Sara Bernard

Multimedia Journalist

Seattle, WA

Audio producer, writer, photographer, globetrotter

Sara Bernard

Multimedia Journalist

Seattle, WA

Audio producer, writer, photographer, globetrotter

South Seattle Residents Complain of Industrial Dust
Kelly Welker knew Seattle’s Georgetown area was an industrial neighborhood when she moved here nine years ago. The air quality isn’t great. But lately, she says, it’s been getting worse. “I had never experienced going outside of my house and having my eyes burn within a couple of minutes,” Welker said.
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Radio
Why Have Seattle's Urban Forests Dodged Development?
“With so much building going on in Seattle, why haven’t urban forests like Interlaken and Ravenna been developed?”. Adam Goch of Greenwood asked that question as part of KUOW’s Local Wonder project. With all the construction going on, it’s no wonder that Adam Goch of Greenwood worries about the city’s green spaces.
kuow.org
Radio
Seattle Suspends $1 Fine For Failure To Compost
Breathe easy, Seattle. The proposed fines for not following Seattle’s new food composting rule have been delayed. The fines were originally scheduled to start July 1. But on Wednesday, Mayor Ed Murray said he would suspend those fines for the rest of the year. The earliest they could go into effect -- and that's a big if -- is January 2016.
kuow.org
Radio
Featured
Richmond’s Toxics
Decades of industrial pollution have left toxic contaminants in Richmond's air, water, and soil. Click on the icons to learn more.
Richmond Confidential
Radio Writing
Featured
Retracing Buffalo Soldiers' Trek to Yosemite
In 1899, Buffalo Soldiers in the 24th Infantry carried out mounted patrol duties in Yosemite. This weekend, history buffs will gather in San Francisco to commemorate a little-known slice of the state's past. They'll travel from the city's old Army base, the Presidio, to Yosemite National Park. It's a sped-up version of a trek made to the Sierras more than a century ago by black Army troops known as Buffalo Soldiers.
KQED's The California Report
Radio
This fracking protest is more like Bonnaroo than Occupy
On a bone-dry October day in Oakland, Calif., activists from Food and Water Watch, UC Berkeley’s Students Against Fracking, and a group of folk singers called the Occupellas gathered to celebrate the third annual Global Frackdown. Food and Water Watch launched the Global Frackdown in September 2012 in an effort to eventually ban fracking worldwide.
Grist
Photography Radio Writing
Youth Crew Builds Memories at Spencer Glacier
This summer, five agencies came together to create a ten-week outdoor career program for Anchorage youth, aged 17 to 20. The program took them from city parks to the Chugach National Forest, clearing trees, building bridges, and cutting trails. The students’ last project was at the Spencer Glacier Whistle Stop, where they spent a month building a new trail and learning about the environment — and the employment options — in their own backyards.
Alaska Public Media
Photography Radio
Featured
The Giving State: Volunteering at the Zen Hospice Project
We meet San Francisco artist Tracy Grubbs, who volunteers with the Zen Hospice Project. It's the latest installment of our ongoing series on people who volunteer in California, "The Giving State." Reporter: Sara Bernard. More: Hospice Doctor Finds Calling Through Near-Fatal Accident (Forum) Please ensure that all comments adhere to our community guidelines.
KQED's The California Report
Radio
Renewable Energy Fair Explores Alaska’s Options
Tidal power, wave, wind and solar: there’s no lack of options when it comes to renewable energy in Alaska. To participants at the Alaska Renewable Energy Fair on the Anchorage Park Strip last weekend, Alaska may be one of the best places on the planet to develop some of these ideas. Renewable energy isn’t just about wind turbines and solar panels and biodiesel.
Radio
Climate activist explains why going green is like coming out
When Gerod Rody founded OUT for Sustainability — an LGBTQ environmental advocacy group — in the fall of 2008, it was partly because there was absolutely nothing like it out there. Rody, who identifies as gay, was getting his MBA in sustainable business at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Seattle, and was surrounded by “people who valued environmental and social issues like I did,” he says.
Grist
Writing Radio
Anchorage Holds First Mini Maker Faire
The Anchorage Economic Development Corporation hosted Anchorage’s first-ever Mini Maker Faire at the Loussac Library on Saturday, July 27th. The Maker Faire is a gathering of crafters, engineers, and tinkerers launched in California in 2006 and now taking place in cities across the world. The AEDC hopes the Faire will help boost innovation and industry across Alaska.
Radio
Steller Sea Lion To Give Birth to New Pup
251 people like this. Sign Up to see what your friends like. Alaska’s Western stock of Steller sea lions is critically endangered. The Alaska SeaLife Center’s Lori Polasek is trying to figure out why. She and her colleagues hope that breeding sea lions in captivity will help them better understand those in the wild.
Radio
Anchorage Non-Profit Offering Green Cleaning Solutions
It might not seem like baking soda could do the work of bleach. But Alaska Community Action on Toxics suggests that there are effective alternatives to potentially harmful household cleaners. The Anchorage-based nonprofit’s Green Cleaning Service disinfects a growing number of the city’s homes and businesses with everyday items like vinegar solution and vegetable oil soap — and they say they’re getting good results.
Radio
The Young and the Proud: Christian Guzman-Gazo
A teenager in rural Nicaragua speaks about her life and dreams for the future.
Casa Verde
Video Radio Photography
Out North’s Closure a Blow for Anchorage Artists
The Out North Contemporary Art House in Anchorage closed its doors on July 29th after nearly 30 years in operation. Out North’s Board of Directors laid off the six staff members and asked resident art groups to remove their belongings by early September, citing financial concerns. As artists and fans mourn the loss of one of the city’s great art houses, no one seems sure about what will happen next.
Alaska Public Media
Radio
East Bay College Fund helps Oakland students get to college—and stay there
The East Bay College Fund awards up to forty sixteen-thousand dollar scholarships each year to low-income students from Oakland. Nearly all of these students are the first in their families to attend college, and nearly all have weathered the kind of personal challenges—such as violence, homelessness, or early parenthood—that could easily have blocked the way.
Oakland North
Radio

