Students tell stories of resilience and loss through USC Annenberg Wildfire Youth Media Initiative

In early January 2025, high school sophomore Ashley Hernandez and her family had just moved into a new home in Altadena.

After spending three days unpacking boxes, cleaning and organizing their new space, Jan. 9 was supposed to be their first “normal” evening.

The Eaton wildfire transformed that night into a panicked evacuation as flames neared.

Because they didn’t have much time to get out — and because they thought they would be returning soon — Hernandez and her family packed light, leaving behind important documents and essentials.

That night turned out to be the family’s last in their new house — while their old home in Altadena survived the fires, their new one did not.

“My parents are pastors, and our church also burned down,” said Hernandez, who is now 16 and a junior at Aveson Global Leadership Academy on the border between Altadena and Pasadena. “My high school and everything around it were also damaged.”

Like thousands of people uprooted by the deadly Eaton and Palisades fires in Los Angeles County a year ago, Hernandez struggled to find a sense of normalcy and hope as she dealt with the fear, disruption and uncertainty the destruction had wrought. For her and several high school students from the Altadena and Pacific Palisades areas, a program at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism provided an unexpected route to engage with the impact of the fires through the power of storytelling.

The Wildfire Youth Media Initiative — created by Talia Abrahamson, a junior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy (CCLP) — offered 18 students from the affected communities a chance to create an oral history of the fires and their aftermath.

Through the initiative, which took place from July 15 to Aug. 7, CCLP staff members — including Abrahamson, research fellow Accalia Rositani and University Professor and CCLP Director Geoffrey Cowan — collaborated with USC faculty and professional journalists to train high school students on how to interview people in the Altadena and Pacific Palisades communities. Those “listening sessions” produced material for the students to create podcasts, video interviews, and short- and long-form written pieces. The program also provided mental health support and training for students as they processed their own losses while conducting interviews that at times provoked strong emotions. The content the students produced are housed in an oral history repository with the Los Angeles Public Library, which was unveiled during the one-year anniversary of the fires.

“It’s significant,” said Rebecca Haggerty, USC Annenberg professor of professional practice of journalism, who acted as the program director over the summer. “To involve different partners from public media, public institutions, including the library, different news organizations — the hope is that this can be a model for engaging young people and engaging multiple community institutions after this kind of tragedy.”

The initiative is just one prong of USC’s multifaceted response to the wildfires. Other initiatives include free soil testing for affected residents, college admissions help for high school students from the regions, and the Trojan Family Relief Fund, which has supported more than 450 USC faculty, staff, postdocs and students who have been displaced by the wildfires.

Learning the fundamentals

Alexandra Newman, now 18 and a senior at Marlborough School in L.A.’s Hancock Park neighborhood, recalls being at school when she learned that her parents had to evacuate their Pacific Palisades home.

“They asked me if there was anything I wanted them to grab, and I was like, ‘I don’t know, my grandmother’s jewelry, some skincare products — just random things,’” Newman said. “There had been other fires we had to evacuate from, so we thought it would just be for one night.”

Within a few days of staying at a friend’s house in Santa Monica, Newman and her parents learned that their home had been destroyed. “It took me a few weeks to really process it,” she said.

She says she learned of the Wildfire Youth Media Initiative through the neighborhood WhatsApp group chats her father had joined. For Newman, a member of her school’s yearbook staff who had already applied to USC Annenberg’s journalism program, the initiative was a unique opportunity to pursue both her professional goals and engage with her community about the fires.

“Some of my friends weren’t really comfortable talking about the fires in the moment,” she said. “But I really liked the idea of sharing my experiences.”

A form of therapy

When an English teacher at her high school recommended Hernandez for the initiative, she was shocked to be accepted, considering her lack of any journalism experience.

“When I found out about this program, I was like, oh my God, what they’re doing is so kind — turning this horrible disaster into something positive that we as a community can participate in,” Hernandez said. “I kind of took it as a form of therapy.”

During the first few weeks of the program, USC faculty — including Leslie Berestein Rojas, Stacy Scholder, Joseph Itaya, Fernando Hurtado, Kelly Greco and others — held hands-on workshops that gave students the tools to tell stories that explore loss and resilience in their own and others’ communities.

These included technical and theoretical journalism lessons: how to listen actively, the role of journalism in civic society, and how to work a camera and edit videos and podcasts.

Professional journalists and editors from outlets such as KCRW-FM, the Pasadena Star-News, the Los Angeles Times, American Public Media, LAist and the Palisadian-Post, among others, served as guest speakers for these workshops and lunchtime conversations, sharing decades of real-world experience on ethically crafting stories that feature trauma and resilience.

