of communications and journalism with a time frame of 12 years, not 12 weeks,” Taplin said.

Upcoming programs will focus on the long-term future of advertising, newspaper companies, the music business, the movie business, television drama and online social networks.

Watch video from the event >>

USC ANNENBERG MAKES STRONG PUSH FOR SUSTAINABILITY

As USC makes a sweeping commitment to sustainability this year, the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism is accelerating its own greening program – a move that has the enthusiastic backing not only of its founders but also of its students.

“Annenberg has been very proactive in getting organized and identifying what the opportunities are,” said Matthew Oden, who leads the University of Southern California’s sustainability program. “I think they are ahead of the curve in understanding what their students want – and that they’re going to see more and more students who are focused on green issues.”

Especially among international students, sustainability is a key issue, he said.

“Those students want to see that the institution and the college they attend have embraced those same values,” Oden said.

And USC students who are passionate about greening are in a unique position to campaign for it, said Lauren Whaley, a USC Annenberg Specialized Journalism graduate student whose study focus is science. Whaley has been active as a leader in the school’s greening initiative.

“As highly educated people in one of the most global cities in the world, we have a responsibility to participate in addressing one of the biggest challenges in the earth's history,” Whaley said.

In January, USC trustees approved six resolutions to strengthen the university’s commitment to sustainability. The resolutions addressed issues of environmental degradation, energy conservation, water conservation, waste reduction, and building construction.

Annenberg’s green campaign was already in motion as part of our broader strategy to re-imagine the School as a global hub for innovation and experimentation,” said Dean Ernest J. Wilson III.

“We have focused our efforts on our technology and reducing our environmental footprint, even as we increase our impact in the digital media world,” Dean Wilson said.

Annenberg already has seen results. Its facilities office is the only office on campus to have earned a LEED platinum certification – the highest green building ranking possible– by the USC Sustainability Office.

Like many greening initiatives, it’s the small things that add up to a big energy savings. One example is the school shaving its computer usage by programming machines to go into standby mode after 30 minutes and to shut off after one hour. That switch alone cut computer energy consumption by 9.8 percent after just a month.

Next on Annenberg’s green agenda: reducing overall electricity consumption by 5 percent in 2010-2011 and winning green certification for all of its offices. “We’re looking at sustainability in every project we roll out,” said James Vasquez, head of Annenberg Facilities & Technology.

And in March of this year, the school hosted a “Greening the Annenberg” conference, a gathering of leaders from the sister school at the University of Pennsylvania as well as the Annenberg Foundation and other Annenberg groups and centers. Representatives shared the work that is underway, including state-of-the-art construction of a new project next to Sunnylands, the historical 200-acre winter home of founders Walter and Leonore Annenberg near Palm Springs.

The new project is an education center that will serve as an introduction to the history, art and architecture of Sunnylands. The center and its 9-acre desert garden will produce 100 percent of its own electricity and use no more than 20 percent of the water allotment allowed by regulators.

The conference took for granted that Annenberg groups and centers already are doing the basics when it comes to greening, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. So leaders went beyond the groundwork to delve into more sophisticated environmental initiatives – including distance technology, to take advantage of the sister schools’ common resources and to cut travel at the same time.

“There often are faculty from USC visiting us, and we’re often out here. Well, that’s a lot of flying,” said Jamieson. “That’s not good for the environment. So we’re talking about how we can teach courses in common through distance learning.”

Initiatives like that not only save money but speak to students, Oden said.

“It’s a cost-saving effort, but it’s also a translation of a value statement that students and faculty are making,” he said. “Students want to see the institution go green, and Annenberg is responding to that.”

USC ANNENBERG DOCTORAL STUDENT BROUGH AND RECENT ALUMNA CARROLL NAMED FULBRIGHT SCHOLARS

Third-year doctoral student Melissa Brough and alumna Caitlan Carroll (M.A. Broadcast Journalism '07) both earned Fulbright Scholarships for the 2010-2011 school year and will travel to Colombia and Germany, respectively, for their research.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.” The Fulbright Program chooses participants based on their academic merit and leadership potential, and provides them with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. USC Annenberg students or alumni have now been awarded a total of eight Fulbrights in the past four years.

"These Fulbright Scholarships are a tribute to Melissa and Caitlan and to the intellectual quality and international interests of Annenberg students as a group," said Bryce Nelson, journalism professor and chair of the University's committee on National and International Graduate Fellowships. "Annenberg students have won two or more Fulbright Scholarships in most recent years. Congratulations to Melissa and Caitlin for upholding an excellent tradition."

Brough, who attended Brown University for her undergraduate studies and grew up in Vermont, plans to study how Colombian youth are participating in local media production, and how they in turn may become more engaged in civic and social justice issues.

“In the U.S. we talk about participatory media as mostly related to Web 2.0 and social platforms," Brough said. "There’s a long history of what can be called participatory media or 'citizen media' in Colombia, and young people are often at the forefront of this. I’m interested in looking at how these practices relate to civic engagement and social change, from a cross-cultural perspective.”

She attended a conference on alternative and community media in Medellín, Colombia last summer, so both the country and research won't be foreign concepts to her. In fact, she has been interested in youth and participatory media since she became involved in video and radio documentaries as a teenager.

"Learning to produce media was an empowering and eye-opening experience for me," she said. "From there I continued to work on projects that enabled people to produce their own media in a variety of contexts. Broadly, I'm interested in how media can be engaged to forward social justice and social change."

Carroll, who has worked as a producer and reporter for the national radio program Marketplace since graduating in 2007, will travel to Berlin as part of the Fulbright Commission's Young Journalist program to explore innovations in health care and technology coming out of Germany, with a focus on the elderly. She will first head to Marburg, Germany in August to take extensive language courses.

