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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.

Podcasts

Stories

  • The Blue Suit Logo
    Arts & Life

    Introducing The Blue Suit

    In a world full of stuff, what is worth keeping? What do we treasure? Explore modern-day heirlooms with The Blue Suit, a new KUOW podcast hosted and created by PNW poet Shin Yu Pai.

  • caption: Red-headed woodpecker
    Environment

    Hard Knocks: Lessons from the woodpecker

    Woodpeckers will peck at a tree up to 12,000 times a day and just one woodpecker peck produces about 15 times the force needed to give a human a concussion. So, how do woodpeckers bang their heads so much, and so hard and not come away with brain damage?

  • caption: Chris holding a Northern Pacific rattlesnake. The age of a snake can be determined by the number of coils on their rattlers.
    Environment

    Sitting on a den of rattlesnakes

    Rattlesnakes have long been persecuted, even killed for sport or having their entire dens burned. I head out with two wildlife biologists to look for rattlesnakes as they emerge from hibernation and learn about the important role these snakes play in our ecosystem.

  • caption: Orangutans spend the first 16 years of their lives learning from their mothers.
    Environment

    Orangutans: people of the forest

    Northern Sumatra is a magical tropical home to the endangered orangutan. But their rainforest home is being cut down, and many are orphaned as their habitat is lost. Researchers are working hard to understand how orangutans process and learn, while others rehabilitate young individuals for a life back in the wild.

  • caption: Cicadas from Brood X in 2004 in Winchester, VA.
    Environment

    Billions of bugs: life of a cicada underground

    The shrill calls of billions of Brood X cicadas emerging from the earth have captured the nation’s ears and attention this spring. But what do these noisy insects DO for the 17 years they live underground? In this episode we dig deep into that question.

  • Fly
    Environment

    Why it’s so hard to swat a fly

    It’s springtime which means sunshine, picnics and flies. But you might think twice about reaching for that fly swatter. Flies are amazing creatures that possess the fastest visual systems in the world, use gyroscopes for precision flying, and can see almost 360 degrees.

  • fog drenched Oregon coast

    Escape to the sounds of nature

    We take a break from these stressful times and immerse ourselves in the sounds of the natural world, free of human beings and their noise.