Writers:
Reclaiming the Past
By Sarah Price Brown
Maria Altmann of Los Angeles and her lawyer battled the Austrian and U.S. governments for years over ownership of paintings by artist Gustav Klimt.
Slideshow: Archival photographs and reproductions of the Klimt paintings.
Murder or Self-Defense?
By Eric Berkowitz
A
2002 California law, the only one of its kind, allows women to challenge murder convictions if they were battered by the men they killed. Five women have been released from California prisons to date by the state law that reflects new sensibilities about abused women.
A Closer Look: Battered women form support group behind bars
Online Gambling: Late Nights, High Stakes
Online gambling in the U.S.is a multi-billion dollar business. The stakes are high for companies operating web-based betting, and they’re even higher for Americans: mounting debt, family tensions, even thoughts of suicide haunt addicted gamblers.
A Closer Look: A Personal Foray in Online Gambling
A Passion for Fashion
Diamonds, designers, egos, pathos, and patience. A Los Angeles fashion stylist tells what it really means to work in the industry made more prominent by the rise of niche magazines.
Audio: Q&A with stylist George K.
Jesus Will Return... After These Messages
by Cortney Fielding
Jesus was a carpenter. Now , apparently, he works for Clear Channel. The son of God stays inside a Burbank office complex, where he plays host to his own call-in radio show.
Audio: Listen to a clip of The Jesus Christ Show
Pacific Rim Rising
The dancers of the Maui Girlz Polynesian Dance Troupe slowly sway their hips in sync to the tune. The dancers’ hands expertly maneuver the fire pots they are holding—hollowed out coconut halves containing candles that burn brightly.
Video: The Maui Girlz on TV
Heir to the Throne
John David Booty, USC’s vaunted backup quarterback, finally has a chance to start for the Trojans. But he faces a new era: no more winning streak, no more talk about the best team of all time, and life without the likes of Matt Leinart.
Audio: John David Booty talks about the upcoming season
Eric Berkowitz is a former lawyer and freelance journalist who is completing his final year at USC Annenberg in May. At that time, he will start a three-month position with the Los Angeles bureau of the Associated Press. While Berkowitz's interests range from covering law to mass transit, the issue of battered women in prison has become a personal one. "When I went to the Corona Women's prison, I saw so many elderly women, in prinson for decades for crimes that would never result in such sentences today," he said. "In many instances, they were the real victims. Their story needs to come out."
E-mail: eberkowitz@verizon.net
Sarah Price Brown is the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer and numerous other newspapers. Recently, she has been writing about religion and culture in Los Angeles, where she is a contributor to The Jewish Journal and Religion News Service, the national newswire. Sarah is from Dallas and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1999.
E-mail: sarahpricebrown@google.com
Cortney Fielding is a journalism grad student at USC Annenberg and a Metro section intern at the Los Angeles Daily News. She moved to Los Angeles from Gainesville, Florida in 2003 after graduating from the University of Florida. She has since worked for four daily newspapers, including the Santa Monica Daily Press and the South Bay's Daily Breeze. Fielding has wanted to profile Neil Saavedra, the man behind the Jesus Christ Show, since she stumbled on the program one Sunday morning in 2005. Once she realized the show was, in fact, not a joke, she found herself interested in the suprisingly tasteful program. In May, Cortney will graduate with an M.A. in Journalism and begin a life of holding a "Will Report For Food" sign at freeway offramps.
E-mail: ufcortney@yahoo.com
Shana Glick will receive her Master's in Broadcast Journalism from USC Annenberg in May 2006. Originally from the Bay Area, Glick, 23, graduated from UC Santa Barbara with degrees in Art History and Global Studies in June 2004. Glick plans to pursue a career in entertainment television, with some magazine writing on the side. She loves any and all "educational reality TV," like the Food Network, E! and Home & Garden TV. The city of Santa Barbara and sugar are close to her heart, along with her family and a certain fellow Annenberg student.
E-mail: shana.audrey@gmail.com
Lawrence Lloyd is a print journalism grad student at USC Annenberg. Originally from the San Joaquin Valley, he is a 10-year resident of Los Angeles, where he has attended high school, undergraduate (Cal State L.A. where he received a B.A. in Communication) and graduate school. Lloyd is an avid sports fan and devotes what little spare time he has to playing tennis, reading and worshipping his TiVo. He's a Sagittarius who does not enjoy long walks on the beach unless the sand is clean and most of the people have left. "I've always been fascinated by Las Vegas culture, casinos in particular. I was inspired to follow this story by my partner Edward, who is also a huge sports fan and who introduced me to online sportsbooks. I can't wait to see what happens next with the industry."
E-mail: xlawrencex@gmail.com
Matt Ryan grew up in the fresh air of northern California, but eventually migrated south to earn his B.A. in political science and communications at UC San Diego. Currently Ryan is completing his M.A. in print journalism at USC Annenberg. "I had worked as a beat writer for the UCSD Guardian, covering the men's basketball team," Ryan said. "I've always carried with me a passion for writing and sports, so I figured it'd be fun to combine the two."For the past two years Ryan has covered USC Trojan football for the Daily Trojan, while also holding internships (including a stint at USA Today.) "I hope to continue my work as a sports journalist once I graduate," Ryan said, "and provide my own style and knowledge to this fast-growing field."
E-mail: matthegr@usc.edu
Joyce Tse is in her final semester at USC, where she is earning her M.A. in Print Journalism. She holds a B.A. from UC Santa Barbara in Sociology, with a minor in Professional Writing. Last summer she spent two months reporting for the Cape Times in Cape Town, South Africa where she met Nelson Mandela and soccer stars Ronaldo and Luis Figo. She has also worked for the Daily Breeze in Torrance, The Lookout in Santa Monica and the now defunct Destroy All Monthly, an alternative arts and entertainment magazine in Los Angeles. Joyce is a native of Los Angeles and a recent addition to the Chips Quinn Scholars Program. Through Chips, she will spend the summer after graduation as a general assignment reporter at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside.
E-mail: jtse@usc.edu
The Web Designer:
William Etling holds a degree in film studies from UC Santa Barbara and received his M.A. in print journalism from USC Annenberg in May 2006. As a freelance web designer he's created sites for clients from cinematographer William Eubank to his own musical group The Deadly Syndrome. Etling's freelance writing and photography has been published in The Santa Barbara News-Press, The Los Angeles Times, Farm and Ranch, Valley Living, the Pacific Coast Business Times and McSweeney's Online, as well as on the cover of Verizon phonebooks and his father's novel Sideways in Neverland . He will spend summer 2006 reporting on immigration as a recipient of a Carnegie-Knight fellowship, and plans to pursue a career in visual and online journalism and design. His portfolio is available at etling.com.
E-mail:
etling@gmail.com
William Celis is an assistant professor of journalism and the instructor for the advanced magazine writing class that produced Watt Way Online Magazine. He has contributed to The Boston Globe, Public Access Journalism, and other publications. Celis is a former education correspondent for The New York Times and a former reporter and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of a bok about the national revival of the one-room school and is at work on a second book about urban education and the Latino Civil Rights movement in the Southwest. He has taught the magazine writing class every year since 2000.
E-mail: celis@usc.edu