I had the honor of interviewing Lai Frances at Otakon on July 40, 2022. She is a Social Media Producer for TikTok for CNET and also a multimedia journalist and producer who has a focus on music and entertainment such as K-pop.
At Otakon she held multiple roles, including a K-Pop Journalism session and Behind the Scenes K-Pop panel with Zanybros members Junhong Kim, Angelina Foss, and Jenny Zha. She also appeared on a panel with K-Pop artists PIXY and Rolling Quartz and MCed Friday, July 29ths concert.
It was there, at the K-Pop concert that people could immediately tell the kind of person Lai Frances was if they didn’t already know her. Having never hosted an event such as this, she hid her anxiety and connected with every person in the room, asking how far everyone came to experience Otakon and then patiently awaiting each answer among the cacophony of the ballrooms. She even involved stage hands and the stage manager into the conversation, reminding everyone to stay hydrated, because as she explained to me during our interview, it’s a simple act of caring about other people.
In our interview, she explains how she loved music so she began blogging, using Live Journal and Tumblr. She discovered K-Pop through emo and alternative rock and eventually dedicated her Tumblr account to it. From there she decided she wanted to pursue multimedia journalism in college because she would have more channels to tell stories.
Lai also discusses influences, information consumption, the Banksy documentary, the evolution of her career, shifts in journalism, and a cover story that she worked on last year that stood out to her.