"This Fulbright appealed to me because it's specifically for journalists," Carroll said. "The goal is to have us out reporting."

She said she will spend time in German newsrooms, exploring the vibrant research coming out of Berlin and elsewhere in Germany. Because of her background at Marketplace, most of her stories will have an economic bent.

"What excites me is the opportunity to spend a year getting to know Germany," Carroll said. "There is so much important news coming out of the country. It’ll be great to cover Germany from Germany and then tell stories relevant to U.S. audiences. I also want to find spice-of-life pieces that will really introduce Americans to German life."

She said she sees it as a major challenge to put herself into a completely new environment.

"It’s what makes people good journalists," she said. "You have to be quick responder who can jump into any situation, get comfortable and make connections."

She got her start at Marketplace by interning there in her final year at USC Annenberg. After graduation she began working full time and has since covered a wide range of stories about the economy and health care. She still meets with former professors such as Willa Seidenberg, Michael Parks and Judy Muller for lunch.

"I had a great time at Annenberg," she said. "When people ask me about the program, I tell them its greatest strength is the teaching staff and professors. They've all been in the field and are so generous with their knowledge and contacts. They really launched me in my career. They continue to be a guiding hand and offer input and perspective."

"The Fulbright is a true honor and I know my time at USC Annenberg put me in an ideal position to receive this award," Carroll said. "I’m excited for the opportunity to become an even better journalist."

WILSON TELLS FCC THE UNITED STATES IS AT A "1967 MOMENT"
Dean Ernest J. Wilson III described the “critical moment” that public broadcasting faces today, as he spoke to the Federal Communications Commission on April 30. Wilson, who also serves as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, delivered a special address to the panel at the opening of its workshop, titled “Public and Other Noncommercial Media in the Digital Era.”

“We are at this special moment. We are at what some of us have called 'a 1967 moment.' And the future is ours to grasp. We simply have to step forward with – as (Ford Foundation President) Luis Ubiñas said – the innovation and the imagination to seize that. This is a critical moment in the life of public service and public service media. And the challenge is for us to move beyond public broadcasting… We’re at a moment when we have to move beyond public broadcasting as it’s traditionally defined into something else – public service media that we are still in the process of defining. We’re between the old and the new. We have to challenge ourselves with the imagination and the energy to become public service media.”

Watch Dean Wilson’s full address here >>

USC ANNENBERG'S SIXTH "GAP" STUDY: RECESSION NOT BAD FOR ALL PR PRACTITIONERS

While 2009 was hardly a banner year for the public relations and communication industries, it does not appear to have been nearly as calamitous as some have suggested, and certainly not as bad as may have been the case in prior recessions. 2010 will be better, but organizations remain very cautious about their public relations spending.

These are among the findings of the sixth Public Relations Generally Accepted Practices (GAP) Study, which is published on a biennial basis by the Strategic Communication and Public Relations Center (SCPRC) at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. A total of 382 communication decision makers in corporations, not-for-profits and government agencies participated in GAP VI, for which most data was collected in the last quarter of 2009.

In 2009, 20.9 percent of GAP VI respondents experienced budget increases, 36.6 percent saw little or no change, and 42.5 percent saw decreases. When averaging all the responses, organizations reduced their 2009 budgets by a fairly moderate 5.3 percent. The average change among corporate respondents was -4.68 percent.

2010 looks like a better, but still very cautious, year. 28.8 percent expected budget increases over 2009, 49.7 percent expected no change, and 21.5 percent expected budget decreases. When averaging all the responses, organizations expect to increase their budgets by just 1.56 percent. Corporate respondents expect an increase of 1.94 percent.

"It appears that, despite much pessimism, we came out of 2009 in pretty good shape," noted Jerry Swerling, director of USC Annenberg's SCPRC. "2010 is certainly looking better, as evidenced by the recently announced first quarter earnings of the major agency holding companies, but an anticipated average budget increase of just 1.56 percent among clients clearly points to widely held caution. Still, we should be heartened by two factors. First, an increasing number of organizations are increasing their budgets. Second, from a historical perspective, it appears that we have weathered this recession far better than was the case in prior recessions, as many industry veterans will attest."

Public companies'"PR:GR Ratios" -- i.e., the amounts they spend on public relations or communication relative to their gross revenues -- remained relatively stable from 2007 (GAP V) to 2009 (GAP VI). For example, the average PR:GR Ratio for all public companies larger than $5 billion that responded to GAP VI was 0.07 percent, as compared with 0.08 percent for similar GAP V respondents. This suggests that budgets remained somewhat stable as a proportion of total organizational resources dedicated to communications.

Among all GAP VI corporate respondents, internal staff salaries and related costs accounted for 41 percent of the total PR/communication budget on average, as compared with 44 percent in 2007. Nearly 20 percent was paid to external PR agencies, as compared with 30.37 percent in 2007. Only 4.5 percent was allocated to evaluation and measurement, as compared with 5.8 percent in 2007.

"While much is being said and written about the importance of evaluation, there is little bottom line evidence to indicate that it is more of a priority today than it has been in the past, at least in terms of the financial resources invested in it," Swerling commented.

Staffing
GAP VI reveals some surprising data regarding staffing. In 2009, 61.6 percent of all 382 respondents actually increased the size of their internal staffs, 15.1 percent saw little or no change, and 23.2 percent decreased the size of their organizations.

Interestingly, companies that do business only in the United States increased staffing in 2009 by 1.5 percent, while international/global companies decreased staffing by 1.9 percent. This is consistent with budget data suggesting that U.S.-only companies had more positive budgetary experiences in 2009 than did international/global companies. However, the budget data also suggest that the staffing situation will reverse in 2010, with hiring at international/global companies outpacing U.S.-only companies.