“I really appreciated the other reporters taking time to come speak to us,” Newman said. “They talk about the importance of journalism, of student journalism, and telling our stories. USC going out of their way to give us that experience made me feel very supported and heard.”

Tapping the pulse of the community

Students put their technical skills into practice during two separate listening sessions at the Pasadena Playhouse and the KCRW headquarters in Santa Monica. Students ran the sessions in pairs, discussing topics such as aspirations, lessons learned and lost-and-found items.

“Many community members said that they felt that the process of talking to other community members, but also particularly connecting with young people, felt very meaningful,” Haggerty said.

Andrew Sweet, 16, a junior at Marshall Fundamental, a high school in the Pasadena Unified School District, produced a professional-quality podcast about his experience. He focused on a British couple in Pacific Palisades: Before losing their home in the wildfire, the pair hosted tea parties to link their lives in L.A. and abroad. “After sipping tea, the couple and their guests would jump into the jacuzzi for the more California vibes — that really showed me how their British and L.A. lives wrapped into each other,” said Sweet, who captured the story in a podcast through the initiative, along with a photo essay of the burn areas.

“I was really happy that they let the kids take the initiative in this program,” Sweet said. “The USC professors gave us the instructions, but then they gave us the space to use our creative minds.”

Same lives, different fonts

Along with the technical skills, Sweet, Hernandez and Newman said they and their peers gained greater awareness of not only social divides, but also of the shared experiences that cut across demographics.

“As I got to know the kids from the Palisades, I learned that they have such unique stories, and they’re kids that are just like me,” Sweet said. “It really shifts your perspective to see kids that have experienced the same thing, even if they’re from different social backgrounds. Really, we’re all Angelenos.”

Both groups of students wished they had seen the communities of Altadena and Pacific Palisades before the fires, but were glad for the opportunity to see the regions through their peers’ eyes.

“It’s like we were living the same stories but in different fonts,” said Hernandez, who described the experience as “life-changing.”

Through the initiative, Hernandez wrote about saying goodbye to her high school. Hearing about a similar experience from Zacharie Sergenian — a peer in the program who attends Palisades Charter High School, which was damaged in the fires — helped Hernandez understand that the “heart and soul” of a community exists beyond buildings and familiar structures. Sergenian recorded a reflection for the initiative on this topic that aired on KCRW and played on All Things Considered for the fire anniversary.

Hernandez also produced a video interview with the co-founders of Altadena Girls, a nonprofit started during the Eaton fire as a donation drive focused on empowering girls and women.

Newman, who created an oral history of the Palisades Garden Cafe and a personal essay about her own experiences, says the lessons of the initiative have strengthened her belief in journalism’s importance.

“I’m more confident in my ability to tell stories,” she said. “I realized how many people were touched by fires, and by shedding a little light on their stories, I could help other people not feel so alone. Talking about what happened creates a sense of community.”

Bridging experiences

CCLP hopes to continue the program, which is a part of the organization’s Local News and Student Journalism Initiative. Both the program’s past participants and its organizers hope for the initiative to serve as a replicable model for other communities affected by natural disasters, providing a framework for high school students to document and tell their communities’ stories.

Abrahamson, who believes that high school students can play a crucial role in filling the gap left by news deserts across the country, said all 18 students from the initiative have signed on to continue CCLP’s efforts: “They are very excited about the idea that there is something unifying for young people in the face of a disaster, a common experience, and so they want to serve as a group of mentors for that next community who’s been impacted by disasters.” Since the summer program ended, the students formed an advisory council called the Media Action Project (MAP) that meets regularly to discuss how to expand the program.

“All of us at the initiative are very lucky that we got to have our story told,” Sweet said. “But we know that there are other people in other countries, in other communities, that don’t get that opportunity.”

CCLP Director Geoffrey Cowan believes USC is the perfect institution to house such an effort.

“One of the functions that USC can play is as a gathering place for people from a whole diverse range of backgrounds in a healing and constructive way, whether it’s the arts, or it’s journalism, or it’s government, or it’s philanthropy — all of them were part of this,” he said.

For Hernandez, who like many others in the program now dreams of studying journalism at USC, one of the biggest benefits of the program was a reframing of her response to a tragic event.

“Seeing each other through these months after the fire, and seeing our progress, it was truly beautiful,” said Hernandez, who believes that looking toward the future is a sign of resilience. “I didn’t even realize I’m not really thinking about my house anymore. I’m thinking about what I can do. What do we want our new community to look like? What’s happened has happened — now what are we going to do to move forward?”