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Jim Gates

Senior Editor

About

As Senior Editor Jim heads up the development of podcasts for KUOW’s AudioShop and helps guide reporters and producers through their stories. He helped develop KUOW’s daily news podcast Seattle Now and currently oversees THE WILD with Chris Morgan. Other podcasts he oversaw and edited include Second Wave, Battle Tactics for Your Sexist Workplace and How to Be a Girl which was nominated for a Peabody Award. Jim developed KUOW’s popular community story telling project Local Wonder where listeners ask questions about their community and then vote on the stories that they want KUOW reporters to cover.

Jim helped to oversee and develop one of public radio’s first investigative reporting units at KUOW with the mission to provide in-depth coverage of issues that affect Washington and the Puget Sound Region. Jim was the fill-in news director and led the breaking news coverage on several major stories.

Prior to coming to KUOW, Jim worked as an editor on such national shows as NPR’s Day to Day and Marketplace. Jim helped develop and launch the weekly magazine show Weekend America where he directed the live broadcast and edited feature stories. He started his public radio career as a volunteer at NPR member station KPCC in Los Angeles. Jim kept showing up at the station and eventually they actually started paying him. Jim moved to national programming when he joined the staff of The Savvy Traveler in 2000 as producer of the interview and listener segments.

Jim’s career in story telling began when he was a television writer on several sitcoms (a skill that is oddly applicable to public radio). He was on the writing team of The Discovery Channel’s first fiction show Animal Rescue Kids which won two Genesis Awards from the Human Society of the United States.

Location: Seattle

Language: English

Pronouns: he/him/his

To see more of Jim's past KUOW work, visit our archive site.

Stories

  • caption: Beaver

    Broadcast: Leave it to beavers

    On this one-hour special of THE WILD with Chris Morgan, Chris explores the mighty beaver and its role in reshaping our landscapes and entire ecosystems. Then we plunge into the waters along the pacific coast to follow a sea lion’s journey from California all the way up the Columbia River in search of salmon, in what has become a controversial story of survival between two protected species.

  • caption: Host Chris Morgan being picked up by float plane in an incredibly isolated area of the Brooks Range in northern Alaska.

    Broadcast: How to stay safe in the wild

    On this one-hour special of THE WILD with Chris Morgan, Chris shares tips on how to stay safe in the wild and explores the psychology of animals with author Richard Louv.

  • caption: Chris Morgan as a nervous 24-year-old with the first grizzly bear he ever captured while working on a research study in Canadian Rockies in 1994. Morgan named the bear Dawson.

    Broadcast: How to catch a grizzly

    This is a special one-hour special of THE WILD with Chris Morgan featuring favorite episodes like the first time Chris caught a grizzly bear.

  • Alice Wong - TTT 2

    Voice

    This is a story about the way we make a statement.

  • caption: Asian Bike Club is now Ampersand Bikes Club

    Bike

    Anti-Asian hate crimes spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic. And then the Atlanta spa shooting scarred a community already suffering.

  • caption: Shawn Wong

    A book becomes a movement

    Shawn Wong discovered the first Japanese American novel, No-No Boy, at a used bookstore for 50 cents, after being told by his English professors that Asian American literature didn’t exist.

  • JizuBodhisattva.png

    Jizo Bodhisattva

    During the mizu kuyo ritual for pregnancy loss, a small Jizo Bodhisattva statue enshrines ceremonial remains of a lost child. Following Shin Yu’s miscarriage in 2012, she had a mizu kuyo ceremony to process her grief.

  • caption: Dylan Tomine fishing for steelhead

    Steelhead

    Dylan Tomine has a passion for steelhead trout. Or an obsession. Or an addiction.

  • caption: Donna reads Ana's letter to the future.

    Time Capsule

    On the eve of selling her family’s house, Donna Miscolta’s daughter had a special request: Go to the stairwell and pull back the loose board on the bottom step.

  • caption: Eason Yang

    Resume

    Eason Yang was on an ambitious career trajectory, helping tech companies like Uber change the world. Until he got cancer.