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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Beachgoers unhappy as Navy SEALs get OK to train in Washington State Parks
Washington has OK'd a plan to allow Navy SEALS to train in state parks. The special ops will now do exercises at more than a dozen sites around the state. Parkgoers are worried about safety.
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KUOW Newsroom
How the Makah Tribe beat the coronavirus odds and flattened the curve
"Our goal is to not lose one single life, and so far, we've met that goal.”
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What led to oil-train disaster? Investigators eye equipment, tracks, even sabotage
Why would a train moving 7 miles an hour derail? Why would supposedly puncture-resistant tankers rupture at such a low speed? The FBI wants to know.
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“The train is on fire”: the tense moments after an oil train derailed
Here’s what the train’s three-person crew and firefighters did to keep an oily disaster from getting much worse.
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KUOW Newsroom
King County blames power outages for big sewage spills. Tribe blames the county.
While King County officials blame power outages from a wind storm for millions of gallons of sewage entering Lake Washington and Puget Sound early Wednesday morning, critics say the county needs to be held accountable for the pollution.
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KUOW Newsroom
Millions of gallons of raw sewage spill into Seattle-area waters
The recent region-wide power outage caused wastewater pumps to spill raw sewage into Seattle-area waters, such as Puget Sound and Lake Washington.
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KUOW Newsroom
Inslee unveils new plan to tackle climate change 'head on' in WA
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee says there’s no silver bullet for the climate, so he’s pushing a sweeping package of policies to lower the state’s carbon footprint, economy-wide.
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KUOW Newsroom
Top WA elections official threatened, doxxed after challenging Trump campaign's election misinformation
Secretary of State Kim Wyman's office confirmed on Monday that it has notified the Department of Homeland Security and the state’s own counterterrorism center, the Washington State Fusion Center, about a death threat against one of her employees.
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14 baby sea stars are tiny bundles of hope for their critically endangered species
To save a critically endangered species, sometimes you have to cut off one of its arms.
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KUOW Newsroom
Washington's carbon footprint keeps growing. This time, buildings and planes are to blame
Despite efforts to tame it, Washington state’s impact on the climate keeps growing.