University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Remain L.A.

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Remain L.A.

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Content REMAIN L.A. by Stephanie Raquel Guzman A Professional Multimedia Project Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS (ONLINE JOURNALISM) December 2011 Copyright 2011 Stephanie Raquel Guzman ii Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Remain L.A. ........................................................................................................................ 1 References ........................................................................................................................... 8 ! iii Abstract MacArthur Park-Westlake is the landing place for immigrants in Los Angeles. It’s an area that traditional media does not cover unless there has been a shooting, murder, or protest gone awry. It is a community largely ignored, for all the good things going on in the neighborhood and the problems it still has. This project is a journalistic endeavor to record some of the stories around the park that are going on today in a multimedia format. 1 Remain L.A. When I started graduate school, I had no knowledge of the downtown area. I had lived in Los Angeles for four years but tended to stay on the west side near my cozy college campus. When I was accepted into graduate school at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, the campus area was different. However, I still felt protected in the Trojan bubble around the campus and in the neighborhood where most students lived. The roaming campus safety officers gave a sense of calm to an otherwise dirty and overpopulated area. During the first couple weeks of being at USC, I would reluctantly hop on to the 110 freeway North to get to my boyfriend’s house in Silver Lake. The traffic was intense, at all hours of the day and even worse when everyone was getting off work. One day, I remember thinking, “I’m just going to drive north on Hoover as far as I can and hope I run into Sunset Boulevard.” I jumped in the car and left the Trojan bubble. Hoover winded its way through Pico-Union, and in staying north, veered off onto Alvarado Street. As I approached the intersection of Alvarado and 7th Street, I crossed into a seemingly different world. The amount of people was overwhelming, and their culture vibrated with an intensity that could be felt even while in a car. The busy corner was vastly different than anything I had experienced in Los Angeles. As the semester went on, and my relationship continued, I would drive through MacArthur Park a couple times a week. I started noticing things that I wanted to know 2 more about. I wondered about the art throughout the park that didn’t seem to relate to the community. I noticed the broken and gated boathouse that was beyond restore. I questioned the numerous homeless people throughout the park, the newer apartment buildings that looked untouched and the women street vendors selling beauty products form their strollers. It seemed the community was bursting with stories to tell, and I wanted to explore them. When it came time to discussing our thesis options, I chose to do the multimedia project because I wanted a tangible project to show to future employers. I also thought it would be a good way to learn new skills on my own instead of in the classroom. I had several ideas for thesis pitches, but I was most excited about MacArthur Park. When I presented this idea to our thesis class professor, he immediately took to it as well. I decided to do my project on MacArthur Park in general, as I felt the neighborhood itself was focused enough in light of all the neighborhoods in Los Angeles. I then decided to focus on specific subjects such as education, housing and development, community, and history and art. My first approach to this project was to just go to MacArthur Park and get out of the car. My initial impression of the park was that I was in over my head. I didn’t speak the language most residents used, and I felt uncomfortable in the community. I thought people saw right through me and knew I wasn’t from their community. When I approached strangers with my elementary Spanish, they waved me off like they didn’t 3 have time or were uninterested. I recognized my obstacles immediately, and knew this would be a hard project to report on because of the barriers between myself and those in the community. I needed to find a way to get into the community. I started with community organizations and activists. I met Sandi Romero from Mama’s Hot Tamales, who is a staple of MacArthur Park and was a huge link in cleaning up the park. She introduced me to others in the community, and pointed me to places I should visit. The effort to immerse me into the community continued to snowball. I was able to find many sources I could talk to, and unexpected stories to report on. The hardest part of the project was trying to find ways to vary the format. The great thing about journalism is there are many ways to tell a story. But not all mediums fit every story. You have to think about the story and the best medium to tell it in. For stories that had a lot of data, I chose to tell the story visually. When presenting the census information on the neighborhood, I designed an infographic so readers would have an easier time comprehending the data. I also decided to use bright colors and bold font to engage the reader. For the history of MacArthur Park story, I chose another visual storytelling method. Prezi is a free visual presentation program that is easily embeddable on a web page. I knew that if it was a written story, it would read like a history book and the reader would not be interested. I created a Prezi slideshow with pictures and text in a timeline format that didn’t bore the reader. With Prezi, the reader can also freely move around on 4 their own and ignore the order of the presentation. I included historical pictures to show how things around and in the park used to look when the park was first built, and what the land looked like before a park was even there. At the end of the original Prezi piece, I had a slide show of before and after photos of the park. These included photos of the boathouse, an overview of the lake, the historic Westlake Theatre, and the pavilion. My committee member suggested I break up that story into two, as there would be too many visuals on one page. I took his advice and created a thumbnail, lightbox gallery to fill the post space. I think this worked out better because the reader now has control in what they want to click first, verses having to go through the slideshow without any controls. Some of the longer conversations I had with community members, such as community activists from Collective Space and Councilman Ed Reyes, seemed too long for a traditional print article. They’d also be too long for an audio piece and there wouldn’t be enough b-roll for a video story. I turned both of these stories into question and answer pieces and chose to include a lot of engaging pictures to entice the reader to look