Apply to the Wildfire Youth Media Initiative
Applications are now open for the Wildfire Youth Media Initiative at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. The Wildfire Youth Media Initiative is a four-week summer program for high schoolers to help document and report on the January 2025 wildfires in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena.
12 high school students, six from each fire-impacted community, will form a cohort that travels to both the Palisades and Altadena. There, they will attend group listening sessions and record the stories of each other and their communities. At USC, they will be taught to turn some of those stories into local news products, such as podcasts.
The initiative is intended to serve as a replicable model for other communities affected by natural disasters, providing a framework for high school students to help document and tell their community’s stories. The idea originated from CCLP’s Local News and Student Journalism Initiative, which attempts to locate a space for high school and college-aged journalists within the local news landscape.
Rebecca Haggerty, professor of professional practice of journalism and associate director of the journalism (BA) program, is the program director. Talia Abrahamson, Junior Fellow, is the program coordinator. CCLP will be drawing on additional USC Annenberg professors, CCLP Senior Fellows and reporters from KCRW, an official partner of the initiative, to help teach digital journalism workshops.
Any high schoolers between 16 and 19 years old are invited to apply. The application closes on May 16.