Impact on Internal vs. External Resources
Only 23.2 percent of responding organizations reduced their staffs in 2009, with those reductions generally falling in the modest 1 percent to 5.5 percent range. However, in 2009, GAP VI respondents spent a much smaller percentage of their total budget -- 15.4 percent -- on compensation for outside agencies, than the 26.6 percent GAP V participants spent in 2007. While this decrease is totally consistent with data gathered by the SCPRC in February 2009, some of it may be attributable to the relatively larger size of many GAP VI respondents. Also relevant are findings in all six GAP studies showing that the most common reason for working with outside agencies is "extra arms and legs."

All of this may explain why internal budget cuts were generally modest (i.e., 5.3 percent on average), while substantial anecdotal evidence suggests that outside agencies experienced significantly larger reductions in revenue. The greater scalability of external agency relationships and the greater commitment to internal staffs were major factors in how organizations responded strategically to the recession. Instead of making wholesale internal cuts they froze or reduced salaries, reduced agency compensation, reduced programming, or a combination of the three.

Statistical Correlations
By means of statistically valid correlations among respondents' answers to multiple questions, SCPRC researchers were able to identify some fascinating patterns that reliably reflect true best practices. For example, respondents who reported both an increase in budget in 2009 and a reporting line to the C-Suite (chairman, chief executive officer, chief operating officer) grew by a far-better-than average 8 percent in 2009. They also were far more likely to indicate that they expected their budgets to grow by a healthy 5.9 percent in 2010. In contrast, those reporting to marketing expected budget increases of just 2.5 percent.

Likewise, GAP VI respondents who reported an increase in 2009 budgets were more likely to describe their organizations as being "long-term/strategic" rather than "short-term/tactical"; "proactive" rather than "reactive"; "flexible" rather than "rigid"; "innovative" rather than "non-innovative"; "democratic" rather than "autocratic"; and "people-first" rather than "profits-first."

Availability of GAP Results
To optimize user friendliness the massive GAP VI data will be published on a staggered basis in five incremental reports: 1 – Budgets/Staffing; 2 – Organization/Reporting; 3 – Responsibilities, Digital/Social Media, Evaluation; 4 – Use of Outside Agencies, Senior Management's Perceptions; and 5 – Best Practices and Executive Summary. Section 1 is now available for download on the SCPRC website.

View the data >>

USC ANNENBERG LAUNCHES STROOME: A COLLABORATIVE, ONLINE VIDEO EDITING COMMUNITY

USC Annenberg continues to break new ground in the evolution of digital media and journalism, as school leaders announced the launch of Stroome, a comprehensive and collaborative online video editing platform.

On Wednesday, April 21, co-founders Nonny de La Peña and Tom Grasty joined School of Journalism director Geneva Overholser and other faculty members at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism to introduce the project. De La Peña and Grasty conceived and developed Stroome as graduate students at the school. USC will be the first university to license the product; it will be deployed school-wide across Annenberg for use in classrooms, at Annenberg TV News and on Neon Tommy, Annenberg’s digital news site.

Grasty and de la Peña designed Stroome (Stroome.com) as a Web-based application that anyone can use to post, cooperatively edit, share and remix video. It’s also a social networking site, allowing users to exchange comments, build communities and find new collaborators.

The concept opens a wide range of possibilities for journalists, filmmakers, musicians – and anyone else with a camera and a computer.

“I can see a blogger using this – or a start up news operation. Or a legacy newsroom with budget cuts that can’t afford high-end video editing software,” Grasty said. “It’s going to let people produce stories faster and less expensively, and it’s collaborative. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the same state or even in the same country.”

Stroome already has been lauded by the Online News Association as “a paradigm for digital storytelling and visual journalism.” The project won the Audience Award as the best new startup at the association’s conference last year.

Although its potential goes beyond a foundation as a content-producing site, the project was born to fill journalists’ needs, de la Peña said.

“Part of why I did this was I could see some of the struggles that journalists are going through. I wanted to provide a way to turn that around, and Stroome is a way for journalists to do what they do best – which is go cover a great story and get it out there fast and in a collaborative way,” de la Peña said. “This allows journalists to take advantage of social networking and to turn around and publish relevant and robust content quickly.”

The potential for Stroome’s practical applications is endless.

“It goes beyond YouTube, where you just upload. You build and remix on the Web site. It’s a great step toward creation and production on the Web,” said assistant Journalism professor Robert Hernandez, who offered input during Stroome’s development and is experimenting with using it in his Web journalism classes.

“I can see a situation where there’s a protest and five reporters are shooting different pieces of video and using different equipment to upload it to Stroome, and someone in the newsroom edits one piece together. You can even go so far as saying, ‘Dear citizen, upload your clips here, and we can work it into our content,’” Hernandez said. “It has really strong potential.”

Stroome was born as a project Grasty and de la Peña built for the Annenberg Program for Online Communities, a graduate program in new media, Internet marketing and online social networking. Over the last year, the two continued to develop and market the project.

Overholser endorsed Stroome early in its development and helped facilitate its partnership with Annenberg.

“It has the potential for being an innovation that practicing journalists could really use,” Overholser said. “It had all the hallmarks for me – it’s innovative, it’s very collaborative in spirit, and it encourages participation. I think it’s just a very Annenberg project.”

Besides its utility for on-the-ground reporters, it’s the social networking aspect that may attract a wider range of users and keep them engaged, said Alvand Abdolsalehi, executive producer of Annenberg TV News.

“It’s very interactive – you can watch different people’s videos, you can ask them if you can remix theirs, and it’s building relationships based on a community of editing,” he said. “Because you have the ability to take other edits and put them into your own, it’s like a constant network of sharing and learning and feeding off of each other’s work to create something you’re all proud of.

“One thing that’s really desirable online right now is networking. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr – all those things are status sharing, photo sharing – and now we’re sharing video, so it takes it one step further. Which is pretty awesome.”

