ALUMNI
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: DYMANH CHHOUN
The first-gen graduate has been on the scene of major city-news flashpoints, bringing the news to televisions everywhere; now he's training the next generation. BY KATIE DOHMAN ON MAY 26, 2020, 31-YEAR-OLD WCCO
photojournalist Dymanh Chhoun (B.A. ’11) found himself waiting out a potential threat of violence and crowd panic in the aftermath of what sounded like a gunshot near the South Minneapolis grocery store Cup Foods, and coincidentally, the home of a former high school football teammate. That morning he had kissed his wife and two kids goodbye, saying, “I love you honey, I think this is going to be big.” Nerves were frayed. The day before, George Floyd had been killed while in custody of Minneapolis police. Community grieving and protests had begun. As he waited, Chhoun struck up a conversation with his former teammate, whose girlfriend was able to give him footage and soundbites from her cell phone. “Many stations didn’t have people out there—it was too scary. They had to make a lot of hard ethical decisions. But I told my news director, ‘This is my place. This is my Target. My Cup Foods. This is history, and I need to be out here capturing this.’” He ended up covering the ensuing events for five days straight before he decided he could take a break. His experiences covering Floyd clearly illustrate the strength and importance of diversity in the newsroom. His upbringing in South Minneapolis familiarized him with the community, the issues, and empathy needed to tell the story. “I played high-school football blocks from Third Precinct,” he said. “Maybe I don’t know all the community members personally, but I understand their anger.” He’s not 26
MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2021
entirely sure what it is about him that allows him to float confidently through protest crowds “almost like a ghost” following a tinderbox story—his first was in the aftermath of the Jamar Clark case—whether it’s because he’s “Asian, short, not a threat?” But he says while adrenaline rushed, he was mostly unafraid. He was fine. He counts on those factors to peacefully and safely uncover a story and share it with an audience. “When I’m out there, overall, I make sure I am not in harm’s way, and then do my job peacefully,” he said. But, a “white reporter would not have gotten that cell phone footage or those interviews. We need to have more minorities in the newsroom.” He continued, “This benefits a company for having people like myself who are not called John or Mike. When the name Dymanh
Chhoun is under the photo, or under the video, people see that at home and feel like, ‘Yes, good job WCCO, I trust them.’” Chhoun said he never had designs on being a photojournalist for a major broadcast outlet. His parents arrived here from Cambodia via a refugee camp in Thailand in 1993 when he and his siblings were small, and getting through school was a struggle. He didn’t know English. He was behind in reading and math. He was bullied with racist taunts, and he was expelled for fighting back. But, he said, it was opportunities like ThreeSixty Journalism that helped boost him and show him he should dream bigger. The program, run by the University of St. Thomas, is an immersive journalism camp that aims to give a diverse set of high schoolers an inside look at the
