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Yunji de Nies, a Hawaii-raised broadcast journalist with network chops, will join the KITV4 news team on the anchor desk Sept. 10.
She will co-anchor the 6 p.m. weekday news with Paula Akana and the 10 p.m. weekday news with Kenny Choi as well as do some reporting, she said.
An honors graduate of Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in political science and with a master’s degree from the University of California Berkeley School of Journalism, de Nies has been a White House correspondent and an Atlanta-based regional correspondent for ABC News, network radio broadcasts and abcnews.com. She also has been a freelance reporter and producer for CNN among other jobs since her first summer gig with ABC World News Tonight as a desk assistant in 2002.
"Once you leave here, I think you spend your whole life … just trying to come back," she said during a televised interview on KITV in 2009. She was here covering the vacation visit of President Barack Obama at the time.
"How foreshadowing," she said Tuesday. She was still under contract to the network at that time and had not been thinking about returning just yet, she said.
When the opportunity arose "it was a no-brainer for me," de Nies said. "I just didn’t think it would happen so soon."
The first syllable of Yunji is not pronounced "yoon." Yunji "rhymes with ‘bungee,’" she said. It became an easy way to explain the correct pronunciation of her name to network anchors. Her last name, de Nies, is Dutch and is pronounced "like the ladies’ first name," she said.
You’re ahead of the game if you thought "hapa." Her mother, from South Korea, and her father, from Holland, moved here after her father spent some time here on vacation.
She grew up on Oahu and attended Honolulu Waldorf School until she was 7. She and her mother then moved to Hawaii island where she attended Waimea Montessori School and then Parker School, through middle school. She attended high school in San Francisco, where her dad was living, but came home each summer.
As a youth she was concerned about her voice.
"I always thought I had such a deep voice, especially for a girl," but as a broadcast journalist it has proved to be an asset.
Her mother now lives in Hawi on the Big Island — the type of rural community where if the fruit seller has to briefly leave her stand, she’ll leave a receptacle for shoppers to leave money for whatever they take. "I love that," de Nies beamed.
Hawi is a far cry from what life was like for de Nies at the network. Covering a 13-state region of the South for ABC, "I took more than 100 flights last year," she said. "They tell you, ‘No P’s. No pets, no plants, no produce,’ and that was my life," she laughed. While her Honolulu apartment doesn’t allow pets, "I’m so excited to be able to buy groceries for a change," and hopes to eventually buy a house "so I can have a cat."
She and Hawaii News Now anchor and reporter Terri Okita both were crossing the country and spending time in the nation’s capital for their respective networks (Okita’s reports regularly appeared on CBS-TV), so did they ever run in to one another? "No, I didn’t, and I always looked for her," de Nies said.
As was Okita, de Nies is "genuinely excited" to be home.
Covering the president of the United States is "obviously" important, but so is covering the governor, mayor, City Council and the school board, because what they do has "a much bigger impact on your daily life than what they’re doing in Washington," de Nies said. "I think that local news is so important. There’s a relationship there, a trust."
Between now and her first day at KITV, de Nies will reassimilate and get up to date on the changes that have taken place since she left by driving around the island. "I’m really excited to become a part of this community, and the only way to do that is to explore it. … If you see me at the beach, come say hi," de Nies said.
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Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.
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