Broadcast news. (The Roving Eye).

IF all politics are local, it follows that news is as well I A new project at USC's Annenberg School for Communications is developing a program it expects will make current events more accessible: Community news.

Its "Local Broadcast News Initiative" has ambitious goals, transforming local news and promoting "civic reengagement" by creating a series of neighborhood news networks.

The first part of the project is a study of news outlets that prove successful in covering local news. The report, due at year-end, will detail the secrets of their success. Then Annenberg will set up a series of cable news channels to cover such things as community meetings and crime statistics. A Web site will. post neighborhood news such as weekly lunch menus at the local school.

"L.A.'s too big for stations to just cover everything. When you watch a story about something in Culver City and you live in Crenshaw, you don't feel connected to it," said Annenberg spokesman Geoffrey Baum.

Annenberg will use $250,000 it received this year from the Annenberg Trust, formed last year by the foundation created by the late Walter Annenberg, former publisher of TV Guide and the Daily Racing Form.

In January, the Annenberg School hired former Freedom Foundation technology guru Adam Clayton Powell -- son of the colorful Harlem pastor-turned-Congressman - to run the show.

Annenberg considers hiring Powell a coup. During his year-long stint running Howard University's public television station, he exploited the college's long-underutilized studios.

One of Powell's first tasks will be to figure out some use for the school's 200 television cameras, many of which are still in storage.