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
-
How our planet came to life with Ferris Jabr
Host Chris Morgan speaks with environmental author Ferris Jabr about his book Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life
-
Bonus: Nothing says Thanksgiving like ham, lamb and more sides
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Rachel Belle share their Thanksgiving dinner tips with Tan Vinh at the Seattle Eats live event from Town Hall Seattle.
-
The story of Whatcom Creek: an explosion, a tragedy, and a rebirth
The story of the 1999 pipeline explosion in Whatcom Creek, and how a community and a creek began to recover after seemingly irreversible devastation.
-
Sniffs, scratches, sights and sounds: Ed Yong on how animals sense the world
Chris Morgan talks with Pulitzer Prize winning author Ed Yong about the astonishing ways animals sense the world around us: from birds that navigate the open ocean by smell, to penguins that sense vibrations underground.
-
Tiny but tough: Hummingbirds of the Arizona desert
This episode looks at the shrinking of the nectar landscape and native plants and how that could impact the migration patterns of hummingbirds in the desert of Arizona.
-
Brooke Williams encountered a dragonfly and became a dreamer
Host Chris Morgan speaks with environmental author Brooke Williams about his book Encountering Dragonfly: Notes on the practice of Re-enchantment and his journey to a new understanding of nature.
-
A Mexican jaguar walked into Arizona, then the US built a wall
This episode looks at jaguars that cross from Mexico into the United States and how the building of the 30-foot border wall would make that difficult and impact the environment in the borderlands.
-
New season trailer! Welcome back to THE WILD
Welcome back to a brand new season of THE WILD on October 21, 2025! Travel with Chris as he uncovers stories of hope and inspiration as creatures find ways to adapt and thrive in a new world of threats.
-
Your guide to Seattle's udon scene
Tan visits udon noodle house Azuki in Madison Valley to learn about how Chef Ryuji Miyata makes his noodles by hand. Later, Tan recommends some more casual and budget-friendly udon places.
-
The Detroit-style pizza everyone’s talking about
Tan visits Derek Reiff at his new restaurant, My Friend Derek's, the day before it opens to talk about what Detroit-style pizza is and what it’s like to go from a pop-up sensation to a sit-down restaurant.