August 13, 2023 • 55 mins
Retired Chicago veteran news anchor Linda Yu kicks off my season 9 opener as we talk about her decades-long career in Chicago news television, what it was like to navigate the news media industry as an Asian American woman, and more.
Bio:
Linda Yu has been called a trailblazer, mentor and award- journalist. She recently stepped back from daily broadcasting after more than forty years in television news.
Yu began her career in 1974 as a writer for the Los Angeles ABC station KABC-TV and then went on to become a writer/producer at KTLA-TV. In 1975 she stepped in front of the camera as a reporter for the ABC affiliate station in Portland, Oregon KATU-TV. Within months, she received an offer from ABC owned station KGO-TV in San Francisco as reporter and anchor, where Yu worked from to 1979.
In late 1979, she was spotted by the NBC owned station in Chicago, WMAQ-TV, and moved to the Windy City as weekend anchor and reporter. Part of Yu’s motivation for accepting the position was that she would be the first Asian American to appear on a Chicago network station. Five years later, ABC won her back and she moved to Chicago’s ABC7, WLS-TV, to anchor the station’s newly created 4 p.m. news hour. Later, an 11 a.m. news hour was added to her anchor duties. Both news programs maintained their number one rating throughout her 33 year career at ABC7.
Among the honors and recognition for Yu are six local Emmy awards, as well as induction into the prestigious “Silver Circle” of legendary Chicago broadcasters. She has been named one of Today’s Chicago Women magazine’s “100 Women to Watch” and has been awarded a National Gold Medal by the National Conference of Community and Justice.
In her community service, Yu spent more than 30 years as the Advisory Board Chairperson for the Chinese American Service League. She is also a co-founder of the Chicago chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association. She has been an active supporter and volunteer for Common Threads, the Juvenile Protective Association and the March of Dimes.
Yu is the author of “Living and Working in America”, a book published in Chinese and sold in China.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Hi everyone, This is Randy from the Bunby Chronicles podcast.
So today I am here with the legendary icon Linda.
You. Linda, You has been caught.
A trailblazer, mentor and awardwinning journalist, she
recently stepped back from dailybroadcasting after more than 40
years in television news. You began her career in 1974 as
a writer for the Los Angeles ABCstation KABCTV and then went on
(00:28):
to become a writer producer at KTLATV.
In 1975, she stepped in front ofthe camera as a reporter for the
ABC affiliate station in Portland, OR KATUTV.
Within months she received an offer from a BC owned station,
KGOTV in San Francisco, as reporter in Anchor where you
worked from 1976 to 1979. In 1979, she was spotted by the
(00:53):
NBC owned station in Chicago, WMAQTV, and moved to the Windy
City. As we can anchor and reporter,
part of You's motivation for accepting the position was that
she would be the first Asian American to appear on a Chicago
network network station. Five years later, ABC won her
back and she moved to 8 Chicago's ABC7W LSTV to anchor
(01:16):
the station's newly created 4:00PM news hour.
Later, an 11:00 AM news hour wasadded to anchor duties.
Both news program maintain theirnumber one rating throughout her
33 year career at ABC7. Among the honors and recognition
for you are 6 local Emmy Awards as well as induction into the
prestigious silver circle of legendary Chicago broadcasters.
(01:40):
She has been named one of today's Chicago Women's Magazine
100 Women to Watch and has been awarded a National Gold Medal by
the National Conference of Community and Justice.
Wow, what a career you have had.It is a tremendous honor to have
you on my show. I would like to give a personal
shout out to another news icon, Joan Esposito, for connecting
(02:02):
both of us. I want to say that I grew up
watching you on ABC7 as a kid. You were one of the few people
you know. You were one of the few people I
could look up to because of how important it was to see people
who look like me in a time when there's so very few Asians in
the in media. I became a journalism student in
(02:25):
college because of you. And even my dad, who has had a
lot of hesitation about me goinginto journalism, gave in because
he too, was an admirer of your work.
So thank you for being on my show today.
It's a. Pleasure, Ben.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
It's great to meet you. And you know, you use the word
(02:47):
legendary a couple of times. I I don't feel worthy of that,
but it meant a lot to me that I had a responsibility, and that's
how I saw it. I had a responsibility to be the
person that you could, that other Asian Americans could look
(03:10):
at and respect. Maybe look up to, but feel that
they had somebody who look like them, which I think was so
important for young Asian Americans, male or female.
And to be that kind of a role model for them was a very
(03:30):
important responsibility for me.I knew that in Chicago.
I was the very first I found outlater on.
Because back when I started in Portland, OR, I was too
overwhelmed that I was just starting out to even think about
that. But I was also the 1st in
Portland OR too. And so being the first of
(03:52):
something, some people may not take it as a responsibility.
I certainly did and it's it's great for me to hear from you as
well as other people along the way.
That it made a difference to them.
To see me I have to one of the stories that I love.
Can I tell it? Yes, Absolutely.
(04:15):
So my younger brother, when he got out of college, had started
working in a bookstore. And this is many, many years
ago, but he worked in a bookstore and he's checking out
a customer one day. And it was a young Chinese
woman, and he looked at her credit card, and her credit card
said that her name was Linda. You Wong and he said why is your
(04:41):
name Linda, you Wong? And she said, well, my family's
from San Francisco and we watched someone named Linda you
on television and my parents named me for her because they
had never seen an Asian on television before.
And my brother said that's my sister and.
(05:04):
You know, it was a great moment for both of them, and he didn't
remember to tell me for a coupleof months.
But it's the that kind of thing that made me feel really good,
that I opened some doors for people.
But, and even for those who didn't go into journalism, it
(05:24):
was important to me to find out that it made such a difference
to be able to see somebody who looked like us.
Do you often feel that pressure to be the first constantly when
you were in Portland and Chicagofor that matter?
Sure, there was pressure, but itwas pressure I accepted because
(05:46):
I thought that was important. And you know, and it was
important in many different ways.
I knew that there were little Asian girls and boys out there
who were seeing me. I knew that there were.
Asian adults too, who maybe camefrom countries where they didn't
trust journalism because, and weknow that because there were
(06:09):
many countries that they came from where journalists or news
operations anyway were really anarm of the government.
And so that was wasn't somethingthat they trusted and it wasn't
a field, as you know, as you mentioned too, it wasn't a field
that older Asian Americans who had come.
From other countries necessarilythought was an honorable
(06:31):
profession and they needed to learn that journalism was
different at that time in the United States.
And the another responsibility that came with that being first
was every Asian community organization, whether they were
Chinese, Vietnamese, Hmong, Korean, Japanese or.
(06:57):
All look to me. And so I was very busy doing
things and making appearances and doing fundraising and
speaking for a lot of the community organizations all
around the Chicago area, becausefor I was the only one.
And to me, that was a great responsibility.
(07:17):
Thank you for sharing that. And how have the last several
years of retirement been like for you?
And do you miss being in The Newsroom?
It's been, it's been fabulous. I was.
I was surprised and everyone whoknew me was surprised that I
made the transition so, so, so quickly and so wonderfully.
(07:41):
I do not miss being in the news.I think it had to do with just
finally being ready, you know? If I had stopped when?
You know, I've been in the doingit for 30 years.
Maybe I would have still missed it, but I think that by the time
I retired, I mean I retired 6 1/2 years ago on my 70th
(08:01):
birthday. So I worked a long time.
I worked a long time and I was, it sounds like, you know, I I
was unhappy about, you know, thebusiness.
It's just but I I was ready. It was time and.
I had spent a lot of years working seven days a week up to
(08:23):
15 hour days. I spent a lot of years doing
things not only in news but alsofor community organizations.
I spent a lot of years working very, very hard and I think that
for me it was just time and it turned out to be great.
The first week after retirement,I just sort of sat and didn't do
(08:47):
anything. And just sort of let myself
unwind. And then I slowly began to look
for things that, you know, I hadno idea what I was going to do
because I've worked all the time.
And when you work all the time, you don't really get a chance to
think, do I have hobbies? Do I have other things?
Do I have other talents? And so I began to explore that
(09:08):
and have found a few things thathave nothing to do with news
that I get to do. And so that's terrific.
And occasionally I'm still askedto do a few things that.
Use the skills that I developed and so that's been nice too.
But retirement? I love it.
You find yourself watching the news and start being very
(09:29):
critical or do you have that sense of of that that itch every
now and then say, gosh, if I haddone it this way, you know this
would have been better. Do you find yourself having a
hard time watching the news, or do you?
Or do you just absorb it like any other regular person does?
(09:51):
I have to admit to you that I don't watch the news very much
anymore. I have time now to read more
news. I occasionally do watch some
news on television. And yes, you're right.
I look at it with a critical eyethat maybe I did not have when I
(10:11):
was in it. And so there and also for me, I
think I look, I watch news in a different way because I
understand the time constraints.I understand, especially with
the network news, how little time there is, say in an evening
newscast it's 1/2 hour. I understand you know that
(10:34):
sometimes 4 seconds, 2 seconds of of words.