on. I also varied the font to make the piece easier to read. One of my longer and more time consuming pieces was looking at a woman’s apartment that was falling apart. There were many visuals in the story as her home has several holes in the wall, broken appliances, and exposed foundation. At first I wanted to do a broadcast piece for this story but the woman wanted to remain anonymous and 5 didn’t want to be on camera. She was, however, willing to have photographs taken of her from afar and she let me record her voice. With these two pieces of media, I chose to do an audio slideshow. The piece came out well and told an important story that many have enjoyed so far. My last piece was on an English teacher that taught at a day laborer center. I originally went to the day laborer center to find out more about the recession’s affect on immigrant workers. There, I found a woman teaching the laborers English as they waited for jobs. I thought her story deserved to be told because it seemed not many people knew about the work she did in the community. I asked to interview her and use her voice for a radio piece. She agreed to let me do that and take pictures of her “classroom”. I decided to include many visuals for this piece, especially for those who aren’t used to audio stories or feel broadcast stories are boring. The website design took a lot of thought. I decided to use Wordpress as a back end because it’s the easiest way to manage content and media. At first, I had a theme called Arthemia Theme by Color Labs Project. I liked the way it had a large slider on top, a category browsing section, and how each story below the fold had a large thumbnail and explanation. The theme only had two columns, which would’ve been easy to populate. The problem, however, was the lack of support that came with the theme. Although Wordpress is easy to work with, themes can be harder to manipulate depending on the developer. Something as simple as trying to add thumbnails to all the posts was 6 becoming a nightmare. Eventually, I gave up on trying to figure out the coding myself and decided to move on to a theme that worked. I chose to work with the developers of Elegant Themes. Their Wordpress themes are easy to use and have their own custom e-panel with tutorials. Figuring out how to create thumbnails on the website was as easy as doing a simple search on their website. As soon as I uploaded their theme, the entire process became easier. I changed several things about the theme. I changed the menus to be two separate menus instead of mirroring each other. I changed the size of the header so it appeared larger than was intended. I also changed fonts, colors, background textures, and hover-link colors. I liked this new theme because even though I only had 7 stories, the homepage was easy to populate with other things. I liked that the slider took up the top half of the fold because it makes it important to the reader. I also liked the multiple plug- ins the theme came with and the ones I found on my own. This allowed me to fill up the sidebar and footer with relevant and engaging information. Overall, I think the design of my site is simple, clean, and easy to read. The visuals really stand out in this theme because of the large featured slider, and the large photos in the posts. It also feels like the homepage is filled with enough content. I’m very please with the way the online multimedia project came out and am proud of the work I’ve done. 7 This thesis project will be a stand-alone body of work in that it won’t continue to be updated with new stories. I currently own the rights to the domain name but after 1 year, I plan on giving it up. I’ll probably move the content to another folder on the server of my other professional website. In the meantime, you can find my thesis multimedia project at www.remainla.com. Although, I predict that after a year this link will be broken and will no longer work. You will probably be able to find it at www.stephanierguzman.com/remainla. 8 References Alonso, Alex. “18th Street Gang in Los Angeles County.” Street Gangs. 25 June 2008 <http://www.streetgangs.com/hispanic/18thstreet>. The Central American Resource Center. CARECEN. 2009. <http://www.carecen-la.org/>. City of Los Angeles, Department of City Planning. “Westlake Community Planning Area.” <http://cityplanning.lacity.org> Path: Maps and Stats; Statistical Information; Local Population and Housing Estimates; By Community Plan Area; Westlake. Escobar, Alba. Personal interview. 10 Apr. 2011. Hamilton, Nora. Seeking Community in a Global City: Guatemalans and Salvadorians in Los Angeles. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. Leva, Winston. Personal interview. 25 Sept. 2010. “Mapping L.A.: Central L.A. Westlake.” Los Angeles Times. The Tribune Company. Web. Morales, Daniel. Personal interview. 2 Sept. 2010. Osorio, Ignacia. Personal interview. 5 Sept. 2010. “Park Renamed for Gen. MacArthur.” The Los Angeles Times. Web. Ramirez, Rocio. Personal interview. 8 Mar. 2011. Reyes, Ed. Personal interview. 8 Sept. 2011. Rodriguez, Juan. Personal interview. Feb. 2011. Romero, Sandi. Personal interview. 8 Mar. 2011. Romero, Sandi. Mama’s Hot Tamales. Institute of Urban Research and Development. <http://mamashottamales.com/index_LosAngeles.html> Salguero, Geronimo. Personal interview. 14 Oct. 2010. 9 Strawn, James. “Who’s Park: An Architectural History of Westlake-MacArthur Park.” Diss. University of Southern California, May 2008. Trujillo, Virginia. Personal interview. 14 Oct. 2010. Veliz, Jose. Personal interview. 14 Oct. 2010. Karin Pally Associates. “What are the reasons behind overcrowding in L.A.?” Building Healthy Communities 101. Los Angeles Housing Department. <http://www.ci.la.ca.us/LAHD/curriculum/gettingfacts/popgrowth/overcrowding.html>

Abstract (if available)

Abstract MacArthur Park-Westlake is the landing place for immigrants in Los Angeles. It’s an area that traditional media does not cover unless there has been a shooting, murder, or protest gone awry. It is a community largely ignored, for all the good things going on in the neighborhood and the problems it still has. This project is a journalistic endeavor to record some of the stories around the park that are going on today in a multimedia format.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Guzman, Stephanie Raquel (author)

Core Title Remain L.A.

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Journalism (Online Journalism)

Publication Date 12/15/2011

Defense Date 12/15/2011

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag immigrant communities,Immigrants,journalism,Latinos,MacArthur Park,New America,OAI-PMH Harvest,Radio

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Seidenberg, Willa (committee chair)

Creator Email srguzman@usc.edu,stephanierguzman@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-215652

Unique identifier UC11294909

Identifier usctheses-c3-215652 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-GuzmanStep-461-0.pdf

Dmrecord 215652

Document Type Thesis

Rights Guzman, Stephanie Raquel

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA