Inducted 2026
His documentaries raise issues.
For all or part of five decades, Bill Kubota has been telling stories. Fresh out of Michigan State University in 1979, he spent the early days of his television news career in Lansing and Flint. He produced series about local radio station wars, the coming wave of cellular phones, how rising cocaine use became the crack epidemic, neo-Nazis coalescing with the Klan and challenges facing Vietnam veterans.
A Detroiter trying to navigate Michigan’s local TV markets, he became hooked on producing investigative stories and documentaries. He worked in Detroit and co-founded KDN Videoworks. The freelance outfit took on assignments for network news while developing its own documentaries. He produced or was director of photography on assignments with ABC News, CBS News, NHK, BBC, ESPN SportsCenter and others. Bill’s documentaries have aired nationally, and his Michigan stories have covered everything from the history of local television to pieces about the environment and the Great Lakes.
His work these days is regularly seen on Detroit Public Television’s One Detroit program. Bill also serves as treasurer of the Michigan chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association, with which he has been involved for decades. He has done more Asian American stories with Japanese, Chinese and Filipino connections than maybe any other station in the country. Among those stories: Anti-Asian hate during the Arab oil embargo and the 40th anniversary of the killing of Vincent Chin that it spawned as well as similar discrimination during COVID. He has also highlighted Asian American trailblazers and successes. Bill’s years of patient listening and storytelling about many underrepresented communities have given him rare access. He has used that to tell stories, especially on public television, that need to come out.