Maybe goes over the time limit. And so I understand that when
things are cut out and that it bothers me still to to sit there
and hear a piece and then, you know, say to the TV, but what
(10:55):
about this? But did you mean that or who
said that? Who, Where did you find that
out? You know, so there's a little
bit of that, but mostly I stay away from the news now.
Oddly, oddly enough, because it surprised me too.
Yeah, I wonder about your own feelings about where mainstream
(11:17):
media is going into these days, especially with social media and
then AI. I wonder if you have any
thoughts on that too, especiallywith the ever changing landscape
of of The Newsroom. I think that's why I felt like I
retired at the right time because.
(11:37):
All news print, you know, radio,television, magazines, podcasts,
it's all changing. It's, it's.
And I'm not sure that I know. I am sure that I I feel that
(11:58):
it's not changing for the better.
There is, you know, someone a former president.
Started using the the words fakenews and before that for the
word fake and news was not something that you put together.
(12:20):
News was supposed to be, and journalists were supposed to
look at that as news was. It was in.
Important that it be honest. It was important that it was be
true and it was important that it be unbiased.
At least that's the way it was in this country when I started.
I know that there are other countries where news worked
(12:43):
because they took the position. You know, they they had a goal
in mind. You know, if news was was a tool
of the government, that definitely was not news the way
we in the United States used to understand it.
But there are other countries inEurope where it it worked
because a certain news outlet took a position and you knew
(13:07):
what their side was. You knew what their politics
were. You knew what their their social
commitment or social position was.
And the United States didn't do that for a long time.
It certainly has changed now because very definitely, news
organizations take a very strongposition.
We know that. You know, there are plenty of
(13:28):
those. And that still bothers me
because I came from a time, or at least I was trained in a
time, that you were supposed to be objective, you were supposed
to be the one who was the voice of just what was honest.
And that was always important tome.
So yes. That is very difficult for me to
look at now and see how completely radically different a
(13:53):
lot of broadcast and a lot of print organizations have become.
AI That's scary. It really is.
It's was a couple of months ago that one of the companies that
is doing so much research and has you know the different A I
apps came out with an A I generated news anchor person and
(14:18):
this person looked absolutely real and so.
I think it's something that not journalists aren't the only ones
that worry about it. I mean, the Writers Guild strike
in the sag after strike, right? The going on right now have
everything to do with that. Because there's the fear that a
(14:39):
I can replace us. It can replace the work that the
journalists do. And not only that, it can put
falsehoods. Into the mouths, into the
scripts, into the videos. It can put falsehoods.
We know that and it's very hard to tell what is true and what is
(15:00):
false. That's scary.
Yeah, I'm thank you for sharing that too.
I do find it very concerning from what you mentioned about
where AI is going into and also how people consume news and what
is real and what isn't the the growing distrust of the the
public over news. And I wanted to go backwards for
(15:24):
a moment. What can you share about your
early upbringing being raised inAmerica, and what challenges did
you experience that made you realize how different you are as
an Asian American? We came to the United States
when I was not quite five years old.
I was born in China and we got out of China when I was two
(15:47):
years old, just as Mao. And the Communists were coming
into power. And my family background is such
that we really felt like it was dangerous for us to remain in
China because my father was a Protestant minister on my
mother's side. We were royalty.
My maternal grandmother was actually in line to become the
(16:11):
next Empress of China. And I mean I joke about it and
say. You know, some people would joke
about it when they heard about it, since you're a Princess and
I go, no, I'm an Empress, you know.
But back then, it was serious and it was not a safe thing for
us. And so we got out of China.
(16:32):
We were in Hong Kong for a couple of years.
It's a long, long story about how we finally got to the United
States, but we did. But I was not quite five years
old and came to United States knowing only three words of
English. I mean, my parents had studied
English in college. My father had been in this
country for a couple, you know, some years ahead of us.
(16:53):
And so both my my parents wantedmy I had an older sister, a
sister two years older than me, wanted us to speak English in
the home so that we could learn it, and so that they felt
theirs. Their English would improve too,
as along with us learning it. And I'm grateful for that in one
(17:18):
way, in that I think that I was able then speech pattern wise,
to do what I ended up doing because I learned English so
carefully and so rapidly at a young age.
In a negative way, it meant I forgot a lot of my Chinese, and
(17:38):
as I grew older I began to go back to try to find out or try
to relearn. Or learn more Chinese.
So you know, there was that aspect.
But then in many cases, we were different.
We were the different ones. And you know, I'm sure you've
experienced this. I'm sure lots and lots of Asians
(17:59):
of experiences, either you were the only one or people just
didn't get that they were curious, not always in a
friendly way, because we were different when we.
My father had already established himself in
Philadelphia, where he had been going to school.
And when we came, and so we had a home and he had a job.
(18:22):
He was the pastor of a Chinese church.
And so that we were surrounded by Chinese people.
And so it wasn't until I got a little older that I realized
that I was not the most popular kid in school, because I was
little and I was shy. And I was different from
everybody and not everybody. Cared to talk to me.
(18:46):
We had to. We moved to Indiana after a
couple of years because for my father and you know, for all
Asians, education is so important.
And so my father had all his degrees in China and he felt
like they don't count in the United States.
So I need to do it all over again and have my degrees in the
(19:07):
United States. So we moved to a little town in
Indiana where there was a Christian college, and we ended
up in this little town because when my father went there to
look for a place for my mother, him, my mother and my sister and
I. And at that point we had, I had
a baby sister to live. No one would rent to us because
(19:32):
we were Chinese, because they didn't know anything about
Chinese people. Because as I discovered later
on, as an adult, it had been a difficult place to be African
American, to be black and no onewould rent to us.
And we finally were very lucky as my father was about to give
(19:54):
up and he was putting gas in hiscar in a gas station to head
back to Philadelphia. To say to my to tell my mother,
I don't know what we're going todo.
I don't know where we're going to live, but we have to come
down because he was going to go to school there.
The gas station attendant walkedup to my father and said what
(20:15):
are you doing here? And I don't know.
My dad never told us the story, whether it was in a difficult
conversation or not. But my father told him the truth
and said I told him that you know, no one would rent to us
and he was trying to find some place for us.
And there was an elderly lady who was also getting gas in her
(20:39):
car and she heard my father say that and she walked up to my dad
and she said I'll rent to you. I don't live in this town, but I
live in the next little in the little town, like about 20
minutes away. And I have a duplex I'll rent to
you. And years later, not not even
(21:01):
years later, but after we had moved there, I ended up calling
her grandma. That's great.
Yeah. So, so, overt discrimination.
I was very lucky that I didn't experience hate, but I certainly
experienced in a lot, an awful lot of What are you?
(21:25):
Who are you? I don't know.
Anybody like you or looks like you.
I don't quite know what to make of you, that kind of thing.
I have to say that when I first got to Chicago and I worked for
Channel 5, NB C5 and the first time I appeared on the air, you
(21:49):
know they somebody, an anchor was was gone and I filled in on
a weekday. I was hired to do the weekends
and be a reporter during the week.
And when I got off the air, I walked back into The Newsroom
and the phones were all lit up. Back then, you know, you had all
these phones with buttons. You know, when somebody called,
(22:11):
the light went on in the button and so and everybody was trying
to answer these phones and they look up at me kind of irritated
and I thought, did I say something wrong?
Did I, you know, what did I do? I have been so careful before
going on of checking pronunciations of all of the
local, you know, locations and names of people.
(22:33):
And I thought what did I do? And one of the.
So I walked up to somebody and said, why is everybody looking
at me like this? And the producer said, since
you've been on the air, the phones have lit up and
everybody's asking, what is she?And I thought, what does that
mean? You know, what is?
(22:53):
What is she? Because I'm, I'm female.
I'm a reporter today. I anchored the news.
What does that mean? And then it dawned on me and I
said, oh, I'm Chinese. And the producer said, oh, OK
And yelled out to The Newsroom, she's Chinese, OK, she's Chinese
(23:14):
American. And people got back on the phone
and started answering People, basically.
And I saw that as not so much ofthat.
People were being racist about it.
I saw it as curiosity because they'd never seen someone like
me on their TV sets in Chicago. And I think that's when I
(23:36):
realized that I had a responsibility.
And that's what sense of responsibility started here.
Thank you for sharing that incredible story and and also.
Going back to how serendipitism was to meet that woman who would
later rent to your family, that that is incredible.
(23:58):
I mean, just the journey itself.Yeah.
And what were some of your earlier experiences that will
lead you to pursue journalism? Excuse me, What?
Oh, what were some of your earlier experiences that would
lead you to pursue journalism? So when I was graduating from
(24:21):
high school, and that was way before you were even an idea,
that was, I graduated in 1964 K from high school.
And so approaching the graduation from high school, I
was trying to think of what I wanted to study in college.
(24:41):
And back then, women became teachers or women became nurses.
Women became dieticians. There weren't a lot of fields
that most young girls thought were open to us.
And no matter what color of yourskin, you just didn't think
(25:03):
about all of that. And so I first and and we
couldn't afford a four year university then.