Visit Stroome >>

REPORTING TRIP TO ISRAEL AND WEST BANK INSPIRES STUDENTS, YIELDS PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE

As journalism professor Diane Winston contemplated how and where to teach her students the relevance of religion and politics, she could think of no destination more significant, complicated and immediate than Israel and the West Bank.

After a nine-day trip there last month, the work of her 13 graduate students is now being picked up by the Huffington Post, the Global Post, KPCC online, The Salt Lake Tribune and Religion News Service. The work, which included print, radio and video pieces and blog posts, also was featured on USC Annenberg's Neon Tommy news site.

The class, Specialized Reporting 585: Religion, Politics and Gender, visited Jerusalem, Ramallah and Tel Aviv. Students met with activists and journalists, as well as religious and political leaders. They toured settlements, refugee camps and universities.

“I wanted to take them to a place where religion makes a difference in people’s lives, and there is no place quite like Israel in terms of seeing the confluence of religion and politics and how it makes a difference – in everything from domestic Israeli issues, such as marriage and divorce, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Winston, who holds the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at USC Annenberg.

Most of Winston’s students aren’t aiming to build careers as religion reporters, so she faces a challenge when it comes to illustrating how relevant religion is to being a journalist.

“I can’t imagine being a reporter in today’s world without knowing something about religion, but yet that’s a very hard sell,” Winston said. “I thought being exposed to a society where there was no church-state separation like there is here would open their minds.”

And watching Al Jazeera or reading Israeli newspapers doesn’t compare, she said, to visiting an Arab family in Hebron who live in a neighborhood now occupied by Jewish settlers. Seeing their family home, surrounded by a wire cage, made an impression, she said.

Student Evan Pondel dug up a story about gay Israeli couples who turn to the United States to arrange surrogate births. Pondel’s story, picked up by the Global Post, reported that “despite the country’s reputation as a world leader in reproductive technology, surrogacy is illegal for same-sex couples.”

Through a source Pondel met on the trip, he was able to find and interview an Israeli male couple who had twins 8 months ago via a surrogate mother in Texas.

“You learn so much in a classroom, but I think the most learning in journalism comes from being in the field and actually doing it,” said Pondel, a specialized journalism master's candidate.

“When you have a professor that’s providing guidance, and you’re actually in the field reporting, it’s the best of both worlds,” he said. “That’s why we’re in school – not just simply to be in a classroom but to experience what you’re studying firsthand and then write about it.”

Winston paid for the trip with funds from her endowed chair along with money granted by Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson III. She’s trying now to raise more money to pay for a second tour next year.

She said she’s never had a teaching experience more rewarding.

“We were sitting on the bus, traveling from Jerusalem to Ramallah – and instead of talking about movies and sports, the students were debating occupation and resettlement,” Winston said. “I was just sitting there thinking, ‘This is what it’s all about. Having students who are so grabbed by the issues that they want to talk about them all the time.’”

IBM'S JON IWATA GIVES KENNETH OWLER SMITH SYMPOSIUM AUDIENCE A PREVIEW OF THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

For the 20th year, the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism and the Public Relations Society of America, Los Angeles (PRSA-LA) jointly presented the Kenneth Owler Smith Symposium, an event that celebrates its namesake as well as examines the field of public relations to which he greatly contributed.

With the future very much in mind, the topic at hand was “Looking Ahead of the Curve: PR/Communications in 2020.” The conversation was led by keynote speaker Jon Iwata, who Jerry Swerling, Director of PR Studies and USC Annenberg's Strategic Communication and PR Center, described as a man “whose name invariably comes up when you ask knowledgeable professionals to name the smartest, most forward-thinking people in the business.”

As noted by Dean Ernest J. Wilson III, the event consistently serves as “a wonderful opportunity for (students) to hear words of wisdom from outstanding leaders” in the field of public relations, while also offering insight for Annenberg to better prepare the next generation of PR practitioners.

Iwata, senior vice president of Marketing and Communications at IBM, has long been regarded as an innovator and leader, successfully breathing life and relevancy into one of the world’s most valuable brands. And as a member of the IBM communications team for over 25 years, his experience in navigating times of great change shaped his insights about the future of public relations.

“When you think about the PR profession — what it’ll look like 10 years from now – start not with PR but with the world at large; not with the decade, but the century,” said Iwata, adding that a century from now, the world will look back on the early 20th century as a time when “civilization took a great leap forward,” marked by “changes in what people know, changes in what people expect and ultimately changes in behavior.”

Though attempting to analyze such a period of change while simultaneously experiencing it continues to prove difficult, Iwata identified new disciplines in the corporate function, emerging from an environment characterized by transparency and readily available information. At the core of these emergent disciplines is a stress on behavior management—a sense of corporate integrity permeated down to and communicated directly from the individual employee.

“Lincoln said character is like a tree, reputation is like its shadow,” Iwata said. “Many believe their job is to manipulate the shadow rather than tend to the health of the tree. In this world of transparency and democratized media, it is increasingly difficult for organizations and individuals to lead double lives. There can be no image management without behavior management.

“People care about the corporation behind the soft drink, or bank account, or computer – they do not divorce their opinions of that company from the company’s products and services.”

Iwata went on to suggest that the behavior and subsequent image of a company goes far beyond the surface, indicating a need for the instillment of unique corporate values among all employees, as “they only matter if lived and applied consistently by everyone in the company.”

According to Iwata, it is through the consistent maintenance of and adherence to a brand’s values and promise that they are able to succeed in another emerging discipline—that of building constituencies. The idea of merely reaching an audience and achieving message penetration is not enough. “Pumping out information only adds to the noise and compounds the challenge of being heard… Value will come from offering perspective and useful information and providing a contribution to our audience’s knowledge.”

