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Bo Hee Kim
By Ilia Morshed, JCamp Class of 2021
Bo Hee Kim is on a mission to change the way journalists tell their stories and make them accessible.
Kim immigrated to America when she was three, and until college, she didn’t have a clear idea of what she wanted to be other than an English major. This led her to all kinds of writing classes, including one that introduced her to the world of journalism. The idea of being the voice for the voiceless and impacting communities convinced her that journalism was a career that represented her interests.
Her first introduction to AAJA was at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism where Kim realized there wasn’t an AAJA chapter on campus. There was one nearby in San Francisco, though, and she recalled AAJA as “a community of people who understood just the unique space that we were in when the media was and continues to be tumultuous.” One highlight of her AAJA membership was meeting KTVU’s Lloyd LaCuesta, one of the few Asian Americans in broadcasting she grew up watching.
For Kim, the idea of journalism took a turn when she was assigned to report and write about high school football players in Richmond, California. Learning many of those students didn’t have computers at home changed her perspective. She became determined to change the way journalists deliver information, especially for historically underserved and underrepresented communities. Reporting was one step towards the solution, she realized, but so was improving accessibility.
From working with Vox Media to The New York Times, Kim stays motivated by remaining curious and finding new ways to share stories with the world. As a woman of color, she also feels a responsibility to help pave the way for other journalists of color to succeed. Through her work developing and implementing more effective diversity, equity, and inclusion newsroom policies, she hopes it can “change the shape of our journalism, and it’s hopefully going to help more people of color stay at The New York Times longer and produce coverage that is richer and deeper.”
Bo Hee Kim is on a mission to change the way journalists tell their stories and make them accessible.
Kim immigrated to America when she was three, and until college, she didn’t have a clear idea of what she wanted to be other than an English major. This led her to all kinds of writing classes, including one that introduced her to the world of journalism. The idea of being the voice for the voiceless and impacting communities convinced her that journalism was a career that represented her interests.
Her first introduction to AAJA was at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism where Kim realized there wasn’t an AAJA chapter on campus. There was one nearby in San Francisco, though, and she recalled AAJA as “a community of people who understood just the unique space that we were in when the media was and continues to be tumultuous.” One highlight of her AAJA membership was meeting KTVU’s Lloyd LaCuesta, one of the few Asian Americans in broadcasting she grew up watching.
For Kim, the idea of journalism took a turn when she was assigned to report and write about high school football players in Richmond, California. Learning many of those students didn’t have computers at home changed her perspective. She became determined to change the way journalists deliver information, especially for historically underserved and underrepresented communities. Reporting was one step towards the solution, she realized, but so was improving accessibility.
From working with Vox Media to The New York Times, Kim stays motivated by remaining curious and finding new ways to share stories with the world. As a woman of color, she also feels a responsibility to help pave the way for other journalists of color to succeed. Through her work developing and implementing more effective diversity, equity, and inclusion newsroom policies, she hopes it can “change the shape of our journalism, and it’s hopefully going to help more people of color stay at The New York Times longer and produce coverage that is richer and deeper.”
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