USC Annenberg Media

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USC has announced that the Peace Garden will relocate to Kerckhoff Hall, with construction expected to begin in the spri...
11/14/2025

USC has announced that the Peace Garden will relocate to Kerckhoff Hall, with construction expected to begin in the spring of 2026.

Julie McLaughlin Gray, the associate chair in the Chan Division, said in a briefing with Annenberg Media and the Daily Trojan that Kerckhoff Hall was chosen because it offered more room than the other sites under consideration, and met several criteria set by students and community members.

“We’re excited to continue the work we were doing in the former location and also add some new features,” McLaughlin Gray said.

The USC Peace Garden, created by Camille Dieterle, an associate professor of clinical occupational therapy, was previously located on Shrine Place before USC sold the property over the summer. The closure prompted student outcry and concern about losing a community space that supported gardening, produce sharing, wellness classes and informal gatherings.

McLaughlin Gray said the new location aims to restore community connection and remain accessible to residents of the university’s surrounding neighborhoods.

A September survey conducted by USC Sustainability garnered 291 responses from students, staff, faculty and community members to gauge the most desired locations, furniture and plant types. The most requested components included an on-campus location with access to sunlight, shade, space for programming and a mix of shade trees and native plants. Respondents also highlighted accessible pathways and quiet areas.

Read more at the link in our bio.

📝 Lauren Tonsich
📸  Terence Holton

For Michael Kodas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and senior editor at Inside Climate News, the problem isn’t ...
11/13/2025

For Michael Kodas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and senior editor at Inside Climate News, the problem isn’t that young people don’t care. It’s that the way climate is covered often makes them feel either numb or powerless.

“We’ve created a society built on distracting people,” Kodas said during Wednesday’s climate journalism event at USC Annenberg. “Everything is fighting for our attention.” The event drew a small crowd, but the low turnout created space for a more intimate, student-driven conversation, allowing attendees to engage Kodas with deeper questions.

In that attention war, climate stories lose twice: first to the algorithm, and then to despair.

Kodas argues that journalists haven’t always helped. Too often, climate coverage exposes what’s broken but doesn’t show readers what they can do to help.

“We’ve been good at exposing wrongdoing,” he said. “We haven’t always been good at giving people tools to feel like they can make even a small difference.”

Kodas suggested, for Gen Z, raised on a steady stream of breaking news and existential threats, that distinction matters. If every headline reads like the world is ending and nothing changes, checking out can feel like a form of self-preservation.

Read more at the link in our bio.

📝 Danielle Hughes
📸 Avidha Raha

The USC AI Summit brought hundreds of Trojans to the Ginsburg Hall Auditorium on Tuesday. At the summit, Marshall School...
11/13/2025

The USC AI Summit brought hundreds of Trojans to the Ginsburg Hall Auditorium on Tuesday. At the summit, Marshall School of Business Dean Geoffrey Garrett announced a partnership between USC and OpenAI that provides all USC students, faculty and staff with complete access to GPT-5 and limited access to more advanced AI models from OpenAI.

Garrett said, “Behind the scenes, we were desperately hoping that USC and OpenAI could come to an institutional level agreement about the use of AI on campus, and we did that.”

To open the event, USC Interim President Beong-Soo Kim and guest Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, had a conversation about the future of AI.

Schmidt joked with the crowd, saying it took him one sentence to write a sonnet about the Marshall School of Business. He poetically urged, “USC with boldness lead the way and teach tomorrow’s mind what rules today.”

After the applause died down, Schmidt said, “Welcome to the new world of AI.”

Read more at the link in our bio.

📝 Melie Haile
📸 Melie Haile

USC hosted the Trojan Family Weekend on Friday, Nov. 7. The annual celebration is an occasion for parents, families and ...
11/13/2025

USC hosted the Trojan Family Weekend on Friday, Nov. 7. The annual celebration is an occasion for parents, families and alumni to connect and share new memories in the campus community.

At USC Annenberg, the day started with a special breakfast gathering. Dean Willow Bay spoke about the various opportunities that students at Annenberg can get access to.

One of the biggest attractions for students is the Annenberg Media Center, which functions as a professional newsroom and provides students with an immersive learning experience.

Some parents visited the media center in the morning, before the workday began.

Read more at the link in our bio.

📝 Avidha Raha ()
📸 Avidha Raha

USC hosted the Trojan Family Weekend on Friday, November 7. The annual celebration is an occasion for parents, families ...
11/13/2025

USC hosted the Trojan Family Weekend on Friday, November 7. The annual celebration is an occasion for parents, families and alumni to connect and share new memories in the campus community.

At USC Annenberg, the day started with a special breakfast gathering. Dean Willow Bay spoke about the various opportunities that students at Annenberg can get access to.

One of the biggest attractions for students is the Annenberg Media Center, which functions as a professional newsroom and provides students with an immersive learning experience.

Some parents visited the media center in the morning, before the workday began.

Read more at the link in our bio.

📝 Avidha Raha ()
📸 Avidha Raha

USC Annenberg hosted its latest “Lunch with a Leader” event this Wednesday afternoon, featuring a conversation with Tevi...
11/06/2025

USC Annenberg hosted its latest “Lunch with a Leader” event this Wednesday afternoon, featuring a conversation with Tevin Tavares, an award-winning filmmaker, director and producer from Oakland, California.

“Today, we are thrilled to welcome … a visual storyteller whose work seamlessly webs art and advocacy,” said Rafiq Taylor, who works in public relations for the Charlotta Bass Journalism & Justice Lab, which hosted the event.

Taylor called Tavares an upcoming and “distinguished voice of the industry” who has directed critically acclaimed music videos, short films and high-profile commercial campaigns. Many of these have been featured by notable outlets, including Variety, Forbes and The New York Times.

