John Ryan
Reporter
About
Environment reporter John Ryan welcomes tips, documents and feedback from listeners. For secure, confidential communication: he's at 1-401-405-1206 on the Signal messaging app, you can use KUOW’s SecureDrop portal, or you can send snail mail (but don't put your return address on the outside!) to John Ryan, KUOW, 4518 Univ. Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105.
Good thing John was a clumsy traveler.
Otherwise his cheap microcassette recorder wouldn't have fallen out of his pocket in an Indonesian taxi, a generous BBC stringer wouldn't have lent him some recording gear, and he wouldn't have gotten the radio bug. But after pointing a mic at rare jungle songbirds and gong-playing grandmothers for his first radio story, there was no turning back.
He spent several years freelancing for most of the major public radio news shows (as well as newspapers including Christian Science Monitor and Los Angeles Times). John also did an award-winning documentary for KUOW on the side from a day gig covering transportation at the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.
In 2009, John moved back to Seattle to become KUOW’s first investigative reporter after two exciting years covering avalanches, political intrigue and just about everything in between for KTOO, the NPR station in Alaska's capital city. He returned to Alaska for a 4-month stint in the Aleutian Islands in 2015 and won awards for KUOW and KUCB-Unalaska for his coverage of Arctic oil drilling from two states.
John’s stories have won multiple national awards for KUOW, including the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi awards for Public Service in Radio Journalism and for Investigative Reporting and national Edward R. Murrow and PRNDI awards for coverage of breaking news.
John is a shop steward of KUOW’s SAG-AFTRA newsroom union.
He believes democracy only works when journalism holds the powerful accountable for their words and actions.
To see more of John's past KUOW work, visit our archive site.
Stories
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Otter dances. Otter poops. Researchers dig in
Scientists study river otters, a small but mighty top predator, hoping to know how to clean up a very dirty river.
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Task force urges help for salmon, ban on watching endangered orcas
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Why famished orcas may have to wait 90 years for more salmon
That’s what environmental activists found as they began to restore the tiny Rhone-Poulenc salt marsh deep in the industrial bowels of Tacoma.
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Stop fishing salmon, orca lovers say. You’re missing the point, Skagit tribe says
At meeting after public meeting over the past six months, orca lovers and orca experts have urged bold action: Everything from removing dams to restricting or banning activities that can harm the whales.
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Carbon tax initiative in Washington state is failing
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It’s a gusher! Record sums of oil money flood carbon-fee fight
A gusher of out-of-state cash from oil companies BP, Phillips 66, Andeavor, Valero and Chevron has made the campaign against the carbon fee initiative the costliest “no” campaign in state history.
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Inslee: 'We have a commander in chief who's AWOL right now'
"I swear this administration has a department of cockeyed ideas, and this is just another one of them," Inslee said in an interview with KUOW.
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Big soda really, really wants to stop govs from taxing bevs
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The Record
Debate: Should you vote for a carbon fee?
This year, voters will decide whether or not to instate a first-in-the-nation fee on carbon emissions in the state. We invited groups for and against the ballot measure to talk about why they support and oppose I-1631.
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Tax polluters says the UN — but much more than WA carbon fee
“The next few years are probably the most important in human history.”