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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Another smoky summer could be on Washington's horizon
Western Washington may not be in a drought, but much of the state and the West Coast is. That means Seattle could be in for another smoky summer.
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KUOW Newsroom
Sabotage caused Washington oil-train disaster, rail union says
The oil train came apart on the snowy tracks north of Bellingham shortly after the locomotive engineer got the mile-long chain of petroleum tanks on wheels under way.
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Tribal leaders call Inslee 'a snake' after he vetoes climate law's tribal consent measure
Tribal leaders are saying Washington Gov. Jay Inslee used and betrayed them after he vetoed a provision requiring tribal consent for some environmental projects.
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Washington state bans polystyrene foam, clamps down on other plastics
The new law, signed Monday by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, restricts restaurants’ use of disposable plastic items, requires recycled content in some plastic bottles and bags, and bans most uses of polystyrene foam, including cups, clamshell containers, packing peanuts, and coolers.
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Gov. Inslee signs flurry of anti-pollution laws, but draws ire with vetoes
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a sweeping set of new environmental laws Monday. He also vetoed some of their key provisions, drawing criticism from both Democratic and Republican legislators.
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King County aims to slash carbon emissions in half by 2030, including aviation
The King County Council unanimously approved a new climate strategy Tuesday, aimed at cutting the county's climate-harming pollution in half in less than a decade.
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Cap-and-trade law tackles big polluters, fractures political alliances
A sweeping climate proposal from Gov. Jay Inslee has both fractured existing alliances and sparked new ones — among activists and oil refineries alike — on its way to becoming Washington state law.
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KUOW Newsroom
How Inslee’s climate agenda just got a boost
'I would call it a victory for climate advocates, with a big asterisk on it.’
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Climate advocates go to court to block Tacoma gas plant
Dueling lawyers made their opening arguments Monday in a case that could determine whether a major fossil-fuel plant opens on the Tacoma waterfront.
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Northwest ports pledge to stop air pollution (29 years from now)
The Northwest’s biggest ports promise to stop polluting the air — 29 years from now.