Local Woman Will Run Daily Trojan

A young scholar from Oxnard is the latest student journalist to run the USC college newspaper, the Daily Trojan.

Claire Luna, 19, will tackle the job as Trojan managing editor in a few weeks as she begins her senior year.

“I’m very happy, and it is a tremendous honor to be selected as managing editor,” said Luna, who will lead the newspaper’s 170 college journalists. “It will be a wonderful opportunity to work with staff members in all different sections of the newspaper.”

During her sophomore and junior years at USC, Luna rose through the ranks as copy editor and music writer, head copy editor and city editor. She held a news internship last summer with a weekly newspaper.

After she graduates next May, Luna plans to attend graduate school to study journalism at Columbia or Northwestern university. She would like to become a newspaper reporter with the London or San Francisco bureau of the Associated Press.

Top achievement is nothing new for Luna, the daughter of two teachers.

While growing up in Oxnard and Camarillo, she attended Rose Avenue and Elm Street elementary schools before attending and graduating from Fremont Intermediate School in Oxnard, where she was selected outstanding graduate. While attending Villanova Preparatory School in Ojai, Luna was chosen a National Merit Scholar and helped revive the school’s student newspaper, the Villanovan.

After three years at Villanova, Luna was accepted to the resident honors program at USC at 16 and has become a member of the university’s Latino and psychology honor societies.

In addition to academics, Luna has been active in the service group Job’s Daughters. While in college, Luna has helped provide recreational programs for first- and second-graders at elementary schools near the USC campus and has served as a mentor for high school students and college freshmen.

Her parents are Jamie French, a seventh- and eighth-grade language arts teacher at Frank Intermediate School and former principal of Curren Elementary School in Oxnard; and Fred Luna, a 12th-grade government teacher at Channel Islands High School in Oxnard.