So I started in junior college, and partially because we
couldn't afford tuition, some, you know, at some university,
and also because I wasn't sure what I wanted to study.
So I started in junior college and I thought OKI had written
(25:29):
something for my high school publication.
And so I thought, OK, but maybe I'll become a teacher and I took
English classes. It was something I was better
at. Unlike the stereotypical Asian
is good at math. I was terrible, terrible at
math. So I took English classes and
some months into my first semester I just didn't, you
(25:54):
know, knew that I wasn't excitedand sat down with my mother and
told her that. And I said I don't think I want
to be a teacher. I don't, I don't know what I
want to do. And my mother surprised me and
she said, would you do somethingfor me?
I said sure. And she said, would you take a
(26:14):
journalism class? And I said why?
And she said that she had alwaysdreamed of being a journalist
because in China one of her older sisters had moved to Japan
and had married someone there. And she became, she went, went
(26:34):
to work for a newspaper. And my mother just thought that
was the most wonderful thing because it was a career, you
know, and that hadn't occurred to her.
And she didn't know. You know, she tried to do some
writing, but she just thought that was exciting.
And so she said to me, would youtake a journalism class?
(26:55):
So I said, sure, why not? So I took a journalism class at
that junior college and I fell in love.
I It was a class where I went out and found out about things
that were happening on campus. And I would, I could write
stories about it. And then luckily for me, the
(27:16):
local newspaper would sometimes run the stories.
And that my instructor in that class, the first time I wrote a
story and I didn't know anythingabout a lead.
I didn't know anything about, you know, who, what, where,
when, why, how. I didn't know anything about
those things he was going to teach me.
But he sent me out to cover the first story, and I wrote the
(27:38):
story I had told him about my mother's, you know, asking me to
take a journalism class. So when I turned in the story
and then he looked at it and he said to me, did your mother
write this? And I said, no, my mother didn't
write this, you know, And he said you're a good writer.
And I just, that was it for me. It was, it opened such a door, a
(28:02):
world for me. And I found that I loved going
out, getting information, finding out stuff, you know,
talking to people, all of that kind of thing.
And in in some cases, I began tolearn getting all the different
because it's not just two sides to a story.
There are many sides to a story.Getting as much as I could about
(28:23):
it. Then checking, you know, having
this instructor say, OK, is thistrue?
Did you check? How do you do it?
Teaching me all of those things.And then I would be, I would be
writing stories after story after story.
And then I ended up working for the school's newspaper and
getting more of that sort of daily experience, OK, for the
(28:45):
for the school newspaper. And just the world had opened up
to me. I loved it.
And so that's how I got into journalism.
Thank you. And you know it remind there's a
story that I'd like to share. So, like, when I pursue
journalism, I wasn't predominantly white.
Spaces and too often I was the only Asian person there.
(29:06):
I found it very difficult to find a mentor, especially when
it looked like me that could have guided me in those
environments. And gosh, it was very difficult
for me to find a job where people would take me seriously,
especially in that field where it is very white presenting and.
A lack of Asian American visibility and were you
(29:28):
struggling to find out whether you were cut out to be a
journalist? And did you receive the
mentorship that you were lookingfor?
The same thing happened to me where there weren't, you know,
other Asians that I could look up to or go to and ask questions
of. It also was difficult because I
(29:50):
was not a guy when I started to look for work after college you
I could. I went back to the newspaper
that had run some of my stuff when I had started college, Went
back. It was a it was a good size
daily suburban paper that was very much respected.
(30:14):
And so I thought, okay, that could be some place I could
start. And guys were called Cub
reporters and back then they made a cub reporter, made
$125.00 a week. I would have been I was called a
girl reporter and I would would have been paid $97.50 a week.
(30:37):
And so it was a matter of not only was there anybody that I
could talk to and ask questions of who was Asian, I also wasn't
male. And so that was difficult and I
ended up not going to work at the newspaper.
I ended up starting my own. I went no, I went to work for a
(30:59):
public relations firm and then eventually got back into
journalism via television. But it was something that really
stayed with me because as I onceI had my career established in
Chicago in particular, because they felt more established once
(31:21):
I got to Chicago, I thought about that and thought, you
know, if there had been anybody who I could have talked to,
anybody who would have reached out to help me, it would have
made a difference in terms of myprogress.
It would have made a difference in terms of my confidence.
It would have made a difference in terms of maybe my choosing,
(31:46):
where I might want my career to go.
Wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be nice to have an
organization that would help young journalists?
And so I helped to start one, and that's the Asian American
Journalists Association. Some others in Los Angeles had
started it. And one, you know, one of the
guys that I worked with had saidstart a chapter in Chicago.
(32:10):
And I did. And to me that was very, very
important because. Yeah, like you.
I wish there was somebody who I could talk to, somebody who
would mentor me. It turned out that my mentors
were white guys. Yes, that was also the
(32:32):
experience that I had too. And there was still a
limitation. They weren't preparing me for
the aspect of me being an Asian American in this field, let
alone a Southeast Asian American.
And not having the network because my parents came as
refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia.So that was also another thing I
(32:53):
had to contend with was the factthat the my internship
supervisor was a young white manbut was also comes from a very
wealthy family with networks andI did not have a network and I I
just kind of wonder what would the trajectory have looked like
for me had I? Gotten that support and it's
(33:16):
another thing that I don't thinkabout as often anymore because,
you know, I've moved on from it.But I wonder what my 20s would
have looked like and how that would have changed the
trajectory of my career. And then there's another aspect
to it too, because of the difficulty in having somebody to
look up to or to help guide you through, and that is it.
(33:38):
It happened in particular when Iwas in San Francisco that I
really noticed it. And I realized in retrospect
when I when I started on air in Portland, because my next on air
job was in San Francisco. When I got to San Francisco,
there were a lot. The population of Asian
(33:59):
Americans was much, much larger.And so by the time I got there,
each of the TV stations, excuse me, had one of us.
And partially because of the theFCC requirements and everything,
one of us also meant one of us was female because we used to
(34:22):
call ourselves 2 pointers because the FCC wanted you to
diversify and the FCC wanted stations to also hire more
women. And so a lot of stations then
hired an Asian woman or an Asianor a black woman or a Hispanic
woman because each of us then would be a 2 pointer for them.
(34:45):
And so each station had one Asian American female.
And I realized that there were reporters and there were, you
know, in print in San Francisco,also in radio also.
They were beginning to be more Asian Americans because of
(35:05):
population of Asians was so muchlarger there.
But I began to realize that there were some who did not want
to cover stories that had to do with Asian Americans because
there was the fear that that would put you in that slot and
that you would never be able to grow out of that.
(35:28):
And that was disturbing to me. I started covering stories that
had to do with Asians, particularly Chinese, because
even though my Chinese was limited, I still spoke some
Chinese. And I felt like I could
communicate often with people and have a better understanding
(35:51):
of their story because of that. And I talked to other Asian
reporters and said it's important to be able to cover
stories that have to do with ourown people because we might have
a better understanding culturally and we can tell the
story better. But that was that was another
side of the difficulty for when we were starting out.
(36:14):
Excuse me? Yeah, and also it prevents the
erasure of Asian American stories too.
And also history. And which is why it's so
critical to advocate for Asian American stories to be.
In traditional social media outlets to have these stories be
front and center, especially in the wake of what happened with
(36:37):
COVID, with anti Asian hate crimes and racism, that's that's
happened. And yeah, I also, with that
said, over the course of your career and now, do you feel
encouraged by the number of Asian Americans entering into
media or do you feel that it is still slow moving?
(36:58):
No, I am much more encouraged about the number who are coming
in. And the the problem now for a
lot of those who want to be in TV is that, you know, and I I
can't really speak to other media, but you know, I know more
(37:19):
about broadcast. The problem is that it's the,
you know, broadcasting, especially in the smaller
markets doesn't pay very well. And so it has been a field and I
think it applies to, to everyoneelse too, to every other color
(37:40):
of skin that the men tend not togo now into the broadcast
because when you start in the small market, you're not making
very much. And so they go and look for
other fields where they can makemore for women.
(38:01):
You know, the feeling is, well, this is more open to me maybe
still than some other other fields.
And so it has become more, especially in the small markets,
more of a growth area for females.
What will that mean as they moveon?
(38:22):
I don't know yet I do. You know what I am encouraged
about is that I do see more people of color, but
particularly women of color, youknow, say reaching the larger
markets, reaching network level and hope there's more of us.
(38:43):
Indeed. And you've been living in
Chicago for several decades. So what made Chicago unique to
you? There is a warmth to the people
of Chicago that I think is different.
(39:04):
I think every city has its own personality and the people who
live in it are affected by that,but they also create that
personality and the difference for me, when I was working in
Chicago and my career was growing in Chicago, and then,
(39:24):
you know, occasionally I'd be inNew York for something.
And the feeling of there's just a more openness and a more.
At the time there, there was just a more trusting kind of a
feeling that I got from people in Chicago.
