With booming enrollment, including a tripling of majors during the past four years, the Journalism Program is adding capacity by hiring two senior, full-time faculty members: Youjeong Kim and John Temple.
“University of Hawai’i at Mānoa is recognizing the fundamental societal need for Journalism, as the bedrock of Democracy,” said Journalism Program Director Brett Oppegaard. “UH is investing in our Democracy, by investing in Journalism, and by hiring these outstanding professors and bringing them to Hawai’i to mentor our students in the creation of better public discourse.”
Originally from South Korea, Dr. Kim worked as a television producer, making documentaries for the Korea Broadcasting System in the early 2000s, before shifting her focus to academics in the United States. She earned her master’s degree in Mass Communication from Kansas State University in 2005, then her Ph.D. in Mass Communication from Penn State University in 2010. She served as an assistant/associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology for about a decade before joining Texas State University in 2021.
Kim specializes in studies of emerging-media technologies, and media literacy, with an emphasis on the ways in which online communication affects health. The associate professor will be leading the development of multimedia classes in the program, especially those involving video production, and she will start in the Fall by teaching about news literacy in the Jour 150 class, Journalism and Society.
“This is truly a dream come true for me,” Kim said. “Living in Hawai’i and exploring an innovative journalism curriculum with immersive technology has always been a dream of mine. I can’t wait to experience the excitement and joy of life in Hawai’i.”
Professor Temple worked as a newspaper reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., and the Tampa Tribune in Tampa, Fla, before earning his M.F.A. degree in creative nonfiction writing at the University of Pittsburgh in 2002. He joined the West Virginia University faculty that year and spent more than two decades teaching in Morgantown, including a stint as Associate Dean of the university’s Reed College of Media, before joining UH.
As an investigative journalist and screenwriter, he has published several books chronicling dramatic true stories of American life that illustrate contemporary issues, such as “American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America’s Deadliest Drug Epidemic,” “Up in Arms: How the Bundy Family Hijacked Public Lands, Outfoxed the Federal Government, and Ignited America’s Patriot Movement” and “The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates.”
Most recently, Temple was a staff writer on the 2023 Showtime series “Waco: The Aftermath,” a five-part drama that recounted the disastrous 1993 FBI standoff at the Branch Davidian compound in Texas. He will use such experiences to create a new Jour 459 Special Topics class called “Journalism Meets Hollywood” this Fall, and he will also teach the required Jour 300 Reporting class that semester as a way to introduce himself to the students.
“I couldn’t be more excited to work with UH journalism students to uncover stories about this unique place,” Temple said. “The opportunity to learn more about Hawaii was irresistible to me.”