Citing Apple as a company that does this well, Iwata suggested, “They don’t just advertise, they teach. They don’t just sell, they create learning experiences in their stores. They want you to learn everything their product can do, so then you will teach others… In the process they recruit new and loyal customers that become advocates and evangelists.”

Crafting and disseminating a valuable message and building this constituency is no longer, however, the task of solely communications professionals. Iwata described a third and final major shift as the development of the eminence of a company’s workforce—training employees to act and communicate as experts who produce valuable information for the public and extend the power of the brand.

“2010 is the year that corps grapple with and ultimately accept that their employees are engaging with social media… But simply having your people on the net is not the differentiator. It’s what they do once they get there.”

In a panel that followed Iwata’s provocative address, Diane Dixon, senior vice president of Communications and Corporate Affairs at Avery Dennison, found Iwata’s suggestions about employee empowerment to be among the most insightful and significant.

“The words ‘employees are your most important asset’ are not empty words,” noted Dixon.

Daryl McCullough (M.A. Communication Management ’93), CEO at Paine PR, found Iwata’s suggestions to be universally applicable, as they “can be attached to any company that wants to do good and do good work.”

Representing the questioning mind of academia on the panel, communication professor Jonathan Taplin saw a potential danger in the inundation of information, as individuals may consume only that with which they are familiar.

“We’re getting ourselves in information stovepipes, to hear only what we want to hear.

More and more we’re going to seek these filters, and they may stop us from the random chance encounter from something we didn’t know about.”

While this danger is quite possibly an imminent reality, Iwata maintained that it is the charge of organizations to adapt to these shifting models and innovate their practices for the health of their own corporations and for the public good. The one thing everyone must do now: “Embrace change. One hundred years from now, people will notice.”

Watch video from the event >>

NEON TOMMY WINS 2010 USC TOMMYS AWARD FOR INNOVATION

USC Annenberg's Neon Tommy news source was named “Most Innovative Student Organization” at the 2010 Tommy's – Student Involvement and Student Organization Awards Ceremony.

The Tommy's, which are sponsored by the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation, are designed to recognize and honor the outstanding work done at some of the more than 700 student organizations on campus.

Neon Tommy senior news editor Callie Schweitzer (Print Journalism '11) said the Neon Tommy concept itself is innovative, but the student journalists' determination brings the online news source to a top level.

“I think it’s the passion behind all of our stories and also the risk taking and the boundaries that we’re crossing," Schweitzer said. "Our stories really go a step beyond what a lot of the other LA media are doing. Our swine flu story is proof of that. The story really put a face on the disease in our area. We found that in some cases, family members didn’t even know their loved ones had died from swine flu.

“What makes us unique is that we’re completely online and we’re in the Annenberg School," she continued. "A lot of people are saying university publications are going to be leading the way in the media because of what’s happening with journalism nationwide, and I think Neon Tommy is a great example of the work that can be done by students on a premier level.”

Neon Tommy was also praised in an April 13 Truthdig article, the headline of which proclaimed that "The Future of Journalism Is Written in Neon."

Read the Truthdig article >>

IMPACT TELEVISION NEWS MAGAZINE WINS FIRST-PLACE NATIONAL COLLEGE TELEVISION AWARD

USC Annenberg's award-winning Impact television news magazine added another prestigious award to its résumé April 10 when five members of last year's production team placed first in the news magazine division at the national College Television Awards.

The awards ceremony, hosted by The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel, honors the best work in video, digital production and film production by undergraduate and graduate students from around the country.

"There was a brief moment of, 'Did we hear what we thought we just heard?"' journalism professor and Impact executive producer/faculty advisor Dan Birman said about listening to Impact's name called. "Seeing the looks on the students’ faces was really fun. This is their launch to their careers. This is a big deal.”

Accepting the award for the winning show, Impact Episode 45, were show producers Cristina Bishai (M.A. Broadcast Journalism '09), Maritza Navarro (M.A. Broadcast Journalism '09) and Kim Daniels (M.A. Broadcast Journalism '10), and segment producers Kate (M.A. Broadcast Journalism '09) and Shannon Carroll (M.A. Broadcast Journalism '09). Last year's supervising producer, Esther Pomeroy (M.A. Broadcast Journalism '09) and Deidre Crawford (M.A. Print Journalism '10) were unable to attend. Kate and Shannon reported a story titled "Urban Beekeeping" for Episode 45, while Bishai delved into the world of ventriloquism with "I've Got No Strings."

"It was absolutely incredible," Bishai said about winning the award. "We were all shocked. I jumped up and screamed. We ran down to the stage and accepted the award, and it was very, very exciting. Coming into USC, I knew that Impact had been recognized several times by the Academy. When I knew I would be a senior producer it was my secret goal to get us another award. I'm so happy that it happened."

As a first-place winner, Impact students received a $2,000 award. Second-place winners took home $1,000 and third-place winners received $500. In addition to a cash prize, selected winners receive invaluable career building opportunities, including an invitation to pitch their piece to a development executive and a chance to meet with an entertainment industry mentor.

“A number of College Television Award winners go on to have successful careers in the industry and have even become Primetime Emmy Award winners,” said Television Academy Foundation Executive Director Terri Clark. “This accomplishment is only the beginning for many of this year’s talented student producers.”

The University picked up a total of six College Television Awards, as the USC School of Cinematic Arts won five awards. This year, the College Television Awards honored work in 11 categories including: Animation, Children’s, Comedy, Commercials, Documentary, Drama, Music Composition, Best Use of Music, Newscasts and Series. More than 600 students from 158 schools across 38 states entered the competition. The winning work was then showcased at a special screening on April 11 at the Television Academy's Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood.

