Although it long-seemed like a fantasy, cities and city governments across the country are now starting to reckon with the fact that autonomous vehicles will soon be the next reality. Given that the CEO of ride-sharing company Uber recently announced his plans to have self-driving cars in service by the summer of 2019 and that…
Tag: los angeles
Empowering the Public Through Open Data: Findings & Recommendations for City Leaders in Los Angeles County
Over the past year the Civic Tech USC research team here at the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy (CCLP) has been investigating what cities in Los Angeles County are doing to make their government data easily accessible to the public. Cities already collect vast troves of information, such as crime stats, budgets/financial expenditures, code…
USC Open Data LA initiative promotes public access to government data throughout Los Angeles County
Launched by USC Annenberg's Center on Communication Leadership & Policy (CCLP) in partnership with the USC Price School of Public Policy, the USC Open Data LA initiative aims to promote transparency and civic engagement in Los Angeles, beginning with a survey to assess the state of publicly available city data in each of L.A. County's 88 cities. "Open data is a new aspect of journalism in the public interest," said Dana Chinn, CCLP faculty fellow and USC Annenberg project lead. "It's a worldwide movement, but we're going to focus on how open data initiatives can address the unique needs of……
Geneva Overholser Named CCLP Senior Fellow
Geneva Overholser, former professor and director of USC Annenberg's School of Journalism, has been appointed a Senior Fellow of the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy (CCLP). Overholser joins a distinguished group of CCLP senior fellows that include journalists and media executives such as Cinny Kennard, Adam Clayton Powell III and Narda Zacchino, authors and policymakers such as Dan Glickman, Richard Reeves and Morley Winograd and pioneering leadership scholar Warren Bennis, among others…….
The New Innovation Battlegrounds Are City Hall And The State House
Colorado is currently considering proposals to outlaw Uber and other services that enable passengers to book a car service from their smartphones. Uber and its competitors face similar challenges from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to Washington, DC. In May, the North Carolina State Senate voted unanimously to prohibit Tesla Motors, the innovative electric car company, from selling cars directly to consumers, including via the Internet. The Texas legislature recently retained similar prohibitions until at least 2015…….
Live presidential debate screening gathers record numbers of the USC community
Record crowds assembled at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism for the election season's first presidential debate, held on October 3, 2012. The USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, in partnership with Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics, welcomed over 350 members of the USC community throughout the evening, the largest ever debate viewing on the USC campus…….
PBS loses a 4th station; public television local news commitment questioned
WASHINGTON — The Public Broadcasting System has been abandoned by a fourth station, WIPR-TV in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As previously reported, KCET-TV in Los Angeles dropped its PBS programming in January of this year. Two public television stations in Florida followed suit in early July. WIPR canceled its PBS affiliation after an unsuccessful year-long negotiation over the amount the station would pay for programming, according to an article in Current magazine. That was exactly the same pattern as in Los Angeles, according to KCET President and General Manager Al Jerome in an interview late last week with CCLP. In……
Newspapers Dying: The demise of geographic exclusivity
There are so many reasons why print newspapers are failing. Mostly, people complain that newspaper content is available on the Internet for free, so subscribers need not subscribe any longer, even though in reality circulation revenues were usually not more than 20% of total revenues. Or, more importantly, that classified advertising, the largest profit contributor of any newspaper, has been outdone by the efficiency of transactional web sites for homes, autos and jobs. Then there was the retail consolidation of big box stores, who hardly advertise, and chain department stores (only one advertiser rather than three or four). And the……
Rachlis in LA Times – LA Magazine
Senior Fellow Kit Rachlis is profiled in an article in the Los Angeles Times. Rachlis, during his time as editor-in-chief of the publication, is credited for the building of the Los Angeles Magazine of the 1980's which was viewed as "a lot of fluff and nonsense and fun," to being built as a reliable and award-winning magazine…….
Here We Go Again: Reform in California
Forget the midnight ride of Paul Revere, Callista Gingrich's jewelry collection and Anthony Weiner's … well, you know. The most important political people right now are 14 Californians you don't know. They are the members of the Citizens Redistricting Commission of this great state. American elections are rarely decided by debates in New Hampshire or even hundreds of millions of dollars in television advertising. By and large, American elections are determined by who comes out to vote, the fine print of election laws and squiggly lines on state maps. Except for presidential elections, which can surprise you, more than 90……