On April 19th, UCLA Asian Pacific Alumni brought in Ted Chen, news anchor from KNBC Channel 4 News and UCLA alumnus, as the keynote speaker. He described Covel Commons, the conference’s venue, as a beautiful building. He recalled living in Sproul Hall and walking all the way to Dykstra Hall every weekend to eat food because Covel wasn’t yet built. During Chen’s undergraduate days, he was involved with UCLA Radio, asking if it was still broadcasted through radio or on the Internet. His reminisces of UCLA can remind us how many years UCLA and the media have evolved.
As a broadcast journalist, he says the perks of of his career is that he can do a little bit of everything: reporting about Charlie Sheen to a story about banning sharkfins (which can turnaround Asian-themed restaurants in California). With television sales decreasing and Internet users increasing, he said it’s challenging for broadcast journalists to do their job. However, the upside to his career is that there are more stories to cover especially with helpful tools such as Twitter.
A woman in the audience asked if there was a glass-ceiling for Asian Americans in broadcast journalism. His answer: yes and no. The industry has been diversified over the years, but there are no male Asian Americans as famous as Connie Chung.
The conference filled its chairs halfway, with extra food left. Students mingled with alumni, and many even stayed behind to ask more questions from Business & Entrepreneurship panelist Eric Nakamura, CEO and Co-Founder of Giant Robot.
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