(39:44):
What I liked when I first came was that people were curious
about me, but they were also open, but they also would call
you on things. You know, I covered a lot of
stories in Portland, in San Francisco, but I never got the
kind of thing I got in Chicago where people would say would
(40:06):
back then they would write or maybe they would call, you know,
Nowadays they'll they'll go on Facebook and they'll go on
Instagram and go on whatever, you know, and but in Chicago,
they would say. What did you mean by that?
Who told you that? Why didn't?
Why didn't you ask? You know, they, they wanted to
know. They were open to that and they
(40:28):
weren't afraid to come and ask you.
And in that sense, I got more ofa feeling of connectedness with
the people of Chicago. And I think maybe that's what
worked for me as a career here was that as I responded to
people like that, I began. I felt more and more at home.
(40:50):
I reached out. I think people felt like I was
more and more part of the city. And maybe that's why the career
became so long and was successful, because I responded
to that kind of a feeling and that kind of curiosity, that
kind of welcoming, that kind of questioning, you know, from the
(41:13):
people in the city. And that's, I think that's why
this city is so special to me. What personal favorite memories
can you share about your time with ABC7?
There's a memory and a gratitudethat applies to both stations.
(41:35):
I was at Channel 5 when one day the news director said there's
some stuff going on and we're curious about it.
It's in China and we're going tosend you there.
And while you're there, we know that you don't know.
You know, you were really littlewhen you left, so you want to go
(41:58):
find where you were born. And it was like, you're asking
me, would I like to, and you're going to send me to that?
And they did. And then when I got it over to
Channel 7, same thing happened. There were things going on in
China. There were things going on.
You know there were other thingsthat were from China that were
(42:19):
being brought to Chicago. And a news directors brings me
and when they said I know that it means a lot to you and you've
covered stories back in China. We watched it when you were in
in and did it for Channel 5. You want to go back like, wow,
you know, they sent me back to China a couple times.
(42:45):
So across both from both of those stations, the fact that
they wanted me to go, the fact that there were stories there
that was, that were important that they felt to the Chicago
market, even though at the time the Asian population in Chicago
was not huge. And the fact that they trusted
(43:05):
me to do that, yeah, that's got to be my best memory.
And it crosses both stations. What advice would you give to
younger Asian Americans going into journalism?
I know you've kind of alluded tosome of it in our conversation,
but what would you give? What advice would you give to
them? You know, my, my advice to young
(43:29):
Asians going into the field has been the same pretty much as the
advice to any young person who has come to me over the course
of my career. And there have been a lot.
And the first thing, especially nowadays that I would say, which
I didn't used to say, but the first thing I would say now is
(43:51):
be prepared to work really, really hard.
We have a generation now that doesn't really think they need
to work seven days a week and it's probably not really healthy
for you to work seven days a week.
But I did. And it it wasn't a what I
(44:11):
learned from doing that was thatI took every opportunity
possible. Let me do that story, let me
work that shift. Let me learn about that.
Let me do that so that when another opportunity came to move
up, I was ready. And that to me is very
(44:31):
important. The second thing that I think is
very important for a young person going into the field is
has remained the same always. And that is learn as much as you
can about as many things as you can.
You need to be somebody who knows everything because you
don't know what's going to fall in your lap in terms of a story.
(44:52):
Is it going to be a story where there's some terrible breaking
news, You know, it's another terrible shooting and these and
it it happens and it's in the school where they mostly speak
Spanish. I don't.
Doesn't mean you have to go out and learn every language, but
learn something about the culture so that you can
(45:12):
understand something about what motivates the people, the the,
the families, the children that that happens to.
Or the example I used to give ina smaller market when you first
start out is that isn't exactly true in a larger market.
But in a smaller market you could spark start your day and
be sent to the airport because apolitician is flying in for a
(45:36):
really quick news conference or or a tour of something really
quick. So you need to understand the
politics of the US You need to understand what's happening
politically, whether it's the campaign time or it's somebody
who's running for reelection andyou know and where they're going
and understand something about that, that kind of business or
know what kind of questions to ask about why they're doing, why
(45:58):
they're going to that. So you do that and you send the
story in. And then in the afternoon, it
could be that you're sent to a hospital because they have an
announcement about some new procedure or somebody needs a
transplant. Whatever the story is, you need
to understand something about the business of hospitals.
You need to understand about some basic understanding of
(46:21):
medicine, Maybe something about transplant or something about
cancer, if that's what the story's about, Okay.
And then if you're still workingthat night and it's the opening
of the opera season, you need tounderstand, you know, something
about opera, something about music, something about society
and who the patrons that go there and what's important about
(46:43):
that and why that's an importantsocial kind of event.
Those things could that could happen in a small market where a
TV reporter could cover those. Certainly nowadays in any size
market, a radio reporter would be doing that and having to post
stories and and clips from it orsound bites or something from it
(47:06):
all day long. You've got to know all of these
things so that not so that you know everything about
everything, but you know enough.And this is what I always used
to stress, you know enough to ask the right questions.
And so those I think would be bytwo most important things.
Whoever you are, if you're starting out that you need to be
(47:29):
prepared to always be paying attention, always be paying
attention to the news, always beprepared to read a book that was
written ages ago or look back into history and understanding
it's something about that, so that you know the history of
something that led to to what's happening out.
(47:51):
All of those things are important that you've got to
keep learning, keep knowing so that you're prepared to ask the
right questions. My goodness that is so profound.
And also very exhausting too, I must admit.
Yep, and it means working very hard.
That's why I started out with working hard.
Because you need to. Because you need to be ready
(48:15):
when the opportunity comes. Great advice and in your
retirement life, what are your plans for the rest of this year?
I don't know. That's the good thing about
retirement. We talk about that sometimes
with why are we rushing to something?
(48:36):
We're retired. We don't have to rush.
We can decide, you know, I want to do this or that.
I mean, after the pandemic last November, we had a chance to to
travel and so we went on, let's see.
The trip lasted for me 4 weeks. For my husband, it lasted a
(48:57):
little longer because he kept ongoing.
But so in the last few months I've been to left Chicago to be
with family in Los Angeles, wentto Honolulu to see some people,
then went to Guam, went to Palau, went to Saipan, went to
South Korea, went all over Australia and then came home.
(49:19):
And then an opportunity came up within a couple of months that
we just didn't expect that sort of fell in our laps.
But you can do this, let something fall in your lap.
When you retired. It was a chance to go to Borneo
and wanted to go because before the pandemic we had gone to
Rwanda because I wanted to see the the great, the great apes,
(49:41):
the the silverback, the gorillas, and got a chance to do
that. After that I thought I want to
see orangutans in the wild. And so that was on, you know,
something that I wanted to do. And somebody said, hey, we're
going on a trip to Borneo and weand I said take notes, OK, take
notes. And they said why?
(50:02):
And I said because that's where I wanted to go next and they
said we'll come and three weeks later I was in Borneo.
So I don't know what might be instore for the rest.
It's just I'm very blessed that I can go and do these things
because I can afford to. Now I'm forever grateful for
(50:24):
that because I grew up so poor. And so I'm so grateful that, you
know, I have the ability to thenwherewithal to do that.
But also because I'm retired. And once again, you know, when
the opportunity comes and now it's it's a whole different set
of tools that I have. But it's also a mindset too that
(50:49):
allows me to say this opportunity is here.
I have a mindset that says I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll go, So
it's been great. So who knows what's going to
have what might pop up in the next couple of months and and
we'll say sure we're going, we're going to or we'll do it.
(51:09):
I am so happy for you. I am so glad that you are
enjoying your retirement life tothe fullest, especially after
working so hard after all these decades And just to be able to
travel and to be able to connectwith folks along the way and to
experience that pleasure is is amazing.
And and one final question. So if you were to talk to your
(51:30):
22 year old self, what will you tell that person?
I think I would say to that person you have no idea yet the
worlds that will open up and take advantage of it.
Because I think that I did not take advantage, because I worked
(51:52):
all the time and, you know, in some ways working all the time
and getting ready for stuff and always learning about stuff.
That did open worlds for me in adifferent way.
It opened worlds for me that I had tried to study more
histories that I would know. I tried to, you know, learn more
(52:18):
about music so that I would knowI all sorts of things.
You know, some things that I wasn't good at, you know, like
thinking I need to understand more about the world of math and
where that leads to. But I was not good at it, you
know, But wanting wanting to so that I would know so those
worlds open to me. That helped me in working.
(52:42):
So I think I would have said to the young me, yeah, do that.
But find some time also to explore worlds that are just
good to experience rather than just working, because that's
what I did. It worked.
And you know that that kind of goes against what I just said
about working really hard, you know.
(53:04):
But in your work, think about that.
You want to be somebody who experiences a lot.
And I don't think that I did that so much.
I learned a lot, but I didn't goout and experience it myself and
I wish now that I had. I don't regret working hard on
(53:27):
my life. I don't regret working the way I
did. But now that I am seeing the
world, meeting other people, meeting people of different
cultures too, and appreciating that, I wish I had done that
earlier so that I would have felt like my life was more
(53:50):
rounded and who knows where thatwould have led me to, you know?
