Jennifer Hsiung

Jennifer Hsiung (external link)  ‘05, co-anchors CP24 Breakfast from 6 to 9 a.m. on weekdays.

Since joining CP24 in 2020, Hsiung has brought her international reporting experience to homes across the GTA. Hsiung is a seasoned journalist having covered international news, sports, and entertainment. Her reporting spans global events such as the Olympics, the G20 summit, as well as the Academy Awards and international fashion weeks.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What drew you to journalism as a career?

The Journalism school at TMU was very famous to me for some reason. I just knew that it had a really good reputation. I wanted to be downtown in the city at TMU. So I did that.

When I went into journalism, I always knew that I wanted to be in broadcasting. I hoped to get into the broadcasting stream, and I don't know if that was because I was young and the only visible minority I saw on TV at the time was, like, Connie Chung, Pauline Chan, or Jee-Yun Lee, who I now work with on TV.

There were very few representations of East Asians in the media. And I think that that was something I wanted to be part of or expand the narrative.

What did your career look like post-grad?

My first job out of J-school was as an overnight traffic reporter for 680 News.

I did the graveyard shift from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. I lived right by Sherbourne and Bloor, so it was really close to where they were broadcasting from. I did that for almost a year.

Then a girlfriend of mine, whom I'd met on this trip to Taiwan, was like, ‘hey, you know, it was really cool going to Taiwan, discovering our culture, but I want to go to China now. I want to go see the motherland, before we get settled in with marriage and  routine, let's just travel.’

It was alluring because that was coming up in 2006, and I knew that Beijing had just won the bid to host the 2008 Summer Games. I did some research and found that in Beijing, they had a large television network, state-owned CCTV, but they also had an English-language channel, much like Al Jazeera and BBC International.

That was my goal.

I set my mind to it. So we went there, and I had a return ticket for four months later, but we just went, and it was an adventure. I did a voiceover recording job with a guy, and we got to talking, and he was like, ‘oh, I hear, you know, CCTV9, (now called CGTN), they're looking for a sports anchor and I hear they want her to have a Chinese face, but speak like perfect English.’

I had prepared a demo tape that I pieced together so I sent it to him, and to my surprise, he got in touch with me. I think I came down for two auditions.

I got the job and ended up staying in China until about 2009, after the Olympics.

When did you decide to come back to Toronto?

In 2009, I met my husband in China; he's another Canadian. He was working for the Women's Tennis Association. We moved to Florida for his job,  I left [mine], and we got married. I took a break from working for a few years. We went back to China because he got a job with the National Basketball Association (NBA) in China. That's when I start popping out kids.

So, from 2012 to 2017, I [focused on being a mom], and in 2016, I actually went back to CGTN.

I was on their arts and culture show called “Culture Express.” I worked there for maybe two years. Then we decided it was time. Our family is mostly in Canada we decided it was time to move back home.

In 2018 we moved back to Toronto. During my time living in Beijing, I had started doing stand-up comedy, and was really focused on it. So when I came back to Toronto, that's what I did.

So when I came back to Toronto, that's what I did. I grinded out for two years as a stand-up comedian, and then long-story-short, the pandemic hit, and I was like, okay, I think it's time for me to explore other options.

I saw an opening at CP24 for an anchor, decided to apply and got the job. Then here we are today, still doing it.

Does comedy ever intertwine with your work as a journalist?

On the breakfast show, I think there is more room for comedy, but when you're delivering straight news, I don't think you can interject with a joke.

I'm definitely not doing it as much as I was when I didn't have this job. When I was in China, I did a story on the growing comedy scene in Beijing.

We interviewed guests who were exploding in the stand-up comedy scene. It was kind of a small expat community, and a lot of Chinese people who spoke Mandarin were also getting into this very American art form. I thought it was interesting.

What have been some of your favourite segments on the show?

We had a gentleman who does cross-country cycling for Parkinson's, and he wrote a book about it.

He read an excerpt on air for us, describing his whole experience, including having him and his cycling buddies on air with us, talking about their journey. And he wrote so beautifully, and he read this two-minute excerpt on air, and it literally moved me to tears.

I thought, ‘oh my gosh, those are some beautiful, powerful words.’ I was like, ‘how lucky am I to get to share a snippet of his incredibly challenging and unreal journey that I don't think a lot of people would get to know?’

I interviewed a young poet, Kyo Lee, who has a Korean background, and she wrote a book called I Cut My Tongue on a Broken Country. She wrote this book of poems, and she was only a teenager. Just reading excerpts from her book and being so impressed by her. She won CBC's Poetry Prize. I was really happy with that interview and just meeting the raw talent.

Do you have any advice for students or recent alumni looking to find balance in work?

I'm saying this, acknowledging that not everyone might have the privilege to explore. I wish I had taken more time to not just lock into a job and feel this pressure to check the box because everyone's doing it. It's this bandwagon mentality about what success and happiness are.

It doesn't have to be like that. There are so many different options to explore. It's so important to find your voice, whatever that might be. Just look at it from a perspective of, ‘what am I good at? What do I enjoy? How can I apply what I've learned?’