Get to Know Your Reporter: Elly Yu, Senior Reporter at LAist
“Get to Know Your Reporter” is a series of interviews we’re having with journalists covering topics that are both timely and relevant to our audiences. Our aim is to advocate for and highlight the issues & policies that affect the children and families we serve, and one way is by providing information directly from experts in the field.
To launch this series, we are honored to have had the opportunity to sit down with Elly Yu, an Early Childhood Senior Reporter at LAist and 89.3 FM (LAist radio).
Thank you, Elly, for taking the time to meet with us. I’m looking forward to learning more about you as an early childhood reporter at LAist. Can you start by sharing a little about your background?
I’m local to Southern California. I grew up in San Gabriel Valley and attended the University of Southern California. I left California for graduate school in New York but I’m now back in my hometown.
I’ve been a journalist for more than ten years, having reported in Atlanta, Washington DC and now, here. Before being on the early childhood beat at LAist, I was on the station’s investigative team, covering healthcare, COVID-19 and immigration-related issues.
It’s wonderful that someone local to Los Angeles via many other cities has returned home to cover issues related to your hometown. While you were sharing about being a journalist and a reporter, could you share what differences there are between the two?
The term, journalist, is an all-encompassing one. For instance, a reporter who goes out in the field is a journalist but so are editors, producers and other roles who aren’t necessarily in the field or on air. I’m out on the field as a reporter but I have an editor on my team to help with the development of my stories.
What motivates you to cover the beat of early childhood? What are you most passionate about as a reporter?
The early childhood beat is such an important one because the early years are critical to a child’s life. Making sure children have the right opportunities and experiences to grow while having access to health and quality education really impacts the trajectory of their lives. The early years set up a foundation for the rest of one’s life. We know about ACES and traumatic experiences and how those things can adversely affect health outcomes – even decades later into adulthood.
I am also a mother to a three-year-old son. I don’t know if he’s given me a window into the policies I cover but I’m learning firsthand that parenting is hard. The United States is very different from other countries when it comes to things like maternity leave and childcare support.
What makes me passionate about reporting is being able to tell stories of my community. At the same time, it’s also important to hold institutions to account for their policies. We are committed to telling the truth and shining a light on issues impacting people’s everyday lives. I believe journalism is a vital public service for our democracy.
Wow, that’s profound. As a reporter, you do have a quite powerful role in keeping institutions in check for the greater good. To dig deeper into your motivations as a storyteller and reporter, what would be a message you’d like to convey to your readers?
That’s a hard one. I’d say I like to connect people to other people’s experiences within their own communities or the neighborhoods they live in. I want to help people relate to their own neighbors and their stories – stories that they may not have been aware of previously. Also, through my work, I would like to explain how policies affect the lives of everyday Angelenos.
Can you share what you are working on that you’re excited about?
I am interested in exploring housing insecurity for families with young children across Los Angeles County where affordability continues to be such a big issue. I want to look into what is and isn’t working for families and learn about the experiences families are going through to get or maintain safe and affordable housing.
Do you see any major issues affecting children & families impacted by some of the more recent policies affecting homeless and clearing encampments?
I don’t have enough information yet, but I do know that families tend to live more in cars and vehicles than in tents or encampments. A UCLA study reported that the largest predictor of someone living in a vehicle was being a family with children. Family homelessness can be an invisible issue.
We also have a housing and homelessness team at LAist that is following all the changes around encampments and Proposition 1 affecting mental health housing. I want to see how the housing crisis is specifically affecting families with children.
If you’re a family with children, you’ll most likely want a two-bedroom home vs. a one-bedroom for example – which can be a challenge to find.
A New York Times article/Princeton study reported that Americans most threatened by eviction were babies and toddlers, particularly Black children. These are just some of the issues I would like to dig deeper on.
For our last question, can you share something interesting about yourself? And, is there anyone person that has been really interesting to report on?
I guess the interesting thing about me is that I have the opportunity to interview very interesting people.
As for hobbies, I like to explore new restaurants and seeing all the cuisine Los Angeles has to offer with all its diversity. At the moment, I don’t have too much time for hobbies – keeping up with my three-year-old takes up most of my time now but I can say I know ALL the different types of dinosaurs that exists because of my son!
In regards to the most interesting person I’ve ever met. I actually can’t pinpoint one person. Yesterday, I sat in on a class in Fullerton – a midwife class. The professor of that class also works as a midwife at the MLK Community Hospital and I’d have to say that class was really interesting.
Most of my days, I have the opportunity to talk and meet with people from all different walks of lives and getting a peek into their daily lives is such a privilege.
Elly Yu can be reached at eyu@scpr.org
See below for articles by Elly:
What is child neglect? Training educators to see beyond poverty | LAist
Transitional kindergarten: What can a parent can expect | LAist
Knock, knock. Who’s there? The Department of Public Health | LAist
Business owners divided over how much a struggle child care is | LAist
LAist is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that is also home to L.A.’s largest NPR station, broadcasting at 89.3 FM. Sign up for LAist’s early childhood newsletter here.