I'm an award-winning multimedia journalist and audio producer with a huge appetite for audio news and long-form narrative. For the past seven-plus years, my focus has been podcasts. After several years as a staff writer for Seattle Weekly, I produced and hosted a weekly, sound-rich, deeply reported narrative podcast for that news outlet called "Seattleland." In 2019, I produced another narrative podcast for a law firm here in Seattle -- "Trial Insider: Dinh v Ride the Ducks," a six-episode story about a trial and its context; find it wherever you get podcasts. I then helped launch the podcast department from scratch at Cascade PBS in Seattle, which now has four active podcasts along with several more in its archive. Among others, I launched and produced "This Changes Everything," a podcast about the events that transform society (https://crosscut.com/podcast/changes-everything or wherever you listen). The first season explores the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic; the second, the movement to defund police; the third, public education in a pandemic. All three seasons have won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and/or Best of the West. These days, as Senior Podcast Producer at Cascade PBS, I produce and co-host a newsroom-focused show called Northwest Reports (formerly Crosscut Reports, which also consistently wins SPJ awards), produce a show about Pacific Northwest history (Mossback), and help to mix audio and support production for Your Last Meal, an award-winning food podcast, among other projects.

Before all this, I was a fellow at Grist.org, a staff writer and multimedia producer at Edutopia magazine, and a freelance reporter and avid international traveler. I grew up in upstate New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, studied abroad in Toulouse, France, and spent several years freelancing, traveling, and volunteering in Thailand, Vietnam, India, France, England, Peru, Ecuador, Haiti, and Nicaragua before obtaining a master's degree at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and moving to Seattle.

As a writer, radio reporter, photographer, and web producer, I've fallen pretty hard for the myriad possibilities of multimedia storytelling. I've reported, produced, edited, voiced, and polished long-form audio documentaries. I spent a year reporting part-time for Crosscurrents on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and a summer reporting for the Alaska Public Radio Network. I've produced radio pieces for broadcast on KQED’s The California Report, KUOW in Seattle, the National Radio Project’s Making Contact, and KALX 90.7 FM in Berkeley, along with many audio slide shows and add-ons for news outlets and nonprofit organizations. I've shot and edited videos, mapped data, and built stories using a variety of software platforms and CMS systems including Creatavist, Drupal, and Wordpress.

In addition to Seattle Weekly and Edutopia, I've written for Grist, Wired, The Atlantic, Crosscut, VIA, Bay Nature, Afar, Ode, Yoga Journal, Adirondack Life, Change.org, KQED’s MindShift, and The Bold Italic, among other publications, about education, travel, food, health, science, art, social justice, and the environment. I'm passionate about the power of high-integrity media to inform and inspire… and intensely curious about pretty much everything.

Sara Bernard

About

Sara Bernard