As part of USC Annenberg's career development program, a group of students saw the inner workings of YouTubeSpaceLA in Playa Vista, CA on Friday, January 20, 2017.

On November 29, 2016, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the USC National Association of Black Journalists hosted author, broadcaster, publisher, advocate and philanthropist Tavis Smiley for the Journalism Director's Forum.

More than 40 students and faculty braved time-zone differences and early morning rain to gather in Wallis Annenberg Hall for an informal viewing of Donald J. Trump's swearing-in as the 45th President of the United States. Leading up to the oaths, Bob Shrum, director of the USC Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics, Geoffrey Cowan, director of the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy (CCLP), Justin Wallin, COO of Probolsky Research, and audience members participated in a wide-ranging discussion forecasting Trump’s speech and the possibility of protest. Across the country, USC Annenberg professor Robert Hernandez and a group of Annenberg student journalists were in Washington creating multi-platform coverage of the Inauguration using text, social media and virtual reality.

On December 1, 2016, USC Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson III, Dean Emeritus Geoffrey Cowan, and School of Journalism Director Willow Bay hosted a book talk and signing with Wesley Lowery, national reporter at The Washington Post and author of "They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement."

USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Professor and cultural historian Josh Kun was selected as a 2016 fellow of the MacArthur Foundation. The prestigious fellowship, known informally as the “genius grant,” provides each recipient with a $625,000 “no strings attached” award over five years. Kun is one of 23 fellows selected this year by the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

On December 1, 2016, a group of public relations visionaries came together at Wallis Annenberg Hall to discuss the single greatest threat facing their profession. Fred Cook, director for the USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations and CEO of Golin, offered that warning as he moderated an event marking the inaugural release of the center's Relevance Report. Curated by CPR, the unique...

Dr. Stacy L. Smith, Associate Professor and Founder and Director of the Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative, interviews members of the Systemic Change Project, formed by Women in Film Los Angeles and Sundance Institute to address inequality in the film industry. Actor/Producer Maria Bello (Lights Out, McFarland, USA, Coyote Ugly, A History of Violence), producer Cassian Elwes (Elvis & Nixon, Dallas Buyer’s Club, Lee Daniels’ The Butler), and other guests discuss the unprecedented work the group is doing to reach their peers in entertainment and move the needle for women in Hollywood for the first time in decades.

The USC Master of Public Diplomacy program celebrates ten years of Canadian Fulbrights and 70 years of the Fulbright in Canada program. Secretly negotiated trade deals like TPP, TTIP and ACTA are the exact opposite of "public diplomacy:" smoke-filled rooms where bureaucrats and industry figures negotiate binding private law that affects the lives of hundreds of millions of people without any legislative scrutiny, let alone public participation. But across the world, netroots activists have found that their common interest in fundamental justice, their common expertise in technology and their common presence in virtual spaces provides for a surprisingly effective check against these offensives run by the most powerful multinational corporations in the history of the world.