Four J-School couples from the Class of ’98 on falling in love and three decades of partnership
The passion that drives journalists in their work can also spark romance between newsroom colleagues. Just ask Hollywood, whether it’s the 1940s movie classic “His Girl Friday” with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, or the love triangle between Holly Hunter, William Hurt and Albert Brooks in 1987’s “Broadcast News.”
North Gate Hall has also seen its share of love stories, from furtive glances over newsroom computers and late-night editing to flirting, coffees after class and post-deadline drinks.
Former Dean Neil Henry, then in his fourth year as a professor after a storied career at The Washington Post, said the J-School has seen quite a number of couplings over the years.
“Perhaps only another journalist, after all, can understand and appreciate the strange hours, the intense pressures and the soaring passions that fuel the craft and profession,” Henry said.
First row top Gabriela Quirós and Andy Gilbert Second row Sapana Sakya, Josiah Hooper, Gregory Chang Third row bottom Saidah Said and Jennifer Paige.
Professor Bill Drummond, a former NPR editor and correspondent who has been a member of the Berkeley faculty for more than four decades, chalks it up to the easy proximity back then.
“The school had a much more closely knit student body,” Drummond said. “No Zoom or remote teaching. This was the analog world. Everybody was on campus and in North Gate Hall all the time.”
Still, there was clearly something special going on in 1996, when these folks were all at Berkeley.
There was plenty of real news capturing the public’s attention that year, of course: the arrest of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, the death of rapper Tupac Shakur, the Atlanta Summer Olympics, Bill Clinton’s reelection, the passage of welfare reform and the growing use of AOL and the internet. And in “Up Close and Personal,” America saw a news anchor played by Michelle Pfeiffer find love (and a mentor) in Robert Redford, who portrayed a news director.
Sparks were also flying for some people at the J-School, even as they were honing their reporting and media skills. At least four couples emerged from the Class of ’98, which had 51 students, and all of these pairs are still together some 30 years later.
Here’s how it all began.
Camille Servan-Schreiber (’98) and Jason Cohn (’98)
Photo: Family photo of Camille Servan-Schreibrer and Jason Cohn with their two sons.
Documentary filmmakers Jason Cohn and Camille Servan-Schreiber are partners in love and in business via the production company they created, Bread and Butter Films.
Cohn said the first time he spied his future wife at North Gate Hall, he “went gaga” and their relationship took root during the November 1996 election.
“The returns were still coming in past midnight. There was a lot of coffee and there might have been wine and beer. The mood in the newsroom was like a rager for politics nerds. Camille and I spent a lot of time talking that night and we made our first real connection,” Cohn recalls. “I think the collaborative vibe and just feeling connected in a microscopic way to the unrolling of history lent an aura of romance to the evening.”
Although it was merely an exercise in reporting, it felt significant, he said.
It was as if “we could all project ourselves out to a future when we’d be an actual part of grand events like elections,” Cohn said.
They married five years later in Paris and now live in Berkeley. They have two sons, ages 17 and 20, and are as busy as ever.
Servan-Schreiber is currently producing the sequel to the documentary “Miss Representation,” directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom. Cohn is directing a film about the Japanese comics and animation pioneer Osamu Tezuka.
Sapana Sakya (’98) and Josiah Hooper (’98)
Sapana Sakya and Josiah Hooper have different first-impression memories, but agree that late nights working together in the TV lab editing rooms brought them together.
“I saw her in the courtyard at night during some assignment that kept us late,” Hooper said. “She was wearing a Mao cap and smoking a cigarette, so I was immediately curious.”
Sakya said Hooper first approached her while they were writing scripts for a story about Castroville, a city 100 miles south of Berkeley touted as the “Artichoke Capital of the World.”
Photo: Sapana Sakya and Josiah Hooper and their two daughters.
“He asked me to read [my script] and I remember thinking ‘Who is this frat boy?!” Sakya said.
It was only later, when the two were working together scripting and shooting a piece about Cal’s women’s basketball team that “things got interesting,” she said.
They got married in Nepal and Berkeley in 2001, and live in El Cerrito. They have two daughters, 17 and 22.
Sakya works at the Center for Asian American Media as the nonprofit’s talent development and special projects director. Hooper is a licensed marriage and family therapist working at Bay Area Community Resources.
Saidah Said (’98) and Gregory Chang (’98)
Gregory Chang and Saidah Said
Saidah Said said her love story with Gregory Chang “started as a tale of the haves and the have-nots.” The pair were both in the late Joan Bieder’s broadcast journalism class, and those without cars were partnered with those with wheels, she said.
Chang drove Said and others to places across the Bay Area to cover news stories for the class. Those long drives in his grey Honda Civic gave them an opportunity to get to know each other.
The seeds of romance were sown “somewhere along I-880,” she said. By the next year, when they both participated in a reporting fellowship in Hong Kong to cover the region’s historic handover from Britain to China, the relationship blossomed.
A year after graduation, they became life partners and now have three sons. They live in the Bay Area where Chang is an editor at Bloomberg Intelligence and Said is a public school teacher.
Gabriela Quirós (’98) and Andy Gilbert (’98)
Gabriela Quirós and Andy Gilbert shared two classes together during their first fall semester at the J-School: the J-200 class of now professor emeritus Lydia Chávez and Intro to Television — “which meant we were spending a lot of time together,” Gilbert said.
Chávez, now the executive editor of Mission Local, said the demands of J-200, the school’s foundational course, is a uniting force.
Gabriela Quirós and Andy Gilbert
“J-200 is a bear but brings students together,” Chávez said. “They survive by collaborating, commiserating and having a good time — sounds like the start of a good marriage.”
Like Said and Chang, transportation needs set the relationship between Gilbert and Quirós in motion.
Gilbert had a car and gave regular rides to several car-less classmates, including Quirós. While he lived close to campus in the Berkeley hills, she lived nine miles away in Point Richmond. After late nights working in the TV lab, he would give her rides home.
“I think being thrown together amidst the intensity of J-School, with all its anxiety, excitement and insecurity, definitely fueled our getting together,” Gilbert said.
Quirós adds that they also shared a love for jazz, and went out to listen to music together at the Bay Area’s renowned jazz club Yoshi’s.
In 2005, they were married in Berkeley where they still live. They have one daughter, a sophomore student at Berkeley High. Quirós is a video producer who most recently oversaw the PBS web science series “Deep Look” at KQED public media in San Francisco. Gilbert is a music and arts freelancer who contributes to The Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, Berkeleyside and other publications.
Romance aside, this is also a tale of longtime friendship. The eight alums – seven of whom studied documentary filmmaking while at UC Berkeley – were friendly at school and have stayed in touch with each other since graduation.
Servan-Schreiber and Gilbert made their thesis film together, and Sakya and Said also partnered on their thesis.
“We’ve been to each other’s wedding celebrations,” Quirós said. “As a group, we really have grown up together. It’s a wonderful thing.”
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