Lindsey Blumell has pictures of several American icons in her office on the seventh floor. She has posters of Martin Luther King Jr., the quintessential “War’s End Kiss” of the sailor and nurse kissing in Times Square at the end of World War II, and even an Elvis Presley calendar. One would never guess Blumell is not originally from America.
Blumell has reported from around the world.
Blumell is a graduate part time assistant in the Ph.D. program in the College of Media and Communication. She is from a small village in southern Alberta, where she grew up as one of five children. Both of her parents were educators, which Blumell said harvested her interest in pursuing big dreams.
“I feel like everyone else’s dream was in the confines of that geographic area. But for me, I was always thinking bigger, bigger, bigger.”
While volunteering to search for a missing person, Blumell’s parents met a local reporter. They told her about the reporter and how she got started, and Blumell decided that was the career path for her.
Blumell received her broadcast journalism degree from Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. After graduation, she began her reporting career on Vancouver Island. Although Blumell enjoyed the work, she knew local reporting was not for her.
The next location for Blumell was Croatia. While in the small central European country, Blumell taught citizens how to speak English. She also made a documentary called “An Off-Court Story: The Life of Kresimir Cosic.” The documentary is about a Croatian basketball player who found success in the NBA. At this time, Blumell was also pursuing a journalism degree at Brigham Young University.
After working in Croatia, Blumell returned to North America and worked as an assistant producer on “Blood Lies and Alibis” for the Discovery I.D. channel. Blumell said although she would normally not pick a job like that, it was a good experience and she learned a lot from the position.
Lindsey Blumell in China.
Blumell then ended up in China, working for Guangzhou TV. This new reporting job was very different than anything Blumell had done in the past. The program “Discover Guangzhou” had native English-speaking reporters produce lifestyle pieces about Chinese culture. One of her first assignments was a story about the art of Chinese paper cutting.
“The first story I did, I was just doing it normally, like how you would report on it. And they were like, ‘You’re doing it all wrong,'” Blumell said.
“I realized that the story wasn’t about the paper cutting. The story was about me and my attitude towards the paper cutting, because I was the foreigner. I didn’t get that at first.”
According to Freedom House, an organization dedicated to press freedom, China’s media system is considered not free. Blumell said she personally did not experience any censorship, but other reporters in Guangzhou did.
“Guangzhou is in the south, so they have gotten in trouble a few times,” Blumell said. “The journalists there have either been incarcerated or fled, because they’ve printed something. There was a newspaper last year that printed something against the government, and it basically got shut down. Some of the journalists are in hiding.”
Blumell explained that the media system in Canada varies greatly from China’s. Blumell said Canada produces a lot of programs that are shown in America, such as “Degrassi”, a teenage drama based in a Toronto high school. She also said many American productions are filmed in Canada, partly due to certain tax breaks.
Blumell with a friend in China.
“I think what Canada has tried to do is, like, produce in two areas. We’re producing either anti-establishment programs, kind of going against the grain, which is like Degrassi. I think in Canada, we’re a little more liberal and can get away with that.”
Now that she is in Lubbock, Blumell said it has been a difficult transition. Having come from a similar geographical region in Canada, she expected Texas to be different. However, she did say there is one thing she really enjoys here.
“What I’ve enjoyed most here is definitely Texas Tech, because I think the people that come here, particularly the professors at the Ph.D. level, are people that really want to be here and are willing to go out of their way for you.”
Blumell is teaching Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Media in the College of Media and Communication this semester. The class has been taught by Kent Wilkinson, Ph.D., the Regents Professor in Hispanic and International Communication. He said Blumell is an excellent edition to our university.
“I think that her international experience, her interest in human rights, definitely, is very useful in our program,” Wilkinson said. “Taking that perspective in international communication and sort of the ethics of communication is very important.”
Blumell said she hopes to travel to the Middle East and Africa in her next adventures.
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