Jill Leovy is an American journalist and nonfiction writer. [1] She is best known for the non-fiction book Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, her 2015 New York Times best-seller about homicide in Los Angeles. [2] Leovy argues in Ghettoside that more effort must be given to arresting and incarcerating perpetrators of inner-city murders, because "impunity for the murder of black men remained America’s great, though mostly invisible, race problem." [3]
Leovy spent 24 years as a reporter and editor for The Los Angeles Times . [4] Her work has appeared in The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Wall Street Journal , The Atlantic, and The American Scholar . [5]
She is a senior fellow at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy [6] and a fellow with the Department of Sociology at Harvard.
Ghettoside was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, [7] and it won the gold medal for nonfiction at the 85th Annual California Book Awards. [8] [9] The book was also honored with the Ridenhour Book Prize, the PEN Center USA Prize for research nonfiction and the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.
The University of Southern California is a private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert Maclay Widney, it is the oldest private research university in California, with an enrollment of more than 49,000 students.
Robert Scheer is an American left-wing journalist who has written for Ramparts, the Los Angeles Times, Playboy, Hustler Magazine, Truthdig, ScheerPost and other publications as well as having written many books. His column for Truthdig was nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate in publications such as The Huffington Post and The Nation. He is a clinical professor of communications at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California. Scheer is the former editor in-chief for the Webby Award-winning online magazine Truthdig. For many years, he co-hosted the nationally syndicated political analysis radio program Left, Right & Center on National Public Radio (NPR), produced at public radio station KCRW in Santa Monica. The Society of Professional Journalists awarded Scheer the 2011 Sigma Delta Chi Award for his column.
Edwin O. Guthman was an American journalist and university professor. While at the Seattle Times, he won the paper's first Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1950. Guthman was third on Richard Nixon's "Enemies List."
Michael Kantor is an American attorney who served as the United States Trade Representative from 1993 to 1996 and United States Secretary of Commerce in 1996 and 1997.
The Norman Lear Center is a multi-disciplinary research and public policy center exploring implications of the convergence of entertainment, commerce, and society. It is based at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Through scholarship and research, and its programs of visiting fellows, conferences, public events and publications, the Lear Center works to be at the forefront of discussion and practice in the field.
Willow Bay is an American television journalist, editor, author, and former model. In 2017, she became dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism having earlier served as director of USC Annenberg School of Journalism. She was previously a senior editor for the Huffington Post and a special correspondent for Bloomberg Television.
Neal Gabler is an American journalist, writer and film critic.
Murray Fromson was a CBS correspondent and professor emeritus at University of Southern California's School of Journalism, and Center on Public Diplomacy. He was educated in the Los Angeles Unified School District, including Belmont High School in Downtown Los Angeles.
Ernest James Wilson III is an American scholar. Wilson was the Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication, and Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, California from 2007 to 2017. He stepped down as dean in June 2017 and was succeeded by Willow Bay. Dr. Wilson is the founder of USC Annenberg's Center for Third Space Thinking, which is devoted to research, teaching and executive education on soft skills in the digital age. Through the center, Dr. Wilson's most recent research focuses on critical workforce competencies and talent and skills development in the 21st century. As a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, he currently is writing a book on utilizing competencies via the framework of Third Space Thinking.
The academics of the University of Southern California center on The College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the Graduate School, and its 17 professional schools.
Josh Kun is an American author, academic and music critic. Kun is Professor of Communication and Journalism and chair in Cross-Cultural Communication in the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. He also holds a joint appointment at USC's Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. He is the director of USC Annenberg's School of Communication, director of the Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's the Norman Lear Center and co-editor of the book series Refiguring American Music for Duke University Press.
Thomas Gordon Plate was an American journalist, university professor and op-ed columnist. Since 1996 his continuing column on Asia - and now specifically on the U.S. China relationship - has appeared in leading newspapers across the globe, including, of late, the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, where he is now a regular overseas opinion-section contributor, from Los Angeles; and before that in The Straits Times in Singapore, The Khaleej Times out of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, The Japan Times in Tokyo, The Korea Times in South Korea, The Jakarta Post, the International Herald Tribune, and many others. He was Editor of the Editorial Pages of the Los Angeles Times from 1989 to 1995, and a L.A. Times op-ed columnist until 1999. He is now at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles as its Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies and in the Asian and Asian American Studies Department, in the university's Bellarmine College of Arts and Sciences. He is founder and editor-in-chief of Asia Media International (asiamedia.lmu.edu), America's only website run by college students devoted entirely to Asia and the U.S. He is a Charter Member of LMU's Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Since 2017 he has served as a board member and Vice President of the Pacific Century Institute, a track-two 'building bridges' nonprofit based in Los Angeles, with branch offices in East Asia. Currently, he is in the pre-production phase of launching an Asia Media International subsidiary: Asia Media/Pacific Century Institute Press.
Neon Tommy was the online news publication sponsored by the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California. It was active from 2009 to 2015.
Geoffrey Cowan is an American lawyer, professor, author, and non-profit executive. He is a University Professor at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership and directs the Annenberg School's Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. In 2010, Cowan was named president of The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, a position he held until July 2016. In this role, Cowan was commissioned with the task of turning the 200-acre estate of Ambassador Walter Annenberg and his wife Leonore into "a venue for important retreats for top government officials and leaders in the fields of law, education, philanthropy, the arts, culture, science and medicine." Since Sunnylands reopened in 2012, Cowan has helped to arrange a series of meetings and retreats there. In 2013–14, President Barack Obama convened bilateral meetings at Sunnylands with President Xi Jinping of China and with King Abdullah II of Jordan. In 2016, President Obama hosted the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at the site, where they released the Sunnylands Declaration. Prior to his time at Sunnylands, Cowan was appointed by President Bill Clinton as Director of Voice of America.
Sasha Anawalt, born Marcia Evelyn Cunningham, is an educator, dance critic and former journalist who founded several arts journalism programs at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles, including a master's degree program in arts journalism (2008). She is author of The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company.
Kirk Wallace Johnson is an American author, journalist, and founder of The List Project, a not-for-profit organization that helps resettle Iraqi refugees who previously worked for the U.S. government during the Iraq War. He served as the U.S. Agency for International Development regional coordinator for reconstruction in Fallujah, Iraq in 2005.
K. C. Cole is an American science writer, author, radio commentator and professor emerita at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She has covered science for The Los Angeles Times since 1994, as well as writing for many other publications, and has been described as "the queen of the metaphor in science writing".
Michael Parks was an American journalist, editor, and educator who wrote on various political events around the world throughout his career. He served as editor of the Los Angeles Times from 1997 to 2000. He won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting award in 1987 for his reports about the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. He also taught at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and served several stints as its director.
Justin Douglas Chapman is an American author and journalist, actor, musician, and politician. He currently serves as Communications Officer at the Pacific Council on International Policy. He is the author of the travel memoir Saturnalia: Traveling from Cape Town to Kampala in Search of an African Utopia, published by Rare Bird Books in January 2015. Chapman was the youngest elected member of the Altadena Town Council at age 19. He is currently attending University of Southern California and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009. He has written for over 20 publications. As a professional child actor he often performed in commercials, television shows, and movies. He lives in Pasadena, California.
Cynthia "Cinny" Clare Kennard is an American business and nonprofit executive, author and former broadcast journalist. She is the executive director of The Annenberg Foundation, based in Los Angeles, and Annenberg PetSpace.