NYFA Broadcast Journalism: August 2020 Updates

August 10, 2020

Having “Guest Speakers” for instructional classes isn’t unusual. But it is unique when the guest calls-in from the middle of a raging wildfire she is covering in Southern California…

NYFA alum Karen Hua
Late Monday, after putting in a full day at KGET in Bakersfield, NYFA alum Karen Hua was sent to cover a wildfire burning out of control. It meant doing live shoots that evening, sleeping in the station SUV, and doing more live shoots Tuesday morning.
NYFA alum Karen Hua
She found time to share with the NYFA Broadcast Journalism Summer School participants what it is like to work as a multimedia journalist (MMJ), the challenges of meeting deadlines and how it really is a very small world. (Her roommate is a reporter at a rival TV station in Bakersfield.) If you want a role model, someone who embodies contemporary TV journalism in the United States, I can’t think of anyone who better fits the bill than Karen. Note she is wearing high-visibility fire gear…
Fifteen years ago I created a documentary that still remains special to me…
Still from ‘So Very Far From Home’
August 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. It also marks the 75th anniversary of an amazing rescue. During the final days of World War II, small groups of specially trained American troops parachuted into prison camps in Japanese-occupied China, liberating innocent children, their parents, teachers and friends. They had been imprisoned for the “crime” of being American, British, Australian and Dutch, confined to camps where hunger, disease, brutality and despair were their everyday companions.
‘So Very Far From Home’ title card
These are the real-life stories behind Steven Spielberg’s epic film “Empire of the Sun,” as told by those who actually lived them.
Decades later, those now-grown children still felt Very Far From Home. Because, to them, “home” would always be China. See their stories now on Vimeo.