“Before we get in, I want to go around and ask everybody how they’re feeling today — get some energy in the room,” says Tavares upon receiving the mic.

After a few words from audience members, the event moderator, Emily Nichols, opened the conversation that led Tavares to share what keeps him inspired throughout his projects and career.

“I realized that my job is to tell the stories that will impact the next generation.” He underscored that the main motivation for his work comes from the feelings it brings to others.

Read more at the link in our bio.

📝 Karla Cruz 
📸 Sarah Goldstein

Last month, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced it would cut around 600 people from its artifi...
11/06/2025

Last month, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced it would cut around 600 people from its artificial intelligence division. But the changes in the AI industry signal something larger than a worsening job market.

According to Axios, the layoffs affect Meta’s AI product, infrastructure and research team, yet its core innovation and development team, housing the recent elite recruits, will not be affected.

Marco Papa, senior lecturer in Computer Science at USC Viterbi, said the job cuts indicate that the industry is shifting focus from research to development. Furthermore, he added, to keep up with rapidly advancing technologies, higher education should equip computer science students with hands-on experience applying the latest tools, rather than focusing on academic research.

“Resistance is futile,” Papa quoted an iconic Star Trek phrase when commenting on the tech industry. “Watch what’s happening, maybe five years from now. If you resist it, you’ll be thrown out.”

This past summer, tech companies, including Meta, began a round of talent poaching. Mark Zuckerberg offered top researchers nine-figure compensation packages to join Meta’s AI labs. The recruitment supports the company’s development of “superintelligence,” aiming to create AI that surpasses the human brain.

But now, after igniting a talent war among industry leaders, Meta will cut around 600 jobs from its AI division.

A***n Parab, a master’s student in computer science, said the lack of job security is concerning, so he is trying to familiarize himself with the cutting-edge skills that are in demand to enhance his competitiveness.

Read more at the link in our bio.

📝 Laury Li
📸 Tomoki Chien

11/06/2025

On Thursday, the California African American Museum ( ) hosted to discuss her debut book A Dream Deferred: Jesse Jackson, and the fight for Black political power. Reverend Jesse Jackson’s daughter, Ashley Jackson was also in attendance for the conversation.

Phillip’s discussion on power, politics, and the unfinished work of the civil rights movement reminded audiences why telling our stories — and telling them truthfully — still matters.

📹 .gayle

C’s may get degrees, but would you still eat at your favorite restaurant if it got an average grade on its health inspec...
11/06/2025

C’s may get degrees, but would you still eat at your favorite restaurant if it got an average grade on its health inspection?

Rock & Reilly’s was forced to shut down on October 10 after a routine inspection by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LADPH) found live cockroaches in the dishwashing area.

This led to the restaurant receiving an “imminent health code violation,” according to an emailed statement from the LADPH. Rock & Reilly’s was directed to “discontinue operation for a minimum of 48 hours to effectively eliminate the cockroach infestation.”

The violation didn’t stop students like Macarthy Mahoney, a senior majoring in computational neuroscience, from returning after the restaurant’s reopening.

“I’ve never seen a cockroach here,” Mahoney said. She described the environment as “clean” and a great place to do schoolwork.

Rock & Reilly’s reopened on October 12 with a grade of C after a reinspection found the vermin problem had been fixed.

A statement from the LADPH said that “after the public health permit was reinstated on 10/12/25, the operator of Rock & Reilly’s… requested an Owner Initiated Inspection (OII) so they may have an opportunity to improve their letter grade.”

The OII was conducted on October 21, and the restaurant scored an A with one minor violation.

Read more at the link in our bio.

📝Nora Rakoci, Tyler Kuslaka, and Krisha Sikka
📸 Nora Rakoci

When the Dodgers became back-to-back champions, the man holding the World Series Most Valuable Player award was pitcher ...
11/06/2025

When the Dodgers became back-to-back champions, the man holding the World Series Most Valuable Player award was pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto. This marked a proud moment for Japanese Americans in Los Angeles – yet tension has grown in the community after federal agents appeared in Little Tokyo earlier this year.

On Saturday, Yamamoto threw 2.2 innings of relief and earned the series-clinching win just a day after starting Game 6. His endurance on the mound not only secured the Dodgers their third title in six years but also represented something larger: the growing visibility of Japanese American identity within American culture.

This visibility stands in stark contrast to events that took place earlier this year. On August 15, armed federal agents made an appearance at the Norman Y. Mineta Democracy Plaza outside the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) during a conference held by Gov. Gavin Newsom about California’s redistricting initiative.

As the press conference began, more than 75 Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents swarmed the sidewalks, arresting at least one passerby.

“The events that are happening today to immigrants just show that there’s been this long trajectory of discrimination and prejudice, othering of immigrants in this country, throughout our nation’s history,” said Kristen Hayashi, Director of Collections Management and Access and Curator at JANM.

Read more at the link in our bio.

📝 Jaclyn Jacques, Jasmine Ying, Nora Rakoci, and Shaun Shpall
📸 AP Photo/Brynn Anderson

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We keep the USC community current on the news and topics that matter to them the most.

USC Annenberg Media is a student-run news organization at the University of Southern California. From social videos to Snapchat news shows and television broadcasts, our innovative converged newsroom runs on many platforms to keep the USC community informed and connected. Annenberg Media’s platforms provide the USC community with news that matters to them in thoughtful, deliberate, user-friendly formats. Twitter: twitter.com/annenbergmedia Instagram: instagram.com/annenbergmedia Twitch:USC_Annenberg_Media WeChat: @AnnenbergMedia YouTube: youtube.com/annenbergmedia Sports: twitter.com/AnnMediaSports Dímelo (News & media for Latino communities): facebook.com/justdimelo/ Intersections South L.A.: facebook.com/southla