Faces to watch 2006

YUNJI DE NIES

TV reporter

An education at Yale and the UC Berkeley School of Journalism plus a coveted internship at “Nightline” could hardly prepare Yunji de Nies, 26, for covering Hurricane Katrina. But she was one of only three reporters for WGNO-TV, a local New Orleans station, who opted to remain on the job once the storm hit.

With water levels rising, De Nies and her crew abandoned their homes and camped out in neighboring Baton Rouge, making forays into the devastation. She sweet-talked National Guardsmen into letting her pass, learned the back roads and, cameras rolling, conveyed firsthand the city’s chaos, grief and rage. New Orleans is far from healed, and De Nies continues reporting on the reconstruction of levees, of lives.

The WGNO headquarters is in shambles, so she and her colleagues work in double-wide trailers, broadcasting their evening newscast against a revolving backdrop of burnt-out buildings and washed-out streets.