I want to say thank you so much for this incredible, memorable
conversation. I have to say that my 10 year
old self would have been very inawe, you know, just talking to
you. Because that's how I grew up.
(54:11):
I grew up watching the news. I mean, a lot of people would, a
lot of kids in my age would watch sitcoms and I did some of
that too. But.
I was always drawn to the news as a kid, and for me to have
that conversation with you many years later, it is cathartic,
it's it's inspiring. And I just want to say thank you
(54:32):
for all the hard work that you've done for Chicago in in
the in the news media landscape.But you mean you've have changed
the face of Chicago media forever.
And I also want to say that there's so many young.
And current journalists, Asian American journalists out there
too, that are not thriving in their work.
(54:54):
And it's people like you that have helped pave the way.
So thank you for doing this and I cannot be any more grateful to
just have this conversation withyou.
Well, thank you. Thank you for asking me too, and
thank you for asking really goodquestions.
I appreciate. That very much.
Hi everyone, This is Randy from the Bunby Chronicles podcast.
So today I am here with the legendary icon Linda.
You. Linda, You has been caught.
A trailblazer, mentor and awardwinning journalist, she
recently stepped back from dailybroadcasting after more than 40
years in television news. You began her career in 1974 as
a writer for the Los Angeles ABCstation KABCTV and then went on
(00:28):
to become a writer producer at KTLATV.
In 1975, she stepped in front ofthe camera as a reporter for the
ABC affiliate station in Portland, OR KATUTV.
Within months she received an offer from a BC owned station,
KGOTV in San Francisco, as reporter in Anchor where you
worked from 1976 to 1979. In 1979, she was spotted by the
(00:53):
NBC owned station in Chicago, WMAQTV, and moved to the Windy
City. As we can anchor and reporter,
part of You's motivation for accepting the position was that
she would be the first Asian American to appear on a Chicago
network network station. Five years later, ABC won her
back and she moved to 8 Chicago's ABC7W LSTV to anchor
(01:16):
the station's newly created 4:00PM news hour.
Later, an 11:00 AM news hour wasadded to anchor duties.
Both news program maintain theirnumber one rating throughout her
33 year career at ABC7. Among the honors and recognition
for you are 6 local Emmy Awards as well as induction into the
prestigious silver circle of legendary Chicago broadcasters.
(01:40):
She has been named one of today's Chicago Women's Magazine
100 Women to Watch and has been awarded a National Gold Medal by
the National Conference of Community and Justice.
Wow, what a career you have had.It is a tremendous honor to have
you on my show. I would like to give a personal
shout out to another news icon, Joan Esposito, for connecting
(02:02):
both of us. I want to say that I grew up
watching you on ABC7 as a kid. You were one of the few people
you know. You were one of the few people I
could look up to because of how important it was to see people
who look like me in a time when there's so very few Asians in
the in media. I became a journalism student in
(02:25):
college because of you. And even my dad, who has had a
lot of hesitation about me goinginto journalism, gave in because
he too, was an admirer of your work.
So thank you for being on my show today.
It's a. Pleasure, Ben.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
It's great to meet you. And you know, you use the word
(02:47):
legendary a couple of times. I I don't feel worthy of that,
but it meant a lot to me that I had a responsibility, and that's
how I saw it. I had a responsibility to be the
person that you could, that other Asian Americans could look
(03:10):
at and respect. Maybe look up to, but feel that
they had somebody who look like them, which I think was so
important for young Asian Americans, male or female.
And to be that kind of a role model for them was a very
(03:30):
important responsibility for me.I knew that in Chicago.
I was the very first I found outlater on.
Because back when I started in Portland, OR, I was too
overwhelmed that I was just starting out to even think about
that. But I was also the 1st in
Portland OR too. And so being the first of
(03:52):
something, some people may not take it as a responsibility.
I certainly did and it's it's great for me to hear from you as
well as other people along the way.
That it made a difference to them.
To see me I have to one of the stories that I love.
Can I tell it? Yes, Absolutely.
(04:15):
So my younger brother, when he got out of college, had started
working in a bookstore. And this is many, many years
ago, but he worked in a bookstore and he's checking out
a customer one day. And it was a young Chinese
woman, and he looked at her credit card, and her credit card
said that her name was Linda. You Wong and he said why is your
(04:41):
name Linda, you Wong? And she said, well, my family's
from San Francisco and we watched someone named Linda you
on television and my parents named me for her because they
had never seen an Asian on television before.
And my brother said that's my sister and.
(05:04):
You know, it was a great moment for both of them, and he didn't
remember to tell me for a coupleof months.
But it's the that kind of thing that made me feel really good,
that I opened some doors for people.
But, and even for those who didn't go into journalism, it
(05:24):
was important to me to find out that it made such a difference
to be able to see somebody who looked like us.
Do you often feel that pressure to be the first constantly when
you were in Portland and Chicagofor that matter?
Sure, there was pressure, but itwas pressure I accepted because
(05:46):
I thought that was important. And you know, and it was
important in many different ways.
I knew that there were little Asian girls and boys out there
who were seeing me. I knew that there were.
Asian adults too, who maybe camefrom countries where they didn't
trust journalism because, and weknow that because there were
(06:09):
many countries that they came from where journalists or news
operations anyway were really anarm of the government.
And so that was wasn't somethingthat they trusted and it wasn't
a field, as you know, as you mentioned too, it wasn't a field
that older Asian Americans who had come.
From other countries necessarilythought was an honorable
(06:31):
profession and they needed to learn that journalism was
different at that time in the United States.
And the another responsibility that came with that being first
was every Asian community organization, whether they were
Chinese, Vietnamese, Hmong, Korean, Japanese or.
(06:57):
All look to me. And so I was very busy doing
things and making appearances and doing fundraising and
speaking for a lot of the community organizations all
around the Chicago area, becausefor I was the only one.
And to me, that was a great responsibility.
(07:17):
Thank you for sharing that. And how have the last several
years of retirement been like for you?
And do you miss being in The Newsroom?
It's been, it's been fabulous. I was.
I was surprised and everyone whoknew me was surprised that I
made the transition so, so, so quickly and so wonderfully.
(07:41):
I do not miss being in the news.I think it had to do with just
finally being ready, you know? If I had stopped when?
You know, I've been in the doingit for 30 years.
Maybe I would have still missed it, but I think that by the time
I retired, I mean I retired 6 1/2 years ago on my 70th
(08:01):
birthday. So I worked a long time.
I worked a long time and I was, it sounds like, you know, I I
was unhappy about, you know, thebusiness.
It's just but I I was ready. It was time and.
I had spent a lot of years working seven days a week up to
(08:23):
15 hour days. I spent a lot of years doing
things not only in news but alsofor community organizations.
I spent a lot of years working very, very hard and I think that
for me it was just time and it turned out to be great.
The first week after retirement,I just sort of sat and didn't do
(08:47):
anything. And just sort of let myself
unwind. And then I slowly began to look
for things that, you know, I hadno idea what I was going to do
because I've worked all the time.
And when you work all the time, you don't really get a chance to
think, do I have hobbies? Do I have other things?
Do I have other talents? And so I began to explore that
(09:08):
and have found a few things thathave nothing to do with news
that I get to do. And so that's terrific.
And occasionally I'm still askedto do a few things that.
Use the skills that I developed and so that's been nice too.
But retirement? I love it.
You find yourself watching the news and start being very
(09:29):
critical or do you have that sense of of that that itch every
now and then say, gosh, if I haddone it this way, you know this
would have been better. Do you find yourself having a
hard time watching the news, or do you?
Or do you just absorb it like any other regular person does?
(09:51):
I have to admit to you that I don't watch the news very much
anymore. I have time now to read more
news. I occasionally do watch some
news on television. And yes, you're right.
I look at it with a critical eyethat maybe I did not have when I
(10:11):
was in it. And so there and also for me, I
think I look, I watch news in a different way because I
understand the time constraints.I understand, especially with
the network news, how little time there is, say in an evening
newscast it's 1/2 hour. I understand you know that
(10:34):
sometimes 4 seconds, 2 seconds of of words.
Maybe goes over the time limit. And so I understand that when
things are cut out and that it bothers me still to to sit there
and hear a piece and then, you know, say to the TV, but what
(10:55):
about this? But did you mean that or who
said that? Who, Where did you find that
out? You know, so there's a little
bit of that, but mostly I stay away from the news now.
Oddly, oddly enough, because it surprised me too.
Yeah, I wonder about your own feelings about where mainstream
(11:17):
media is going into these days, especially with social media and
then AI. I wonder if you have any
thoughts on that too, especiallywith the ever changing landscape
of of The Newsroom. I think that's why I felt like I
retired at the right time because.
(11:37):
All news print, you know, radio,television, magazines, podcasts,
it's all changing. It's, it's.
And I'm not sure that I know. I am sure that I I feel that
(11:58):
it's not changing for the better.
There is, you know, someone a former president.
Started using the the words fakenews and before that for the
word fake and news was not something that you put together.
(12:20):
News was supposed to be, and journalists were supposed to
look at that as news was. It was in.