"The students are being recognized by the most important and recognizable brand in the industry for their work," said Debbie Slavkin, program manager/development associate Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation. "To be judged on excellence from the same people who are judging for the Primetime Emmy Awards, you can’t do much better than that."

Daniels, who is the supervising producer for Impact this year, said she was nervous before the award ceremony because some of Impact's competition came from universities that focus more on long-form journalism.

"When it happened, it was a little shocking, but also fantastic because we deserve it," Daniels said. "Any time you hear your named called out in that situation, your heart is beating a little bit and you’ve been bracing for the letdown, and then you’re not let down. 'Wow, did they just say that? Yes, they just said that!'"

She also called the win encouraging because it shows that the Impact team has been working hard in the right way.

"We know with good training and storytelling, we have talented students who can pull this off and really make great nonfiction storytelling," she said. "We're increasing our skills, telling good stories, making good shows and coming up with compelling content. It’s hugely encouraging. You need to set the bar high. It’s a really competitive industry and this should be our goal. This is huge."

Learn more about Impact >>
Watch Episode 45 >>
Meet the Impact staff >>
See all CTA winners >>

MULLER WINS PEABODY AWARD FOR HER WORK "UP IN SMOKE"

Journalism professor Judy Muller has won a Peabody Award for her work on a KCET SoCal Connected story examining the proliferation of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles.

“Up in Smoke,” which aired in May of last year, revealed that there are now more dispensaries in Los Angeles than there are Starbucks. According to the story, LA has had an “open door policy” on the establishment of dispensaries since Prop 215 passed in 1996.

Because of the lack of zoning restrictions on the dispensaries, “it’s now easier to open a medical marijuana facility than it is a nail salon or a yogurt shop,” the story found.

Muller is an Emmy Award-winning television correspondent and National Public Radio commentator who joined the faculty of USC Annenberg in August 2003. She formerly worked for ABC News and covered the 1992 Rodney King trial and ensuing riots, the 1994 Northridge earthquake and the O.J. Simpson criminal and civil trials.

“The quality of her work is just amazing,” said School of Journalism director Geneva Overholser. “On the one hand, she’s able to teach courses here that students can’t quit raving about, and yet she keeps producing journalism with KCET and KPCC. I’m so proud that her work with SoCal Connected has been recognized with the top award in broadcast.

Watch Muller's report >>

TRUTHDIG - HEADED BY PROFESSOR SCHEER AND USC ANNENBERG STUDENTS AND ALUMNI - WINS WEBBY AWARD FOR BEST POLITICAL BLOG

Truthdig.com, a website co-founded by communication professor Robert Scheer and alumna Zuade Kaufman (M.A. Print Journalism '05), won the 2010 Webby Award for Best Political Blog.

The Webby Awards, hailed as the "Oscars of the Internet" by the New York Times, are the leading international honor for excellence on the Internet, including websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile sites. Winners will be honored at the 14th Annual Webby Gala on June 14 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York.

"The fact that our fellow nominees included sites we visit daily like the Huffington Post, The Economist, The New Yorker and the Atlantic only makes this news all the more humbling and gratifying, but most important, we’re happy to share this award with our community of readers —our biggest asset and the reason we keep doing what we do," Truthdig said in an announcement.

Besides Scheer (editor-in-chief) and Kaufman (publisher), Annenberg contributors to the Truthdig team include: managing editor Peter Scheer (B.A. Communication '04); associate editor Kasia Anderson (Ph.D. candidate); editorial assistant John Cheney-Lippold (Ph.D. Candidate); contributor Joshua Scheer (B.A. Communication '03); contributor Larry Gross (School of Communication director); contributor Marc Cooper (journalism professor); and contributor Sandy Tolan (journalism professor).

"This is an unparalleled honor," Webby Awards executive director David-Michel Davies said in his award letter to Truthdig. "With nearly 10,000 entries from all 50 U.S. states and over 60 countries worldwide, the 14th Annual Webby Awards is the biggest in our history and continues to be the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Your work truly represents the best of the Web."

This is Truthdig's second Webby win, having received both the official jury prize and the People's Voice award for Best Political Blog in 2007.

Visit the Truthdig website >>
Check out the complete list of winners and nominees >>

CORWIN LAUDS, AND IS LAUDED, AT 100TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT USC ANNENBERG

As friends, colleagues and former students gathered at USC Annenberg on April 22 to honor the 100th birthday of Norman Corwin, the USC Annenberg writer-in-residence entertained guests with unscripted anecdotes, friendly jabs at deans and colleagues and a message of thanks.

The event brought former deans and directors of Annenberg together in addition to alumni of his classes during his 37 years of teaching – including one, Lucy Lee (M.A. Broadcast Journalism '88), who said Corwin challenged her to “use language in daring ways,” one of the qualities that endeared him to students and faculty alike.

“Whenever I get upset about how old I’m getting, Norman Corwin looks me in the eye and says, ‘Oh, to be 70 again,’” said journalism professor Joe Saltzman, who first brought Corwin to teach at USC Annenberg in 1979. “That makes me feel so much better. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.”

But Saltzman also recognized the debt he and others at USC said they owed the man who once directed the greatest stars in Hollywood on the radio, only to share that expertise with the University.

“One of the great privileges of my life is being Norman’s friend,” Saltzman said. “After our first broadcasting accreditation review we were told that the new program was accredited, but the panel had one suggestion: do more with radio. Bringing Norman Corwin to USC immediately took care of that criticism.”

Dean Emeritus Geoffrey Cowan , university professor and director of the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, called Corwin the School’s “own, very young treasure,” and recalled his early awareness of Corwin’s work.

“I’ve admired Norman for as long as I can remember,” Cowan said before reading an astonishing “fan letter” he received immediately upon his appointment to lead Annenberg in 1996 – a letter originally addressed to Corwin and written by the then-head of the Voice of America, who happened to be Cowan’s father. “If we’re around you in the next hundred years we’ll benefit from some of that osmosis…thank you, Norman, for letting us be part of your life.”

