Alum Monica Lam is new CEO of the Daily Cal

‘It’s not student journalism. It’s just journalism.’

Alum Monica Lam (’04) has just about done it all in journalism.

She’s traveled the world to report stories for the Center for Investigative Reporting and blanketed Berkeley to produce daily news for the hyper local site Patch. She made a film about the author Amy Tan, was a producer/cinematographer on an Academy Award-nominated film about a young South African photographer, taught journalism at UC Davis, lectured at Berkeley Journalism and produced KQED’s “This Week in Northern California.” Along the way, she’s won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award, five Emmy Awards, Edward R. Murrow Awards and a Gracie Award.

Her latest gig is still in journalism but it’s unexpectedly not in the newsroom or behind a camera. She’s moved to the business side.

Lam has now taken the post as CEO of the Daily Californian, one of the nation’s preeminent and oldest student publications at a time of mounting attacks on universities and the press and challenges for newsroom financial sustainability. Leading the business side of a university publication doesn’t qualify as a cushy journalism assignment and given the times, sounds both exciting and daunting.

“Yes, what you said: It’s exciting but daunting!” Lam said. “A lot of what I’m doing is being an ambassador for the organization: to raise awareness, build the community, explain why the work the students do is so important, and to connect that work with the people who want to support that kind of journalism.”

Lam is one of four non-students hired to support a news outlet that otherwise is entirely run by students. The publication is largely funded by student fees, which were raised to $6 per student each semester and $2.50 per summer session, following passage of a Save the Daily Cal Initiative in 2022.

Lam has never been a CEO, but thinks her experience in journalism and passion for the publication will carry her. Others agree.

“I was overjoyed to hear that Monica would become the new CEO of Daily Cal,” said Andrés Cediel, an alum and longtime adjunct professor at the school who now works with the California Local News Fellowship. “She has an incredible combination of news skills and sensibilities along with a strong track record of working with students. And as an alum herself, she has been dedicated to the Cal community for decades.”

Betsy Rate, director of career services at UC Berkeley Journalism said Lam is the perfect person to guide the Daily Cal during turbulent times.

“She is an ardent supporter of student journalism and its power to yield meaningful change through honest and fearless reporting,” Rate said.

Lam is the daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong who grew up in Chicago and Washington, D.C. She came to California to attend Stanford University as an undergraduate with her newborn son in 1992. She was an Urban Studies major, which gave her maximum flexibility to pursue her academic interests while parenting.

Lam thought she might be a painter or a printmaker. Journalism wasn’t on her radar, but she was drawn to one sought-after Stanford course in video production that changed everything.

“It took me two and a half years to get a spot in that class,” Lam said, laughing. “And I fell in love with documentary filmmaking.”

Lam made her thesis video — the first time they allowed one in lieu of a narrative thesis — about the San Francisquito Creek that snaked through campus, stretching from affluent Palo Alto to the more working class East Palo Alto. She found a story that was ripe with contrast and conflict that spoke to her Urban Studies major, touching on wealth gaps and tension between unhoused people who lived in the creekbed and environmentalists. The class and experience of making the film — called “No Man’s Land” — solidified Lam’s path.

Monica Lam and her daughter, Medina Lam, celebrate after completing the Seattle Marathon in November 2025.

After graduation, she worked for a production company and produced a documentary about the handover of Hong Kong to China and a series about the San Francisco Symphony with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas — putting her knowledge of classical music and training to use.

She came to grad school at UC Berkeley Journalism six years after Stanford with significant journalism experience and a 10-year-old in tow. She wanted to become a better writer and possibly go into university-level teaching.

At that time not many J-Schoolers were parents, but Lam found support from her peers and staff. She remembers how then-TV Lab chief Kean Sakata would put on Star Trek to keep her son occupied while she studied or worked as a Graduate Student Instructor.

At Berkeley Journalism, Lam co-directed and co-produced a thesis film, “Rules of the Game” with fellow student Garance Burke (’04), about one of the first Native American casinos to be constructed after the passage of California’s Prop. 1A in 2000. Although the ballot measure passed handily, some voters had buyer’s remorse when they realized casinos wouldn’t necessarily be in far flung reservation lands, but at times proximate to cities.

The documentary aired on PBS stations, toured festivals and was used by professors as curriculum.

“Monica is a wonderful, inventive collaborator and a powerful leader for journalists and journalism,” said Burke, now a global investigative journalist for the Associated Press. “The Daily Cal is lucky to have her as CEO.”

After J-School, Lam made good on her intention to teach journalism at the college level. She was hired by UC Davis as an adjunct professor, and although she did well and liked the job, she felt too young to be in academia and was eager to work as a journalist. She jumped back into filmmaking and an epic highlight of her career: making a cinema vérité documentary about the author Amy Tan.

“I remember as a little Chinese American kid reading Amy Tan and being like, ‘Oh my god she’s telling my story,’” said Lam.

Lam produced and directed “Journey of the Bonesetter’s Daughter,” which follows the novelist as she creates an opera based on her family history that premiered nationally on PBS.

“When I completed it, I felt two things: one was this was my dream film and the other was, I have no money left in the bank,” said Lam, whose eldest son was by then a freshman in college and two younger children had come along.

She looked for work in the private sector, outside of the field, but the only opportunities that came up were in journalism. “I ended up right back on the journalism treadmill — happily, luckily. It’s kind of funny that I tried to cheat on journalism.”

Lam continued her stellar career, briefly at the hyper-local site Patch, before traveling the world with the Center for Investigative Reporting where she produced stories — often investigations about labor, the environment and human rights — across five continents. Travel became so regular, she would bring her own tea and tea cup for comfort.

She went on to work as a producer for KQED’s “This Week in Northern California,” featuring host Belva Davis, and eventually lead the show as its executive producer.

Taking the post at the Daily Cal — which has shared a building with the school’s Investigative Reporting Program across the street from UC Berkeley Journalism since 2012 — brings Lam back to the Berkeley campus and closer to the J-School.

She says it’s a sobering time for the press and for universities with attacks from the federal government, but she’s up for the challenge.

She says UC Berkeley students are producing excellent journalism, which makes her even more passionate about her role and the work ahead. “Sometimes the students will talk about ‘support student journalism’ and a piece of me is like, this is journalism. It’s not student journalism. It’s just journalism.”

Lam noted that while the effort to renew funding for the Daily Cal is scheduled to come before UC Berkeley students again in 2027, it may be put to a vote next year. She hopes students will step up to show support for the award-winning paper. She also invites Daily Cal alums to stay connected through filling out this survey.

“I would like to expand our alumni network to get in touch and find out where they are and bring them back into the community,” said Lam. “It’s as simple as that.”

Cediel says Lam’s “collaborative and innovative spirit” bodes well for her new role. “I know she is already imagining all the ways to move student journalism forward,” he said. “And I can’t wait to see what will come next at the Daily Cal in this crucial moment.”

—Andrea Lampros