Important that it be honest. It was important that it was be
true and it was important that it be unbiased.
At least that's the way it was in this country when I started.
I know that there are other countries where news worked
(12:43):
because they took the position. You know, they they had a goal
in mind. You know, if news was was a tool
of the government, that definitely was not news the way
we in the United States used to understand it.
But there are other countries inEurope where it it worked
because a certain news outlet took a position and you knew
(13:07):
what their side was. You knew what their politics
were. You knew what their their social
commitment or social position was.
And the United States didn't do that for a long time.
It certainly has changed now because very definitely, news
organizations take a very strongposition.
We know that. You know, there are plenty of
(13:28):
those. And that still bothers me
because I came from a time, or at least I was trained in a
time, that you were supposed to be objective, you were supposed
to be the one who was the voice of just what was honest.
And that was always important tome.
So yes. That is very difficult for me to
look at now and see how completely radically different a
(13:53):
lot of broadcast and a lot of print organizations have become.
AI That's scary. It really is.
It's was a couple of months ago that one of the companies that
is doing so much research and has you know the different A I
apps came out with an A I generated news anchor person and
(14:18):
this person looked absolutely real and so.
I think it's something that not journalists aren't the only ones
that worry about it. I mean, the Writers Guild strike
in the sag after strike, right? The going on right now have
everything to do with that. Because there's the fear that a
(14:39):
I can replace us. It can replace the work that the
journalists do. And not only that, it can put
falsehoods. Into the mouths, into the
scripts, into the videos. It can put falsehoods.
We know that and it's very hard to tell what is true and what is
(15:00):
false. That's scary.
Yeah, I'm thank you for sharing that too.
I do find it very concerning from what you mentioned about
where AI is going into and also how people consume news and what
is real and what isn't the the growing distrust of the the
public over news. And I wanted to go backwards for
(15:24):
a moment. What can you share about your
early upbringing being raised inAmerica, and what challenges did
you experience that made you realize how different you are as
an Asian American? We came to the United States
when I was not quite five years old.
I was born in China and we got out of China when I was two
(15:47):
years old, just as Mao. And the Communists were coming
into power. And my family background is such
that we really felt like it was dangerous for us to remain in
China because my father was a Protestant minister on my
mother's side. We were royalty.
My maternal grandmother was actually in line to become the
(16:11):
next Empress of China. And I mean I joke about it and
say. You know, some people would joke
about it when they heard about it, since you're a Princess and
I go, no, I'm an Empress, you know.
But back then, it was serious and it was not a safe thing for
us. And so we got out of China.
(16:32):
We were in Hong Kong for a couple of years.
It's a long, long story about how we finally got to the United
States, but we did. But I was not quite five years
old and came to United States knowing only three words of
English. I mean, my parents had studied
English in college. My father had been in this
country for a couple, you know, some years ahead of us.
(16:53):
And so both my my parents wantedmy I had an older sister, a
sister two years older than me, wanted us to speak English in
the home so that we could learn it, and so that they felt
theirs. Their English would improve too,
as along with us learning it. And I'm grateful for that in one
(17:18):
way, in that I think that I was able then speech pattern wise,
to do what I ended up doing because I learned English so
carefully and so rapidly at a young age.
In a negative way, it meant I forgot a lot of my Chinese, and
(17:38):
as I grew older I began to go back to try to find out or try
to relearn. Or learn more Chinese.
So you know, there was that aspect.
But then in many cases, we were different.
We were the different ones. And you know, I'm sure you've
experienced this. I'm sure lots and lots of Asians
(17:59):
of experiences, either you were the only one or people just
didn't get that they were curious, not always in a
friendly way, because we were different when we.
My father had already established himself in
Philadelphia, where he had been going to school.
And when we came, and so we had a home and he had a job.
(18:22):
He was the pastor of a Chinese church.
And so that we were surrounded by Chinese people.
And so it wasn't until I got a little older that I realized
that I was not the most popular kid in school, because I was
little and I was shy. And I was different from
everybody and not everybody. Cared to talk to me.
(18:46):
We had to. We moved to Indiana after a
couple of years because for my father and you know, for all
Asians, education is so important.
And so my father had all his degrees in China and he felt
like they don't count in the United States.
So I need to do it all over again and have my degrees in the
(19:07):
United States. So we moved to a little town in
Indiana where there was a Christian college, and we ended
up in this little town because when my father went there to
look for a place for my mother, him, my mother and my sister and
I. And at that point we had, I had
a baby sister to live. No one would rent to us because
(19:32):
we were Chinese, because they didn't know anything about
Chinese people. Because as I discovered later
on, as an adult, it had been a difficult place to be African
American, to be black and no onewould rent to us.
And we finally were very lucky as my father was about to give
(19:54):
up and he was putting gas in hiscar in a gas station to head
back to Philadelphia. To say to my to tell my mother,
I don't know what we're going todo.
I don't know where we're going to live, but we have to come
down because he was going to go to school there.
The gas station attendant walkedup to my father and said what
(20:15):
are you doing here? And I don't know.
My dad never told us the story, whether it was in a difficult
conversation or not. But my father told him the truth
and said I told him that you know, no one would rent to us
and he was trying to find some place for us.
And there was an elderly lady who was also getting gas in her
(20:39):
car and she heard my father say that and she walked up to my dad
and she said I'll rent to you. I don't live in this town, but I
live in the next little in the little town, like about 20
minutes away. And I have a duplex I'll rent to
you. And years later, not not even
(21:01):
years later, but after we had moved there, I ended up calling
her grandma. That's great.
Yeah. So, so, overt discrimination.
I was very lucky that I didn't experience hate, but I certainly
experienced in a lot, an awful lot of What are you?
(21:25):
Who are you? I don't know.
Anybody like you or looks like you.
I don't quite know what to make of you, that kind of thing.
I have to say that when I first got to Chicago and I worked for
Channel 5, NB C5 and the first time I appeared on the air, you
(21:49):
know they somebody, an anchor was was gone and I filled in on
a weekday. I was hired to do the weekends
and be a reporter during the week.
And when I got off the air, I walked back into The Newsroom
and the phones were all lit up. Back then, you know, you had all
these phones with buttons. You know, when somebody called,
(22:11):
the light went on in the button and so and everybody was trying
to answer these phones and they look up at me kind of irritated
and I thought, did I say something wrong?
Did I, you know, what did I do? I have been so careful before
going on of checking pronunciations of all of the
local, you know, locations and names of people.
(22:33):
And I thought what did I do? And one of the.
So I walked up to somebody and said, why is everybody looking
at me like this? And the producer said, since
you've been on the air, the phones have lit up and
everybody's asking, what is she?And I thought, what does that
mean? You know, what is?
(22:53):
What is she? Because I'm, I'm female.
I'm a reporter today. I anchored the news.
What does that mean? And then it dawned on me and I
said, oh, I'm Chinese. And the producer said, oh, OK
And yelled out to The Newsroom, she's Chinese, OK, she's Chinese
(23:14):
American. And people got back on the phone
and started answering People, basically.
And I saw that as not so much ofthat.
People were being racist about it.
I saw it as curiosity because they'd never seen someone like
me on their TV sets in Chicago. And I think that's when I
(23:36):
realized that I had a responsibility.
And that's what sense of responsibility started here.
Thank you for sharing that incredible story and and also.
Going back to how serendipitism was to meet that woman who would
later rent to your family, that that is incredible.
(23:58):
I mean, just the journey itself.Yeah.
And what were some of your earlier experiences that will
lead you to pursue journalism? Excuse me, What?
Oh, what were some of your earlier experiences that would
lead you to pursue journalism? So when I was graduating from
(24:21):
high school, and that was way before you were even an idea,
that was, I graduated in 1964 K from high school.
And so approaching the graduation from high school, I
was trying to think of what I wanted to study in college.
(24:41):
And back then, women became teachers or women became nurses.
Women became dieticians. There weren't a lot of fields
that most young girls thought were open to us.
And no matter what color of yourskin, you just didn't think
(25:03):
about all of that. And so I first and and we
couldn't afford a four year university then.
So I started in junior college, and partially because we
couldn't afford tuition, some, you know, at some university,
and also because I wasn't sure what I wanted to study.
So I started in junior college and I thought OKI had written
(25:29):
something for my high school publication.
And so I thought, OK, but maybe I'll become a teacher and I took
English classes. It was something I was better
at. Unlike the stereotypical Asian
is good at math. I was terrible, terrible at
math. So I took English classes and
some months into my first semester I just didn't, you
(25:54):
know, knew that I wasn't excitedand sat down with my mother and
told her that. And I said I don't think I want
to be a teacher. I don't, I don't know what I
want to do. And my mother surprised me and
she said, would you do somethingfor me?
I said sure. And she said, would you take a
(26:14):
journalism class? And I said why?
And she said that she had alwaysdreamed of being a journalist
because in China one of her older sisters had moved to Japan
and had married someone there. And she became, she went, went
(26:34):
to work for a newspaper. And my mother just thought that
was the most wonderful thing because it was a career, you
know, and that hadn't occurred to her.
