English, Spanish and now—Mandarin? In a dedication to increasing access to news, TUTV has added a new language to its lineup. Yu Chen, a freshman journalism major with aspirations in talk TV, is the founder of Temple Moment, Temple Update’s brand-new all-Mandarin newsbrief on TUTV. Currently, the show is operating remotely and broadcasting three times per week online. In addition to Temple Update and Lo Último, Temple Moment rounds out the station’s news programming with its third language. 

At the start of his freshman year at Klein College of Media and Communication in 2019, Chen thought he was on track to become a TV news anchor through journalism classes and careful reporting. He never could have predicted falling in love with production, but upon enrolling at Temple University, and certainly after seeing the shining TV studios of Annenberg Hall and the full programming lineup being produced daily, he immediately spotted where a Chinese-language show would fit in perfectly.

“I feel like Chinese is one of the most-used languages,” Chen said. “There’s a lot of Chinese international students at Temple, so I said, ‘Why can’t I make the effort to make this happen?’”

Chen says that one of the main reasons he was motivated to launch a show by and for both Chinese and Chinese-American students and those living in Greater Philadelphia was to create an opportunity for journalism students like himself to bridge the gap between Chinese- and American-style reporting. Each features distinct differences in terms of training; for example, anchors in China are often trained with a greater emphasis on vocal tone and technique, whereas at Klein, anchors are trained alongside writers, producers, videographers and photographers. While Temple Moment reports American news in a Chinese style, Chen said that he also likes to incorporate some American “twists,” such as the more animated American style of reporting.

In particular, he thought television was the right medium to not only bridge this cultural gap in content, but also to involve Chinese international students who have a passion for media. Temple Moment serves as a linguistic isthmus from Mandarin media to being comfortable, successful reporters in an American media environment, ultimately avoiding culture shock when they enter the job market.

“I know there’s a lot of newspapers, I know there’s podcasts,” he says. “But I had never seen a college broadcast TV show [in Mandarin] before.”

Right now, Temple Moment is broadcast online and on TUTV three times per week, but once campus life is resumed and production is back in full swing, Chen says the show will begin airing daily. In the meantime, the show’s team is working remotely to broadcast the show, finish up the semester and stay in touch with their families abroad amidst virus-related unease. 

Often, he has been called upon to reassure students’ parents himself. “Their parents are mostly worried about them,” Chen says. “A lot of them have been talking to me about their daughters who are in America … I just try to let them know that their kids are still okay.”

Despite the present obstacles to broadcasting daily, Temple Moment has already broken through to the larger Philadelphia audience via the app PHL Live, a news and culture app focused on Philadelphia’s Chinese community. The app publishes every Temple Moment broadcast, making it available to a wider Chinese-speaking audience outside of Temple.

Jinyan Wu, a 2020 graduate of the Media Studies and Production program, is a scriptwriter, editor and anchor on the show. She says the response has been great so far, and hopes to continue expanding it outside of Temple

“We post our shows on Instagram as well as the Temple Update page, now many people are watching,” Wu says. “We will have more content in the future in order to provide good news for audiences in not only Temple, but also the Philadelphia area.”

Both within the university and externally, it is clear that Temple Moment is gaining traction in both viewership and prestige—even so far as to win an award from the Society of Professional Journalists for its coverage of COVID-19.

“Temple Moment is generating a very positive response so far,” says Temple Update Professor Peter Jaroff. “An indication of the positive response we've been getting was the Honorable Mention award (for Temple Update, Lo Último, and Temple Moment) in last week's Collegiate Coronavirus Coverage competition, sponsored by SPJ and a number of other journalism organizations.” 

This award was given to the three shows collectively even though they were submitted as separate entries, with judges saying they were “impressed by the ambition and execution to broadcast in Spanish and in Mandarin.”

But Chen isn’t stopping there. As he is just finishing up his freshman year, he has big plans for growing and expanding all of his current efforts, including Temple Moment. A lover of conversation and interviews, he hopes to become involved with talk show hosting and production, and knows that all of these things have a home with Philadelphia and Temple’s Chinese-speaking communities.

Temple Moment broadcasts can be found on their web page, on TUTV and on the PHL Live app.