Norman Milton Lear is an American screenwriter and producer who has produced, written, created or developed over 100 shows. Lear is known for creating and producing numerous popular 1970s sitcoms, including All in the Family (1971–1979), Maude (1972–1978), Sanford and Son (1972–1977), One Day at a Time (1975–1984), The Jeffersons (1975–1985), and Good Times (1974–1979). He has continued to actively produce television, including the 2017 remake of One Day at a Time and the Netflix revival of Good Times in 2022.
The Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award is an award created in honor of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. The Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards were established by Christie Hefner in 1979 to honor individuals who have made significant contributions in the vital effort to protect and enhance First Amendment rights for Americans. Since the inception of the awards, more than 100 individuals including high school students, lawyers, librarians, journalists and educators have been honored.
Michael E. Kinsley is an American political journalist and commentator. Primarily active in print media as both a writer and editor, he also became known to television audiences as a co-host on Crossfire.
Susan Estrich is an American lawyer, professor, author, political operative, and political commentator. She is known for serving as the campaign manager for Michael Dukakis in 1988 and for serving in 2016 as legal counsel to the former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes.
The Norman Lear Center is a multi-disciplinary research and public policy center exploring implications of the convergence of entertainment, commerce, and society. It is based at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Through scholarship and research, and its programs of visiting fellows, conferences, public events and publications, the Lear Center works to be at the forefront of discussion and practice in the field.
Willow Bay is an American television journalist, editor, author, and former model. In 2017, she became dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism having earlier served as director of USC Annenberg School of Journalism. She was previously a senior editor for the Huffington Post and a special correspondent for Bloomberg Television.
Neal Gabler is an American journalist, writer and film critic.
The USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism comprises a School of Communication and a School of Journalism at the University of Southern California (USC). Starting July 2017, the school's Dean is Willow Bay, succeeding Ernest J. Wilson III. The graduate program in Communication is consistently ranked first according to the QS World University Rankings.
The Annenberg Foundation is a family foundation that provides funding and support to non-profit organizations in the United States and around the world. Some of the Foundation's core initiatives are the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) project, which funds many educational television shows broadcast on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) public television in the United States as well as The Annenberg Community Beach House, The Annenberg Space for Photography, Metabolic Studio, explore.org, Wallis Annenberg PetSpace and the Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts.
Murray Fromson was a CBS correspondent and professor emeritus at University of Southern California's School of Journalism, and Center on Public Diplomacy. He was educated in the Los Angeles Unified School District, including Belmont High School in Downtown Los Angeles.
Edward Lifson is an American journalist, architecture critic, and academic. He was the Director of Communications for the Pritzker Architecture Prize. He was also a domestic, foreign and war correspondent and bureau chief for NPR National Public Radio; and he created and hosted a radio show in Chicago called "Hello Beautiful!" to explore and tell stories of urban issues, architecture and design. Lifson is an Adjunct Instructor in the Media Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. For NPR, in the U.S. Lifson covered urban affairs, politics, economics, labor and arts and culture. In 1996, he established the National Public Radio Bureau in Berlin, Germany. In Europe, he covered the rebuilding of Berlin as a city and a national capital, European Union, post-Cold War politics, NATO, the launch of the euro, immigration issues, and Central Europe’s transition to democracy and capitalism. As a war correspondent, he reported extensively for NPR from Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia before and during the war in Kosovo. In addition to Berlin, he has lived for many years in Paris, Florence, Italy and in England. Lifson was the interim Director of the Shanghai-based American Academy in China, an urban design think tank and studio.
Marc Ambinder is an American university professor, journalist, and television producer. He is a former politics editor at The Atlantic, a White House Correspondent for National Journal, contributing editor for GQ, and was editor-at-large of The Week and a member of the USA Today national board of contributors. In 2017, he was the journalist-in-residence at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. His third book, The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983, was published by Simon & Schuster in July 2018. He teaches at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where he leads Annneberg's digital security initiative.
Josh Kun is an American author, academic and music critic. Kun is Professor of Communication and Journalism and chair in Cross-Cultural Communication in the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. He also holds a joint appointment at USC's Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. He is the director of USC Annenberg's School of Communication, director of The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's the Norman Lear Center and co-editor of the book series "Refiguring American Music" for Duke University Press.
Paul Pringle is an American investigative journalist for the Los Angeles Times and author of the 2022 book Bad City: Peril and Power in the City of Angels.
Neon Tommy was the online news publication sponsored by the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California. It was active from 2009 to 2015.
Geoffrey Cowan is an American lawyer, professor, author, and non-profit executive. He is currently a University Professor at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership and directs the Annenberg School's Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. In 2010, Cowan was named president of The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, a position he held until July 2016. In this role, Cowan was commissioned with the task of turning the 200-acre estate of Ambassador Walter Annenberg and his wife Leonore into "a venue for important retreats for top government officials and leaders in the fields of law, education, philanthropy, the arts, culture, science and medicine." Since Sunnylands reopened in 2012, Cowan has helped to arrange a series of meetings and retreats there. In 2013–14, President Barack Obama convened bilateral meetings at Sunnylands with President Xi Jinping of China and with King Abdullah II of Jordan. In 2016, President Obama hosted the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at the site, where they released the Sunnylands Declaration. Prior to his time at Sunnylands, Cowan was appointed by President Bill Clinton as Director of Voice of America.
K. C. Cole is an American science writer, author, radio commentator and professor emerita at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She has covered science for The Los Angeles Times since 1994, as well as writing for many other publications, and has been described as "the queen of the metaphor in science writing".
J.A. Adande is an American sportswriter, commentator and educator, who currently serves as the Director of Sports Journalism at Northwestern University.
Nicco Angelo Mele is an American academic, writer, and businessman. He is one of several managing directors of the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. From 2016 to 2019 he was the director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, an academic research center in the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University that examines media policy and innovation. Mele was previously a senior executive at the Tribune Media Company and deputy publisher at the Los Angeles Times and, prior, the founder and chief executive of Echo&Co, a digital and political consulting firm born out of the presidential campaign for Howard Dean. Earlier, he was the head webmaster for Dean's campaign.
Ben Collins is an American reporter from Massachusetts. He began working for the news division of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) in 2018.
