Honorary and Visiting Professors

Ford Burkhart
Honorary Professor

Dr Burkhart is a veteran journalist who has made his mark in the profession and in journalism education.  His impressive career as reporter, editor and writer has spanned four decades and three renowned news organizations, namely The Miami Herald, the Associated Press and The New York Times.  He has held teaching positions with the journalism departments at the University of Arizona and the American University in Cairo and lectured at Stanford University and Columbia University.  He was a member of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team in 2001 and received three Fulbright Fellowships to teach in Nigeria, Uganda and Malaysia.  He has an M.A. in mass communications from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in public administration from Arizona State University. He resides in Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A.

Peter Herford
Visiting Professor

A 27-year veteran of CBS News, Peter Herford was a producer for 60 Minutes and the CBS Eevening News with Walter Cronkite, Bureau Chief in the US Midwest, Paris and Vietnam during the war. He rose to executive ranks as vice president of the news division.

Currently, Herford is a Visiting Professor at JMSC HKU and a Professor at the Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication and Executive Director of the International Media Institute at the Shantou University.

Prior to joining the J-school at Shantou U in March 2003, Herford was the Senior Executive for Production for Public Radio International in the United States.

He taught for six years at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and was director of the University of Chicago’s William Benton Fellowships in Broadcast Journalism program. Herford has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Columbia College and the Graduate School of International Affairs of Columbia University.

Jim Laurie
Honorary Associate Professor

Laurie  has been associated with the University of Hong Kong and the Journalism and Media Studies Center since September 2005. As director of broadcasting and senior teaching consultant from 2005 to December 2011, he developed the radio and television components of the JMSC undergraduate and graduate MJ curriculums.   He taught courses in television writing, documentary film, and the history of television news as well as contributing to courses in television production, management and ‘covering China.’

Laurie is a veteran of more than 40 years in television and the winner of several Emmy and Peabody Awards for broadcasting.  He began his television news career at NBC News in Vietnam in 1972.   He served as a foreign correspondent for ABC News from 1978 through 1999.   Later he developed news channels in India for News Corporation’s STAR TV, and launched his own production company.  He built the JMSC’s first production center, producing university videos and two television series for the BBC in conjunction with the University of Hong Kong School of Business.   See also  www.jimlaurie.com

Nancy Tong 
Visiting Associate Professor

Nancy Tong has been producing documentaries for 30 years. She began her career as a news reporter in Hong Kong with HK-TVB.  In 1981, she moved to New York City where she has worked as an independent film producer.

Among her dozens of documentary projects areWho Killed Vincent Chin, which was nominated in 1989 for an Academy Award; In the Name of the Emperor, which was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1995; and Cancer: From Evolution to Revolution, which won a George Foster Peabody Award in 2000.  Her most recent project,Trailblazers in Habits, has raised more than US$500,000 for the Maryknoll Sisters at benefit screenings in New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver and Hong Kong.

Between 1999 and 2007, Tong taught documentary production at The School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong.  She joined the JMSC in 2008 as a Visiting Associate Professor.  In 2007 and 2008, she traveled to Iran, Indonesia and Pakistan, where she trained Muslim women to make micro-documentaries on their communities.

Raymond Wong
Honorary Professor

Raymond R. Wong began his 50–year journalism career at 17 as a reporter in a small Midwestern town in the U.S. Six newspapers and 13 years later, he became the national news editor of the Louisville (KY) Courier–Journal. In 1968, he returned to Hong Kong where he edited the Hong Kong Standard for two years, before joining the Communication Department of the then Hong Kong Baptist College. He was with the College for seven years, the last three being the department head. He joined Television Broadcasts Ltd. (TVB) as News Controller in 1977 and retired in 2004 as an Assistant General Manager overseeing news and other non–entertainment related departments.

Upon retirement, Wong was named a Distinguished Fellow of the School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University. In 2005–06, Wong chaired the government–appointed Committee on Review of Public Service Broadcasting in Hong Kong. Wong has been an Honorary Professor here at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre since 2000 and a Consultant Professor at the School of Journalism at Fudan University in Shanghai since 1998. Wong gained his Bachelor of Journalism at the University of Missouri, and was a Professional Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. He has since received scores of local, state, national and international awards in print, television journalism and media management. In 1998 he was awarded the Silver Bauhinia Star for “Distinguished Service to Education and Development of Journalism and Mass Communication in Hong Kong.”

Ruby Yang
Hung Leung Hau Ling Distinguished Fellow in Humanities

Ruby Yang is Hong Kong University’s Hung Leung Hau Ling Distinguished Fellow in Humanities at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre. She is a noted Chinese-American filmmaker whose work in documentary and dramatic film has earned her an Academy Award, two further Academy nominations, Emmy nominations, and numerous other international awards including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Journalism Award, and the Global Health Council Media Award.

In addition to producing and editing numerous documentaries and feature films, Yang co-founded the Chang Ai Media Project in 2003, which promotes public health in China. Chang Ai’s trilogy of short documentary films about modern China, all directed by Yang, include The Blood of Yingzhou District, which won an Oscar in 2007; The Warriors of Qiugang, which received an Academy nomination for best documentary short in 2011; and Tongzhi in Love, which was short-listed in the same category in 2008.

As Series Editor for Bill Moyers’ Becoming American – the Chinese Experience (PBS, March 2003), Yang supervised editing for the entire series, which received four Emmy nominations. The New York Times called it “a model documentary that gets almost everything right.”

Yang is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Arnold Zeitlin
Visiting Professor

Arnold Zeitlin has been a visiting professor in Guangzhou, teaching students journalism practice and training faculty in the new, English-language journalism programme at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (www.gdufs.edu.cn) and serving as consultant to news media organizations and other universities in China. He is managing director and chief executive officer of a U.S.-based worldwide news media consulting firm, Editorial Research & Reporting Associates (ERRA www.newerra.com), with much of its work in China. Over a 30-year period, he was a bureau chief and overseas correspondent for the Associated Press as well as Asia vice president for United Press International, and Asia center director for the Freedom Forum.