In 2009, the news spotlight was on Emily Chang, who was reporting for CNN from China on a Communist Obama T-shirt. With the camera rolling, she found herself detained in a market in Beijing by more than a dozen officers because she refused to surrender the politically incorrect shirt. These days, she has to face a lot less controversy as cohost of Bloomberg West, a tech news show for Bloomberg TV that reaches 250 million homes. Since joining Bloomberg in 2010, the five-time Emmy winner has gained a loyal Twitter following, who watches out for scoops on Bay Area companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Airbnb. On a typical day, Chang works in front of four computer screens in the Embarcadero newsroom to make her 3 p.m. deadline. “The Silicon Valley is where the next big thing is probably going to come from,” says Chang. “I like to think of it as the second Industrial Revolution. When we look back on this time in history, it will surely be one of the most revolutionary periods ever. Today’s smartphone is yesterday’s cotton gin.” As a techie, Chang hardly sheds a tear for the death of old media. Instead, she happily ushers in the new digital age, getting much of her news from her network, Twitter, Pulse, blogs, and her iPad. “I try not to sleep with it,” says Chang, who holds onto her iPad as tightly as she did that Oba-Mao T-shirt. —Anna Pan

< Back to Hot 20