This summer, LAist is sharing stories of resilience, triumph and innovation in the face of marginalization — all produced by USC Annenberg graduate students. 

Expanding a partnership that began last year, Sandy Tolan and Megan Donis’ “This California Life: Storytelling for Radio and Podcasting” course allows students to produce professional-quality longform audio stories for LAist Studios’ “How To LA” podcast, from pitch to final mixdown. 

Donis said one of the main goals of the course is to carefully and authentically share the stories behind broad headlines and statistics on some of the biggest issues in Los Angeles. Whether seeking to understand the impacts of lack of housing, diving deep into indigenous rights, or investigating high rates of incarceration, students learn that meticulous and compassionate reporting is a must when creating people-focused, in-depth audio narratives.

“The real way to build empathy is through showing what a complex social issue looks like for an actual person living it,” Donis said. “We really told the students, and I think the stories have really shown this as well, that we don’t want to exploit doom and gloom. Obviously, these stories are talking about extreme difficulties and marginalization, however, they don’t have to be stories about just hardship. They can also be stories about innovation and perseverance.”

The class begins with important group conversations about approaching human-interest stories. This sets the stage for the collaborative nature of the entire course, which is structured as if students are working together in a professional documentary unit. 

“[We had] a lot of deep discussions around the ethics of reporting on these communities and these issues — as people, as sometimes people of privilege — and on really wanting to get it right, really wanting to do it in the most ethical and compassionate way,” Donis said.

In her audio piece “Hollywood Disenchanted,” MA in Specialized Journalism student Olivia Kelleher told the story of Keinon Pierre, a creator and actor from Chicago who is living out of his car while pursuing his Hollywood dream. 

“We met in person several times,” Kelleher said. “I recorded every time we were together, but it wasn’t a formal interview, it was just us having conversations. We had to figure out a good place to meet and record, but also capture his reality…. There were times when it was hard to get a hold of him. Life can be really unpredictable, especially when you are so vulnerable. So, I really wanted him to feel comfortable to come to me when he was ready.”

MA in Specialized Journalism student Erick Treviño took a similar approach with his audio piece chronicling the efforts of a group of activists from the Community Coalition, who are helping to transform the social and economic conditions in South L.A. that foster addiction, crime, violence and poverty.

“This was some of the harder reporting I’ve had to do. I had to really be sensitive with the topics that I was covering, make sure I did my research, make sure I was respectful of people’s wishes and what they were comfortable with talking about,” Treviño said. 

Once students had found their stories, they worked together during the production process, providing peer feedback in workshop sessions along with addressing essential notes from Tolan and Donis.

“We’re a class full of journalists…. Everyone in the program listens to podcasts, so we’re all consumers of audio stories. When we would listen to everyone else’s work, we just became so invested and we became an audience,” Treviño said. “It made people excited for your work, which encouraged you a little bit, but it also was fun to hear the process of a piece that you would’ve listened to on your own time and see how it got created.”

Donis added that this collaboration, structured just like a feedback session in professional radio and podcast studio production, helped bring all of the stories together into a cohesive series. 

“I can hear little bits of each student, even in other people’s stories, because I remember when they encouraged that person to explore this other angle,” Donis said.

These are not easy stories to tell, says “How to LA” Executive Producer Megan Larson, but the “LA on the Margins” project was a good fit for the podcast. “On ‘How to LA,’ we aim to help our listeners understand L.A. a little bit better, and we often do that by connecting them with people across the city,” Larson said. “That means telling the stories of people from all over L.A., and from all backgrounds, including those who may be struggling.” 

Throughout the hands-on semester, students not only enhanced their reporting skills and gained a firsthand understanding of what a production cycle in radio and podcasting looks like, but also got a crash course in using professional audio software and gear to create stories for national broadcast.

“One of the biggest things when you graduate college or from graduate school, is you go out into the working world and you’re applying for jobs, and the first thing an employer says to you is ‘Well, what have you produced? What’s your work experience?’ You don’t have any because you’ve been in school,” Donis said. “With this class and with students’ pieces airing on a nationally public, highly esteemed media organization, they can now go into the world with an actual work experience on their résumé.”

Kelleher believes the lessons she’s learned throughout this course afford her endless opportunities for the future.

“A journalism career can be so fluid and there’s so many different ways to tell stories,” Kelleher said. “The fact that I have multiple skill sets now that I feel really competent in, and I’ve created pieces that are going to be out in the world that can show that I know how to do this, I think it really opens me up to be able to do other things, do other projects. I feel like really, honestly, the sky’s the limit.”

“How to LA” is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Search for the stories titled “LA on the Margins.”