John Ryan
Reporter
About
Environment reporter John Ryan welcomes tips, documents and feedback from listeners. Reach him at jryan@kuow.org or for secure, confidential communication: he's at 1-401-405-1206 on the Signal messaging app or heyjohnryan@protonmail.com.
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.
Two decades later, he has freelanced for most of the major public radio news shows as well as newspapers and magazines and covered transportation at the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce. He’s been a reporter at NPR stations in southeast and southwest Alaska (KTOO-Juneau and KUCB-Unalaska) as well as Seattle. He became KUOW’s first full-time investigative reporter in 2009 and one of the first shop stewards for KUOW’s SAG-AFTRA newsroom union, as well as KUOW’s full-time environment reporter, in 2018.
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, national Edward R. Murrow and PMJA/PRNDI awards for coverage of breaking news and a Society of Environmental Journalists award for in-depth reporting.
He believes democracy only works when journalism holds the powerful accountable for their words and actions.
Stories
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KUOW Newsroom
Washington Gov. Inslee declares European green crab emergency
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has authorized emergency actions to combat an infestation of European green crabs.
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KUOW Newsroom
Seattle's 'green' power violates salmon's legal rights, tribe says
It’s one of the more unusual plaintiffs you’ll see in a lawsuit: Tsuladxʷ. That’s the Lushootseed word for salmon.
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KUOW Newsroom
Why 2021 was a whale of a year for orca sightings
Last year was a banner year for whale watching in Washington state. That is as long as you weren't looking for the region's resident endangered orcas.
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KUOW Newsroom
Sea level on steroids: Record tides flood Washington coastlines
Some of the highest tides ever recorded hit Seattle and much of the Washington coast this week.
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KUOW Newsroom
For the Northwest, climate change was hard to ignore in 2021
Climate chaos doesn’t wait around until nothing else is going on.
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KUOW Newsroom
Jumping slugs: the tiny, slimy acrobats of Northwest forests
Washington and Oregon are home to a group of rare species you’ve probably never heard of. Their name alone might horrify or delight you: the jumping slugs.
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KUOW Newsroom
Health officials pin Covid outbreaks on high school wrestling tourneys
High school wrestling tournaments have led to multiple Covid outbreaks in western Washington, according to state officials, including at least 115 cases in King and Snohomish counties alone.
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KUOW Newsroom
Battered ship finds a port. 105 of its cargo containers presumed sunk
The ship that spilled more than a hundred cargo containers off the Washington coast, then caught fire has made it safely into port. The same cannot be said for much of the Zim Kingston’s cargo.
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KUOW Newsroom
Shoreline nixes natural gas in climate change move, but not all is snuffed out
The Shoreline City Council unanimously approved a new energy code on Monday that prohibits most uses of fossil fuels in new buildings.
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KUOW Newsroom
New bus fuel is 'carbon neutral,' Pierce Transit claims. It's not
Tacoma-based Pierce Transit announced in November that it was switching its fleet of natural-gas buses to a different variety of the gas to help the global climate.