And she didn't know. You know, she tried to do some
writing, but she just thought that was exciting.
And so she said to me, would youtake a journalism class?
(26:55):
So I said, sure, why not? So I took a journalism class at
that junior college and I fell in love.
I It was a class where I went out and found out about things
that were happening on campus. And I would, I could write
stories about it. And then luckily for me, the
(27:16):
local newspaper would sometimes run the stories.
And that my instructor in that class, the first time I wrote a
story and I didn't know anythingabout a lead.
I didn't know anything about, you know, who, what, where,
when, why, how. I didn't know anything about
those things he was going to teach me.
But he sent me out to cover the first story, and I wrote the
(27:38):
story I had told him about my mother's, you know, asking me to
take a journalism class. So when I turned in the story
and then he looked at it and he said to me, did your mother
write this? And I said, no, my mother didn't
write this, you know, And he said you're a good writer.
And I just, that was it for me. It was, it opened such a door, a
(28:02):
world for me. And I found that I loved going
out, getting information, finding out stuff, you know,
talking to people, all of that kind of thing.
And in in some cases, I began tolearn getting all the different
because it's not just two sides to a story.
There are many sides to a story.Getting as much as I could about
(28:23):
it. Then checking, you know, having
this instructor say, OK, is thistrue?
Did you check? How do you do it?
Teaching me all of those things.And then I would be, I would be
writing stories after story after story.
And then I ended up working for the school's newspaper and
getting more of that sort of daily experience, OK, for the
(28:45):
for the school newspaper. And just the world had opened up
to me. I loved it.
And so that's how I got into journalism.
Thank you. And you know it remind there's a
story that I'd like to share. So, like, when I pursue
journalism, I wasn't predominantly white.
Spaces and too often I was the only Asian person there.
(29:06):
I found it very difficult to find a mentor, especially when
it looked like me that could have guided me in those
environments. And gosh, it was very difficult
for me to find a job where people would take me seriously,
especially in that field where it is very white presenting and.
A lack of Asian American visibility and were you
(29:28):
struggling to find out whether you were cut out to be a
journalist? And did you receive the
mentorship that you were lookingfor?
The same thing happened to me where there weren't, you know,
other Asians that I could look up to or go to and ask questions
of. It also was difficult because I
(29:50):
was not a guy when I started to look for work after college you
I could. I went back to the newspaper
that had run some of my stuff when I had started college, Went
back. It was a it was a good size
daily suburban paper that was very much respected.
(30:14):
And so I thought, okay, that could be some place I could
start. And guys were called Cub
reporters and back then they made a cub reporter, made
$125.00 a week. I would have been I was called a
girl reporter and I would would have been paid $97.50 a week.
(30:37):
And so it was a matter of not only was there anybody that I
could talk to and ask questions of who was Asian, I also wasn't
male. And so that was difficult and I
ended up not going to work at the newspaper.
I ended up starting my own. I went no, I went to work for a
(30:59):
public relations firm and then eventually got back into
journalism via television. But it was something that really
stayed with me because as I onceI had my career established in
Chicago in particular, because they felt more established once
(31:21):
I got to Chicago, I thought about that and thought, you
know, if there had been anybody who I could have talked to,
anybody who would have reached out to help me, it would have
made a difference in terms of myprogress.
It would have made a difference in terms of my confidence.
It would have made a difference in terms of maybe my choosing,
(31:46):
where I might want my career to go.
Wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be nice to have an
organization that would help young journalists?
And so I helped to start one, and that's the Asian American
Journalists Association. Some others in Los Angeles had
started it. And one, you know, one of the
guys that I worked with had saidstart a chapter in Chicago.
(32:10):
And I did. And to me that was very, very
important because. Yeah, like you.
I wish there was somebody who I could talk to, somebody who
would mentor me. It turned out that my mentors
were white guys. Yes, that was also the
(32:32):
experience that I had too. And there was still a
limitation. They weren't preparing me for
the aspect of me being an Asian American in this field, let
alone a Southeast Asian American.
And not having the network because my parents came as
refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia.So that was also another thing I
(32:53):
had to contend with was the factthat the my internship
supervisor was a young white manbut was also comes from a very
wealthy family with networks andI did not have a network and I I
just kind of wonder what would the trajectory have looked like
for me had I? Gotten that support and it's
(33:16):
another thing that I don't thinkabout as often anymore because,
you know, I've moved on from it.But I wonder what my 20s would
have looked like and how that would have changed the
trajectory of my career. And then there's another aspect
to it too, because of the difficulty in having somebody to
look up to or to help guide you through, and that is it.
(33:38):
It happened in particular when Iwas in San Francisco that I
really noticed it. And I realized in retrospect
when I when I started on air in Portland, because my next on air
job was in San Francisco. When I got to San Francisco,
there were a lot. The population of Asian
(33:59):
Americans was much, much larger.And so by the time I got there,
each of the TV stations, excuse me, had one of us.
And partially because of the theFCC requirements and everything,
one of us also meant one of us was female because we used to
(34:22):
call ourselves 2 pointers because the FCC wanted you to
diversify and the FCC wanted stations to also hire more
women. And so a lot of stations then
hired an Asian woman or an Asianor a black woman or a Hispanic
woman because each of us then would be a 2 pointer for them.
(34:45):
And so each station had one Asian American female.
And I realized that there were reporters and there were, you
know, in print in San Francisco,also in radio also.
They were beginning to be more Asian Americans because of
(35:05):
population of Asians was so muchlarger there.
But I began to realize that there were some who did not want
to cover stories that had to do with Asian Americans because
there was the fear that that would put you in that slot and
that you would never be able to grow out of that.
(35:28):
And that was disturbing to me. I started covering stories that
had to do with Asians, particularly Chinese, because
even though my Chinese was limited, I still spoke some
Chinese. And I felt like I could
communicate often with people and have a better understanding
(35:51):
of their story because of that. And I talked to other Asian
reporters and said it's important to be able to cover
stories that have to do with ourown people because we might have
a better understanding culturally and we can tell the
story better. But that was that was another
side of the difficulty for when we were starting out.
(36:14):
Excuse me? Yeah, and also it prevents the
erasure of Asian American stories too.
And also history. And which is why it's so
critical to advocate for Asian American stories to be.
In traditional social media outlets to have these stories be
front and center, especially in the wake of what happened with
(36:37):
COVID, with anti Asian hate crimes and racism, that's that's
happened. And yeah, I also, with that
said, over the course of your career and now, do you feel
encouraged by the number of Asian Americans entering into
media or do you feel that it is still slow moving?
(36:58):
No, I am much more encouraged about the number who are coming
in. And the the problem now for a
lot of those who want to be in TV is that, you know, and I I
can't really speak to other media, but you know, I know more
(37:19):
about broadcast. The problem is that it's the,
you know, broadcasting, especially in the smaller
markets doesn't pay very well. And so it has been a field and I
think it applies to, to everyoneelse too, to every other color
(37:40):
of skin that the men tend not togo now into the broadcast
because when you start in the small market, you're not making
very much. And so they go and look for
other fields where they can makemore for women.
(38:01):
You know, the feeling is, well, this is more open to me maybe
still than some other other fields.
And so it has become more, especially in the small markets,
more of a growth area for females.
What will that mean as they moveon?
(38:22):
I don't know yet I do. You know what I am encouraged
about is that I do see more people of color, but
particularly women of color, youknow, say reaching the larger
markets, reaching network level and hope there's more of us.
(38:43):
Indeed. And you've been living in
Chicago for several decades. So what made Chicago unique to
you? There is a warmth to the people
of Chicago that I think is different.
(39:04):
I think every city has its own personality and the people who
live in it are affected by that,but they also create that
personality and the difference for me, when I was working in
Chicago and my career was growing in Chicago, and then,
(39:24):
you know, occasionally I'd be inNew York for something.
And the feeling of there's just a more openness and a more.
At the time there, there was just a more trusting kind of a
feeling that I got from people in Chicago.
(39:44):
What I liked when I first came was that people were curious
about me, but they were also open, but they also would call
you on things. You know, I covered a lot of
stories in Portland, in San Francisco, but I never got the
kind of thing I got in Chicago where people would say would
(40:06):
back then they would write or maybe they would call, you know,
Nowadays they'll they'll go on Facebook and they'll go on
Instagram and go on whatever, you know, and but in Chicago,
they would say. What did you mean by that?
Who told you that? Why didn't?
Why didn't you ask? You know, they, they wanted to
know. They were open to that and they
(40:28):
weren't afraid to come and ask you.
And in that sense, I got more ofa feeling of connectedness with
the people of Chicago. And I think maybe that's what
worked for me as a career here was that as I responded to
people like that, I began. I felt more and more at home.
(40:50):
I reached out. I think people felt like I was
more and more part of the city. And maybe that's why the career
became so long and was successful, because I responded
to that kind of a feeling and that kind of curiosity, that
kind of welcoming, that kind of questioning, you know, from the
(41:13):
people in the city. And that's, I think that's why
this city is so special to me. What personal favorite memories
can you share about your time with ABC7?
