Overwhelming and extremely rewarding are my only words to describe this summer immersion. The session involves the whole cohort of journalism graduate students at Annenberg. Master of Science, Specialized Journalism, or Specialized Journalism and The Arts, everyone. It was scary at first, I knew my classmates for less than two weeks before we got split into two groups to work on a climate change-oriented project. Amanda, Ian, BC, and I quickly decided to go towards a subject that concerns almost everyone. How to make cars sustainable? Media talk a lot about electric cars, but we wanted to go more in-depth on the subject. With our reporting, we ended up talking about hydrogen and solar cars which are less known sustainable options.
No lies here, it was a project that entails a heavy workload. As the weeks went by and the deadline got closer, we had to split up tasks to be more efficient. Amanda wrote the text, BC and Ian worked on digital and video pieces of our project. I took upon the coding responsibility, even though coding was new to me, and I found it challenging. I had the responsibility to finalize the project and give it a look my group would agree on and enjoy.
These days of work resulted in a multimedia project mixed with writing, audio, video, and digital elements. I felt delighted with it and didn’t hold any regrets about what could have been done better. Our hard work paid off and resulted in being chosen by Now This, a New York news organization, to be published as a short video. I feel content and proud to see our work published in the eyes of a vast audience. Climate change is a subject that needs to be talked about more. I loved working on this project with my classmates, but I won’t be the next climate change journalist. It’s just not for me. But if there is one thing this project taught me is to have more awareness around sustainability even on common subject stories.
Clémence-Maureen Feniou participated in a hallmark Annenberg program: the seven-week multi-media reporting intensive for graduate students. With the support from the Center for Climate Journalism and Communication, the theme was, “What on Earth: Tackling Climate Change… Sustainability, Survival and Solutions.” Clémence-Maureen graduated USC with a master’s of science in Journalism.
