David Louie ’72

Award-winning broadcast and digital journalist

David Louie is the business editor and technology reporter for ABC Disney’s KGO-TV San Francisco, for which he became the first Asian American reporter in 1972. He has covered countless stories in local broadcast and digital news: he tracked the emergence of Silicon Valley as a tech innovation center; was part of the first local TV news team to go to China following normalization of US-China relations; and conducted the first post-9/11 interview with late US Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta.

Previously, he was the station’s East Bay and Peninsula bureau chief, business and technology editor, and financial news anchor.

A former member of the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications Board of Advisers, Louie was an inaugural inductee to the school’s Hall of Achievement in 1997. To commemorate his 50th anniversary at KGO-TV, he endowed a scholarship in 2022 for Medill students through the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), which had awarded Louie its first scholarship in 1970.

Louie has served as national president of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) and national chairman of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS). He was a longtime board member of RTDNA, where he judged the annual Edward R. Murrow Awards—one of the most prestigious honors in broadcast and digital journalism. His work has been recognized with multiple awards, including four Emmy Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award from AAJA. In 2019, he was inducted into the NATAS Gold Circle for a half-century of service in television.

Louie began his Northwestern journey in the Medill Cherubs, a summer institute for high school students who are interested in careers in journalism. He received his bachelor’s in journalism from the University.