There's a memory and a gratitudethat applies to both stations.
(41:35):
I was at Channel 5 when one day the news director said there's
some stuff going on and we're curious about it.
It's in China and we're going tosend you there.
And while you're there, we know that you don't know.
You know, you were really littlewhen you left, so you want to go
(41:58):
find where you were born. And it was like, you're asking
me, would I like to, and you're going to send me to that?
And they did. And then when I got it over to
Channel 7, same thing happened. There were things going on in
China. There were things going on.
You know there were other thingsthat were from China that were
(42:19):
being brought to Chicago. And a news directors brings me
and when they said I know that it means a lot to you and you've
covered stories back in China. We watched it when you were in
in and did it for Channel 5. You want to go back like, wow,
you know, they sent me back to China a couple times.
(42:45):
So across both from both of those stations, the fact that
they wanted me to go, the fact that there were stories there
that was, that were important that they felt to the Chicago
market, even though at the time the Asian population in Chicago
was not huge. And the fact that they trusted
(43:05):
me to do that, yeah, that's got to be my best memory.
And it crosses both stations. What advice would you give to
younger Asian Americans going into journalism?
I know you've kind of alluded tosome of it in our conversation,
but what would you give? What advice would you give to
them? You know, my, my advice to young
(43:29):
Asians going into the field has been the same pretty much as the
advice to any young person who has come to me over the course
of my career. And there have been a lot.
And the first thing, especially nowadays that I would say, which
I didn't used to say, but the first thing I would say now is
(43:51):
be prepared to work really, really hard.
We have a generation now that doesn't really think they need
to work seven days a week and it's probably not really healthy
for you to work seven days a week.
But I did. And it it wasn't a what I
(44:11):
learned from doing that was thatI took every opportunity
possible. Let me do that story, let me
work that shift. Let me learn about that.
Let me do that so that when another opportunity came to move
up, I was ready. And that to me is very
(44:31):
important. The second thing that I think is
very important for a young person going into the field is
has remained the same always. And that is learn as much as you
can about as many things as you can.
You need to be somebody who knows everything because you
don't know what's going to fall in your lap in terms of a story.
(44:52):
Is it going to be a story where there's some terrible breaking
news, You know, it's another terrible shooting and these and
it it happens and it's in the school where they mostly speak
Spanish. I don't.
Doesn't mean you have to go out and learn every language, but
learn something about the culture so that you can
(45:12):
understand something about what motivates the people, the the,
the families, the children that that happens to.
Or the example I used to give ina smaller market when you first
start out is that isn't exactly true in a larger market.
But in a smaller market you could spark start your day and
be sent to the airport because apolitician is flying in for a
(45:36):
really quick news conference or or a tour of something really
quick. So you need to understand the
politics of the US You need to understand what's happening
politically, whether it's the campaign time or it's somebody
who's running for reelection andyou know and where they're going
and understand something about that, that kind of business or
know what kind of questions to ask about why they're doing, why
(45:58):
they're going to that. So you do that and you send the
story in. And then in the afternoon, it
could be that you're sent to a hospital because they have an
announcement about some new procedure or somebody needs a
transplant. Whatever the story is, you need
to understand something about the business of hospitals.
You need to understand about some basic understanding of
(46:21):
medicine, Maybe something about transplant or something about
cancer, if that's what the story's about, Okay.
And then if you're still workingthat night and it's the opening
of the opera season, you need tounderstand, you know, something
about opera, something about music, something about society
and who the patrons that go there and what's important about
(46:43):
that and why that's an importantsocial kind of event.
Those things could that could happen in a small market where a
TV reporter could cover those. Certainly nowadays in any size
market, a radio reporter would be doing that and having to post
stories and and clips from it orsound bites or something from it
(47:06):
all day long. You've got to know all of these
things so that not so that you know everything about
everything, but you know enough.And this is what I always used
to stress, you know enough to ask the right questions.
And so those I think would be bytwo most important things.
Whoever you are, if you're starting out that you need to be
(47:29):
prepared to always be paying attention, always be paying
attention to the news, always beprepared to read a book that was
written ages ago or look back into history and understanding
it's something about that, so that you know the history of
something that led to to what's happening out.
(47:51):
All of those things are important that you've got to
keep learning, keep knowing so that you're prepared to ask the
right questions. My goodness that is so profound.
And also very exhausting too, I must admit.
Yep, and it means working very hard.
That's why I started out with working hard.
Because you need to. Because you need to be ready
(48:15):
when the opportunity comes. Great advice and in your
retirement life, what are your plans for the rest of this year?
I don't know. That's the good thing about
retirement. We talk about that sometimes
with why are we rushing to something?
(48:36):
We're retired. We don't have to rush.
We can decide, you know, I want to do this or that.
I mean, after the pandemic last November, we had a chance to to
travel and so we went on, let's see.
The trip lasted for me 4 weeks. For my husband, it lasted a
(48:57):
little longer because he kept ongoing.
But so in the last few months I've been to left Chicago to be
with family in Los Angeles, wentto Honolulu to see some people,
then went to Guam, went to Palau, went to Saipan, went to
South Korea, went all over Australia and then came home.
(49:19):
And then an opportunity came up within a couple of months that
we just didn't expect that sort of fell in our laps.
But you can do this, let something fall in your lap.
When you retired. It was a chance to go to Borneo
and wanted to go because before the pandemic we had gone to
Rwanda because I wanted to see the the great, the great apes,
(49:41):
the the silverback, the gorillas, and got a chance to do
that. After that I thought I want to
see orangutans in the wild. And so that was on, you know,
something that I wanted to do. And somebody said, hey, we're
going on a trip to Borneo and weand I said take notes, OK, take
notes. And they said why?
(50:02):
And I said because that's where I wanted to go next and they
said we'll come and three weeks later I was in Borneo.
So I don't know what might be instore for the rest.
It's just I'm very blessed that I can go and do these things
because I can afford to. Now I'm forever grateful for
(50:24):
that because I grew up so poor. And so I'm so grateful that, you
know, I have the ability to thenwherewithal to do that.
But also because I'm retired. And once again, you know, when
the opportunity comes and now it's it's a whole different set
of tools that I have. But it's also a mindset too that
(50:49):
allows me to say this opportunity is here.
I have a mindset that says I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll go, So
it's been great. So who knows what's going to
have what might pop up in the next couple of months and and
we'll say sure we're going, we're going to or we'll do it.
(51:09):
I am so happy for you. I am so glad that you are
enjoying your retirement life tothe fullest, especially after
working so hard after all these decades And just to be able to
travel and to be able to connectwith folks along the way and to
experience that pleasure is is amazing.
And and one final question. So if you were to talk to your
(51:30):
22 year old self, what will you tell that person?
I think I would say to that person you have no idea yet the
worlds that will open up and take advantage of it.
Because I think that I did not take advantage, because I worked
(51:52):
all the time and, you know, in some ways working all the time
and getting ready for stuff and always learning about stuff.
That did open worlds for me in adifferent way.
It opened worlds for me that I had tried to study more
histories that I would know. I tried to, you know, learn more
(52:18):
about music so that I would knowI all sorts of things.
You know, some things that I wasn't good at, you know, like
thinking I need to understand more about the world of math and
where that leads to. But I was not good at it, you
know, But wanting wanting to so that I would know so those
worlds open to me. That helped me in working.
(52:42):
So I think I would have said to the young me, yeah, do that.
But find some time also to explore worlds that are just
good to experience rather than just working, because that's
what I did. It worked.
And you know that that kind of goes against what I just said
about working really hard, you know.
(53:04):
But in your work, think about that.
You want to be somebody who experiences a lot.
And I don't think that I did that so much.
I learned a lot, but I didn't goout and experience it myself and
I wish now that I had. I don't regret working hard on
(53:27):
my life. I don't regret working the way I
did. But now that I am seeing the
world, meeting other people, meeting people of different
cultures too, and appreciating that, I wish I had done that
earlier so that I would have felt like my life was more
(53:50):
rounded and who knows where thatwould have led me to, you know?
I want to say thank you so much for this incredible, memorable
conversation. I have to say that my 10 year
old self would have been very inawe, you know, just talking to
you. Because that's how I grew up.
(54:11):
I grew up watching the news. I mean, a lot of people would, a
lot of kids in my age would watch sitcoms and I did some of
that too. But.
I was always drawn to the news as a kid, and for me to have
that conversation with you many years later, it is cathartic,
it's it's inspiring. And I just want to say thank you
(54:32):
for all the hard work that you've done for Chicago in in
the in the news media landscape.But you mean you've have changed
the face of Chicago media forever.
And I also want to say that there's so many young.
And current journalists, Asian American journalists out there
too, that are not thriving in their work.
(54:54):
And it's people like you that have helped pave the way.
So thank you for doing this and I cannot be any more grateful to
just have this conversation withyou.
Well, thank you. Thank you for asking me too, and
thank you for asking really goodquestions.
I appreciate. That very much.
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