Dean Ernest J. Wilson III, who succeeded Cowan as USC Annenberg Dean in 2007, spoke following a short recording of Corwin’s “radio masterpiece,” On a Note of Triumph – first broadcast on May 8, 1945 (V-E Day) as World War II neared its close.

“I can’t think of any title that is more fitting for today’s celebration – this is such a momentous occasion,” said Wilson, who remarked that he had never before celebrated someone's 100th birthday. “He is such a friend of the Annenberg School…we are so fortunate to have Norman associated with us.”

Wilson read from Corwin’s own work on writing, in which the approach to seeking an “emphasis on what is right” is most beneficial in teaching the craft, regardless of the medium.

“It’s hard to imagine the changes in media that Norman has experienced in his career,” Wilson said. “He has witnessed every great communication medium of our time. Norman recognized that great writing, no matter what the medium, stood out.”

Corwin took the microphone and promptly congratulated Wilson – on his looks.

“Listening to the dean of the school, I was impressed all over again with the thought that Ernest Wilson is the outstanding candidate for the honor of ‘tall, dark, handsome man,’” said Corwin as the audience laughed.

“I wish my wife was here,” said Wilson, “to hear the ‘tall, dark and handsome’ part.”

Corwin previously celebrated his 95th birthday at Annenberg, and attendees of the tribute watched as images of that and other friendly gatherings were shown on a screen while the platitudes piled up.

“I’ve listened to everything that’s been said, and I must say that I couldn’t have written it better myself,” Corwin said.

Continuing to elicit laughter from the gathering, Corwin commended Cowan on his critically acclaimed play running in New York, Top Secret – a theatrical look at how the ‘Pentagon Papers’ involved the Supreme Court in a freedom of the press debate – to Cowan’s naming of the ‘West Lobby,’ saying “that alone distinguishes him.”

In all of his remarks, Corwin took the time to address the accomplishments of his Annenberg colleagues, calling Cowan’s play “brilliant, raw and potent,” but with winking references to qualities of others that were, at times, on the comedic side.

“I have nothing but high regard for Joe Saltzman,” Corwin said, “He is one of the fastest typists on the planet.”

Corwin’s years at USC as an instructor, he said, came as a happy “challenge to entertain and educate” young writers.

“It was like ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner’ for 37 years,” Corwin said. “The experience of imparting whatever expertise I have that would be useful to young writers was enthralling and I am grateful to get letters even now from them after they’ve graduated from this school, and they’ve always encouraged me to stick with the last measure of devotion. They have rewarded me in a thousand ways.”

Saltzman described Corwin’s use of words as so unique and individual, that when Walter Cronkite read "An Ode to CBS" during the broadcast of CBS’ 50th anniversary program, it was obvious who penned the piece.

“After the first sentence, I turned to my wife Barbara and said: ‘Norman Corwin wrote that. No question about it,’” Saltzman said.

Corwin, whose brother Emil is about to turn 107, said his faculties are not what they used to be but they are still put to good use.

“I have one eye and one ear now and that serves me quite well,” he said. “And I dedicate that one eye and one ear that serve me quite well to the 37 years I served at this university.”

See photos from the event >>
View the birthday slideshow >>
Read an the Daily Trojan's coverage of the event >>

JAMES R. BENIGER, AWARD-WINNING SCHOLAR AND FORMER COMMUNICATION PROFESSOR, DIES AT 63

James R. Beniger, an award-winning communication and sociology professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism and Princeton University who authored a highly acclaimed study of the economic and technological origins of the information society titled The Control Revolution, passed away after an extended battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 63.

“Jim Beniger had the highest academic standards, along with the strongest caring for our students,” said communication professor emeritus A. Michael Noll, former dean of the USC Annenberg School. “He was always challenging them intellectually. The field of communication has lost a delightful human being and a provocative scholar taken far too soon.”

The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Harvard University Press, 1986) is a true classic of sociological and historical analysis with a long history of influence in a variety of social science fields. Beniger’s study made a compelling case that the information age grew out of a crisis of control in transportation and manufacturing during the latter half of the 19th century rather than resulting as an incidental or secondary effect of the development of electronic communication technologies.

In 1986, the book received the Association of American Publishers Award for the Most Outstanding Book in the Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award. It received a full-page review in the New York Times Book Review and the lead review in the special book review edition of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The New York Times Book Review selected the 1989 soft cover edition as a "Notable Paperback of the Year." In 2007 the book won the International Communication Association’s Fellows Book Award for "having stood the test of time." The book has also been published in Italian and Chinese language editions.

Beniger's first book, Trafficking in Drug Users: Professional Exchange Networks in the Control of Deviance, was selected by the American Sociological Association for its competitive Rose Monograph Series and published by Cambridge University Press in 1983.

Beniger graduated magna cum laude in history from Harvard College in 1969 where he was an editor of the Harvard Crimson. During college Beniger was also a freelance arts critic for the Boston Globe and a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal in Chicago, where he helped to cover the 1968 Democratic National Convention, with a front-page byline story about President Lyndon B. Johnson on the opening day of the Convention. Following college, Beniger taught history, English and creative writing at the International College in Beirut, Lebanon, and at a secondary school in Cali, Colombia, work which led him to travel through some 40 countries on five continents. Before beginning graduate school, he served as the Acting Books and Arts Editor of the Minneapolis Star. He studied statistics and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley graduating with a Ph.D. in Sociology in 1978.

Beniger served as associate editor of Communication Research from 1986 to 1993 where he was responsible for a special section of the journal titled "Far Afield," a wide ranging set of review essays written by Beniger and other leading scholars from across the spectrum of the academy. Peter Monge, his former colleague at USC Annenberg, noted, “For many readers these essays were the crown jewel of the journal. They tackled challenging communication issues, offered perspicacious insights, and were written with loving care in a form that has become almost extinct in the Academy.”

