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.
Podcasts
Stories
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Let the Kids Dance! (Trailer) - Coming April 4, 2024
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Arts & Life
A name is a thing that is changeable
When we come into this world we are given a name. It is etched in ink on our birth certificate, pasted onto our cubbies in pre-school, and signed onto paper to acknowledge our union with a beloved. A name has power.
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Environment
Broadcast: In search of silence
On this one-hour special of THE WILD with Chris Morgan we’ll explore natural silence, and how being quiet out in the natural world and having places to do that can be pretty transformative.
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Environment
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.
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Environment
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.
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Environment
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.
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Arts & Life
Voice
This is a story about the way we make a statement.
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Arts & Life
Bike
Anti-Asian hate crimes spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic. And then the Atlanta spa shooting scarred a community already suffering.
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Arts & Life
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.
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Arts & Life
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.