As the director of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, I’d like to introduce OJR readers to our Master’s Programs in Specialized Journalism.

These are not your typical journalism M.A. programs. (Though we also have an excellent one of those.) In this innovative nine-month program, we have a different aim: As journalism is reinventing itself, we are reinventing the journalism academy, here in this incomparable learning laboratory of the future, Los Angeles.

Consequently, your fellow students will be atypical, as well. The remarkably interesting group we assemble each year brings artists and arts journalists of every stripe together with journalists eager to go deep into science, demographics, education, religion and a feast of other disciplines. Their work has appeared in the legacy media as well as Neon Tommy, Huffington Post and other online sites.

You will design your own curriculum, ranging across the offerings of this vibrant and richly interdisciplinary University. Along the way, we throw in some key enhancements: The updates in digital skills and social networking, an entrepreneurial mindset and a sense of the emerging lay of the journalistic land that will equip you to be a leader in journalism’s reinvention. As online journalists, you have a head start on this journey. Together, we’ll proceed further.

We have hired some of the best minds in the new-media world and melded them with our distinguished journalism faculty. And all of this exists within the exciting environment of a full-service School of Communication and Journalism that values the creation of new knowledge about this age-old craft we call journalism, as well as the many different ways we can now serve the public’s information needs. And, assuming you can carve out the time, you can participate in Annenberg’s news outlets on every platform and take advantage of the unparalleled diversity of experiences that Southern California offers.

I surely hope you will consider joining us here at Annenberg, where journalism’s future is looking brighter every day. Please visit our website for application guidelines.

Recognizing the critically important role journalism plays in a democratic society and USC’s role as a leading institution for educating and training journalists, the University of Southern California Board of Trustees has voted to change the name of the USC Annenberg School for Communication to the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

We have grown accustomed to daily reminders that journalism is in a period of great unsettlement. What we recognize here on this special day, by adding “journalism” to the Annenberg School’s name, is that this is also – and primarily – a period of enormous promise. We have asserted, here together, that journalism is a subject worthy of the attention of a great University.

And surely it is, particularly at this moment. For, even as its traditional models collapse, journalism is being reinvented. It is being reborn in new and exciting ways every day. And with this name change, we make clear the vital roles that Annenberg has played, and WILL play, in that reinvention.

First of all, we are, in collaboration with our colleagues in the School of Communication and throughout the University, doing research and deep reporting to enrich the debate that will contribute to shaping tomorrow’s journalism: Research about the new roles of the public, the policies of governments at all levels, the innovations occurring around the world, the emerging models of community and national and international news and the potential for new economic models to support information in the public interest.

Second, in our own J-school version of R and D – researching and DOING – we are increasingly serving the information needs of our communities. as legacy media’s resources so rapidly shrink. In our news outlets — Annenberg Television News, Annenberg Radio News, NeonTommy: the voice of Annenberg Digital News and our documentary program Impact, as well as Intersections: The South Los Angeles Report and Spot.us, a community-supported investigative journalism site that we are just rolling out in L.A. – in all of these, our students and faculty are putting into practice the journalistic excellence we teach.

And teaching, of course, is the heart of our promise of contribution to journalism’s future. In our classrooms and learning laboratories, and in the fine work of our centers for health reporting, arts reporting and digital news, we are ensuring that the enduring values of journalism will find their way wherever the public attention goes, from old media to new, into the worlds of Twitter and Facebook and their successors, through multi-platform storytelling, with a spirit of invention and entrepreneurialism that will enable Annenberg graduates to succeed and to lead in this arena so essential to democracy and to a life well-lived.