In 1996 he was elected the 53rd President of the American Association of Public Opinion Research some 20 years after he won the Association’s Student Paper Award. “Jim’s deep involvement in AAPOR spanned his academic career,” said Peter Miller, current AAPOR President. “He was a charismatic figure who led the Association into the digital age. We will miss him greatly.”

Mr. Beniger initiated and ran the association’s online bulletin board for many years and as a frequent contributor demonstrated the breadth of his concerns and the depth of his legendary wit.

He is survived by his wife Kay Ferdinandsen and daughters Ann and Katherine Beniger of Manhattan Beach, Calif.; his mother Charlotte Beniger of Sheboygan, Wis.; and his sister Linda York of Lake Geneva, Wis. In lieu of flowers, contributions in his memory may be sent to the Alzheimer’s Association, www.alz.org.

ALUMNA AND OLYMPIC MEDALIST JANET EVANS RECEIVES USC ALUMNI MERIT AWARD
Janet Evans (B.A. Communication ’95) was one of seven Trojans to be honored at the 77th Annual USC Alumni Awards on April 24 at the Westin Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles. Evans is a five-time Olympic medalist in distance swimming and world-record holder in four events. She received an Alumni Merit Award, recognizing “individuals whose remarkable accomplishments speak well for the range and quality of a USC education.”

Every year since 1932, the USC Alumni Association has paid tribute to distinguished members of the Trojan Family. The annual Alumni Awards is the premier event sponsored by the Alumni Association.

Jane Bensussen (M.A. Communicative Disorders ’69) was also among those honored that evening. Bensussen received an Alumni Service Award for “outstanding volunteer efforts on behalf of the university.”

CARRILLO HONORED BY CALIFORNIA STATE SENATOR
Wendy Carrillo (M.A. Journalism ’09) was recognized by Senator Gloria Romero as the Woman of the Year from the 24th Senate District. Carrillo is the host of "Knowledge is Power" on Power 106 FM. In addition to her latest recognition, Carrillo also won a national competition to represent young Latinos at the Democratic National Convention for SiTV and Voto Latino. Additionally, she was the recipient of the Elfen Award for Social Justice in Poverty for her short film on Homeboy Industries and their efforts to end gang violence in Los Angeles.

GUTIERREZ JOINS CONSENSUS, INC.
Benjamin Gutierrez (B.A. Public Relations ’09) was hired as a Project Specialist at Consensus, Inc. He currently also represents Youth for Understanding, a non-profit international student exchange program, as a Student Support Representative. Gutierrez previously interned for Here Media, Inc. in the publicity and marketing department. Additionally, he was the Integrated Marketing Communications Director at Shift Marketing.

Casey Spruil (M.A. Communication Management ’08) was accepted into a doctoral program at Northwestern University.

Heather Apraku (M.A. Communication Management ’09) partnered with her husband, sister and brother-in-law to launch Mix n' Munch Cereal and Grilled Cheese Café. The restaurant, which offers customizable versions of the two childhood favorites, is scheduled to open in South Pasadena mid-summer of this year.

Janae Jacobs (M.A. Communication Management ’09) is the founder of Yoo-N-LA, a metropolitan magazine devoted to engaging the urban community and providing a forum for encouragement and motivation within Los Angeles.

Andrew McGregor (M.A. Print Journalism ’09) is the founder of the Los Angeles Chessboxing Club and was featured in a cover story on Brand X, the multimedia editorial from the Los Angeles Times. McGregor founded a local outpost for this new mind-body knockout, in which fighters box in a ring for three minutes, then play a four-minute round of chess. The process is repeated for up to 11 rounds, or until the match is won by knockout or checkmate. The sport has helped McGregor work through the lingering shell shock from his time spent in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo as a freelance photographer for Reuters and the Associated Press. He is also the president and founder of the Tiziano Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building collaborative journalism in violent international hot zones including Rwanda, northern Iraq and the Congo, as well as on Los Angeles' skid row.

Torrey AndersonSchoepe (B.A. Journalism ’10) accepted the position of Assistant Editor at Yahoo! News.

Jacqueline Howard (M.A. Broadcast Journalism ’10) has been hired as Hermosa Beach Editor at Patch.com, a community-specific news and information website.

Marissa Lyman (B.A. Print Journalism ’10) joined Foxnews.com as an Overnight Editor.

Jieun Shin (M.A. Communication Management ’10) was accepted into a doctoral program at USC Annenberg.

In Memoriam
Madge Hibler Allen (M.S. Communication ’46 and Ph.D. Speech Communication ’60), an educator, activist, and nationally-recognized scholar, passed away in March at the age of 93. She was born in Eufaula, Oklahoma and received a bachelor's degree from Langston University before earning both her master's and doctorate from USC.

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association bestowed upon her its highest honor "Fellow of the Association." During her career, Allen established departments of speech pathology at several universities. She was also involved with several civic and professional organizations including the National Black Association for Speech, Language and Hearing, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, and the Links, Incorporated (Petersburg chapter). She was appointed by the governor of Virginia to membership on the Virginia Board of Examiners in Audiology and Speech Pathology. Allen also was a member of the Senior Foreign Service Performance Pay Board of the U.S. Department of State.

Edmund Duzik (B.A. Telecommunications ’61) passed away in March. Duzik graduated from USC and served in the U.S. Marines. His career was spent at ABC Television as a stage manager, working on such shows as The Dating Game, Family Feud and Barney Miller. Duzik was predeceased by his brothers John, George, and Paul and sister Connie. He is fondly remembered by his nieces, nephews and cousin, Carole.