Former KING 5 anchor Lori Matsukawa writes ‘Being There,' a memoir

When retired KING 5 news anchor Lori Matsukawa sat down during the COVID-19 pandemic to write her second book, she originally titled it "Astonished."

Matsukawa didn't expect her early life to lead to a decades-long career in broadcast journalism.

Growing up Wahiawā and ʻAiea in Hawaiʻi, Matsukawa started taking piano lessons in the fifth grade and enjoyed reading books and making her own newspapers. She wanted to become a piano teacher and children's book author.

In hopes of winning a scholarship, Matsukawa competed in the 1974 Miss Teenage America pageant. There, she got interviewed by reporters, which gave her an idea of becoming a print journalist, she said. While attending Stanford University, Matsukawa wrote for her student paper and interned at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Matsukawa said she didn't think about broadcast as a possibility until her managing editor at the Advertiser encouraged her to try it.

Matsukawa eventually moved to the Seattle area in the 1980s and worked at KOMO 4 and KING 5, where she spent 36 years anchoring and reporting the news before retirement. During that time, Matsukawa said she noticed more early-career journalists - many of whom were women - approaching her.

"‘Until I saw you on TV, I never considered a career in journalism,'" Matsukawa recalled them saying.

Seeing how important it was to show up in TV news for the younger generation inspired Matsukawa's book, "Being There: Memoir of an Asian American Journalist," released April 23 by Chin Music Press. This is the second book Matsukawa has written - and the second she's published since her retirement in 2019 - after "Brave Mrs. Sato," a 2023 children's book based on Matsukawa's grandmother, who was a picture bride, and her childhood babysitter in Hawaiʻi.

"Being There" extends beyond Matsukawa's stardom in local TV news, tracing back to her upbringing in rural Hawaiʻi, navigating an industry where journalists of color were especially underrepresented, and recognizing the mentors and professionals who helped her through it.

Despite being a memoir, Matsukawa said the book isn't meant to put herself in the spotlight.

"It's not about me," Matsukawa said. "It's about all of us and what we've been through. And it's basically an effort to put down on paper what this experience was for the future generations."

That includes her and her journalism colleagues' efforts to push back against a lack of Asian American journalists in the media nationally. Outside anchoring the news, Matsukawa fostered trust with community members, co-founding the Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Washington, and mentored young journalists, co-creating the Seattle chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association - only the third such chapter in the nation when it was established in 1985. The following year, Matsukawa was instrumental in launching the Northwest Journalists of Color Scholarship program, which has since awarded more than $160,000 to aspiring journalists.

"Once we got this pipeline going, we would meet with our editors and then say, ‘Here are the people to hire,'" said Matsukawa, referring to more journalists of color. "You said, 'Where are they?' Here they are. Now hire them.'"

In her own career, the former KING 5 evening anchor has received wide recognition for her work, earning an AAJA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005 and a regional Emmy - her first of two - for her series about the incarceration of Japanese Americans and those of Japanese descent in America during World War II, "Prisoners in Their Own Land," which aired in 2017 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066.

Matsukawa said her latest book is an opportunity for her to reflect on working in Seattle's TV market, a predominantly white industry in the 1980s and beyond, where reporters of color were often relied on to cover news about marginalized communities. While at KING, she thought, "If I don't cover it, nobody's going to cover it - so I'm going to cover all of it." Matsukawa did on-the-ground reporting in Latino, Black and Asian American neighborhoods, writing serious stories about economic inequality, but also uplifting ones, such as families celebrating festivals and their children who won scholarships.

"I didn't start off wanting to be championing communities of color - because you don't want to be pigeonholed - but I felt a responsibility to show as many of the faces of Seattle as I could because that's the responsibility," Matsukawa said. "We are supposed to tell everyone's story if we can."

For Brady Wakayama, who grew up in Ballard during the late '90s and early 2000s, Matsukawa was the first Asian American he saw on TV delivering the news. Wakayama, now a reporter at KING, said Matsukawa has been his mentor for more than a decade and made him feel more confident about staying in the industry. Leading up to his graduation from Washington State University in 2016, Wakayama sent her his college reel for feedback. At AAJA conferences, Matsukawa introduced him to her friends and told editors and news directors, "You need him at your station," he recalled.

"She trailblazed for the rest of us to make sure that we were able to continue to climb that ladder," Wakayama said. "She kept the door open when sometimes, these doors would be closed to journalists of color."

Matsukawa said she dedicates her book to aspiring journalists, hoping they can "move forward from where we have come" through learning about what her generation has experienced. Although representation for Asian American journalists has improved, Matsukawa said she'll stay committed to advocating for more of it.

When asked about what advice she could impart to younger journalists, Matsukawa encouraged them to keep holding on because their work matters.

"It makes a difference," Matsukawa said. "‘Being There,' the title of this book, means it makes a difference - because young people are looking for role models, and you're there. You can be the role model they're seeking."

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