The Wildfire Youth Media Initiative at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy invites you to attend wildfire community listening sessions to record your story with high school reporters from the Pacific Palisades and the greater Altadena area. The events are an opportunity to share your memories, hopes for the future, and lessons learned from the fires in company with many members of your community. Anyone who was impacted is welcome: survivors, neighbors, friends, students, journalists, volunteers, community organizers, and more.
We encourage you to bring objects of particular meaning, such as items you found in the aftermath, aided in your recovery, or helped you live or work through this experience.
Pacific Palisades Listening Session
Date: July 19
Time: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. PT.
Location: KCRW
Address: 1660 Stewart St, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Parking:
- Garage Parking: Free with parking permit (required). Permit will be sent to guests who RSVP. Park at the Santa Monica College Center for Media and Design (CMD) Parking Structure, located at 2762 Pennsylvania Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90404 (see map view).
- Street Parking: Limited street parking is available, but please read all parking restriction signs carefully to avoid ticketing/towing.
Altadena Listening Session
Date: July 26
Time: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. PT.
Location: Pasadena Playhouse
Address: 39 S. El Molino Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101
Parking:
- Street Parking: Free for two hours. If you can find a spot on El Molino Ave. or Green Street, feel free to park there.
- Garage Parking: If street parking is unavailable, you can park at Playhouse Plaza, located at 50 S. El Molino Ave (see map view). Take a ticket from the machine and park in any unreserved spot. The ticket is a $5 flat fee.
- Elevator Access: There are two sets of elevators in the lot. Look for the single elevator and take it up to the first floor. Once there, exit through the double doors to your left and cross the street toward the Playhouse.
Each listening session will be organized around five question-based story stations, where we invite you to answer questions organized around a theme. In addition, we have two unique recording spaces. One is for high school students impacted by the wildfires. These “peer storytellers” will have a separate space to speak with the Wildfire Youth Media Initiative high school reporters. We will also have a separate recording space for individuals whose work was profoundly impacted, even if they may not live in the affected areas –– including journalists, philanthropic leaders, community organizers, business staff, volunteers, etc.
The event will be recorded for podcasts, short-form videos, and other content produced by our high school reporters, for publication by USC and potentially other public media outlets, including KCRW and LAist. Interviews will also be preserved as a digital collection held by USC and the Los Angeles Public Library.
About the Wildfire Youth Media Initiative
The Wildfire Youth Media Initiative at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy (CCLP) is a four-week summer program for 18 high school reporters––nine from the Pacific Palisades and nine from the greater Altadena area.
Working with USC faculty at the Annenberg School for Journalism and Communication, the students will be trained through on-campus workshops and on-site visits to the Palisades and Altadena to collect communities stories of both the incident and its aftermath. The community listening sessions, one for the Palisades community and one for the Altadena community, are designed for the students to gather stories from community members for an oral history project – to be deposited at the Los Angeles Public Library – and for media that may appear in a range of formats – on podcasts, social media, and public media outlets.
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 communities’ stories.
This program is part of CCLP’s Local News and Student Journalism Initiative. The program director is Rebecca Haggerty, professor of professional practice of journalism and associate director of the journalism (BA) program. The program coordinator is CCLP Junior Fellow Talia Abrahamson. CCLP is led by Geoffrey Cowan, former director of Voice of America (1994-1996) and former dean of USC Annenberg (1996-2007), who is a university professor of communication and journalism.
For more about the Wildfire Youth Media Initiative, please visit our webpage.