Uncovering - West Virginia University

A man carrying a bamboo basket passes a street while firefighters clear rubble in Pingtong Town in Sichuan Province on May 18, 2008.
to international professionals. Then a
photojournalist for Shanghai’s Wen
Hui Daily, Hang was assigned to
work with visual journalism professor
Joel Beeson.
“The WVU School of Journalism
opened my eyes wide to see journalism
in the U.S. and on a big scale,”
Hang said.
Hang went back to Shanghai in
2003 but returned to WVU a year
later to pursue a master’s degree in
journalism.
As an SOJ graduate student, she
helped coordinate and contributed
to “Starting Over: Loss and Renewal
in Katrina’s Aftermath,” a web-based multimedia
project profiling the stories of Hurricane Katrina
survivors who relocated to West Virginia after
the storm. She also assisted Beeson in teaching
photography and multimedia storytelling classes.
Hang said the lessons she learned at the School
helped prepare her for her work at Shanghai
Daily when she returned to China.
While covering the earthquake, Hang referred
back to the media ethics course she had taken.
She said the victims, many from rural areas or
Students attend a memorial service outside a temporary school in Mianyang City.
“It made me anxious and
want to tell their stories
and [show] the images of
them to the world. I think
they deserve to be heard.
They need help.” — Lingbing Hang
smaller cities, were trusting and
never got upset with the media. But
she never took advantage of their
trust when photographing their
shock and trauma.
“Whenever I approached them to
get their story, I always explained
who I was and what I was doing,”
said Hang. “I always had this concern,
but they let me do it anyway.”
Hang says she consistently
witnessed love and sacrifice in the
people she photographed, and this
taught her to be a good human
being and a better journalist.
“I was able to see many things,”
Hang said. “That’s one thing I appreciate about
choosing this [journalism] as my career. The
people I’ve interviewed have taught me lessons.
It’s a life-long learning process.”
More on the Web
Watch a multimedia interview with
Hang at http://journalism.wvu.edu
(See “Featured People”)
View Hang’s professional portfolio
at http://lingbinghang.com
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