Students in journalism professor Gabriel Kahn's class wrote two articles about the September jobs report that appeared on today's Marketplace website.
The students in Kahn's Journalism 599: "Follow the Money: The Art and Craft of Business and Economics Reporting" class put "faces behind the employment numbers and companies behind the jobs report," Kahn said. The first article profiled five people who have recently been unemployed. It was a collaborative effort, written by students Gracie Zheng, Megan O'Neil, Paige Brettingen and Subrina Hudson. From Marketplace: "The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning. But that's just a number. Students from the USC Annenberg School of Journalism interviewed five Los Angeles residents who represent various pockets of the jobs economy, from the gainfully employed to the out-of-work." Hudson interviewed a 22-year old woman who has been looking for work for more than a year. "It’s tricky now," she told Hudson. "Everything is online and I hate that. Before, you could just go in [a business] and fill out an application. Now, it’s a million people filling out the same application online."
The second article looked at some of the potential employers — some of whom have had trouble filling "highly skilled" positions. "The September unemployment rate fell for the right reason, for a change: More people are seeking work and finding it," according to the Marketplace article. "Students from the Annenberg School of Journalism profile four California companies that are hiring highly skilled workers."
Students Corrina Shuang Liu, Aaron Schrank, Shako Liu and Jake de Grazia partnered to feature companies such as Phelps, a Santa Monica-based marketing and communications company that has been hiring new workers. "(Phelphs) has been able to grow his company because his clients include industry leaders such as Public Storage, which continued to invest during the downturn while weaker competitors retrenched," Schrank wrote. Kahn's past classes have also partnered with major media companies to get the students' work published. Kahn has worked as a newspaper correspondent and editor for two decades, including 10 years at The Wall Street Journal, where he served as Los Angeles bureau chief, deputy Hong Kong bureau chief and deputy Southern Europe bureau chief, based in Rome. He has reported from more than a dozen countries on three continents.
