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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Chinese-English Dictionary
After his father's death, Byron Au Yong turned to paper folding.
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A childhood stuffie goes missing
The Blue Suit's host, Shin Yu Pai, revisits an object from her own life.
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Vitrified Glass
In a small clear box, Etsuko Ichikawa keeps a small piece of vitrified glass that was given to her on a tour of the Hanford nuclear site.
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Miso
Tomo Nakayama usually puts his creative energy into his harmonious music. But when the pandemic hit, he found a new outlet: cooking.
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Night-Blooming Cereus
Jessica Rubenacker collects plants. Lots of plants.
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Red Chador
A chador garment worn by some Muslim women is usually black. Not Anida Yoeu Ali's. Her chador is red and sparkly.
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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.
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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?
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THE WILD: Season 4 Trailer
New episodes of THE WILD begin on Tuesday, January 18th.
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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.
