Jake Warga (born April 24, 1972) is an American

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

, former Stanford University lecturer, and contributor to various

public radio Public broadcasting involves radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing ...

organizations, including

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...

Public Radio International Public Radio International (PRI) was an American public radio organization. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, PRI provided programming to over 850 public radio stations in the United States. PRI was one of the main providers of programm ...

, and American Public Media. Warga is also a professional

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

and

travel writer The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern period ...

, having traveled to, and reported from, six of the seven

continents A continent is any of several large landmasses. Generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, up to seven geographical regions are commonly regarded as continents. Ordered from largest in area to smallest, these seven ...

Life

Jake Warga was born in

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, to Wayne and Carol Warga; his father was a writer for ''

Life Magazine ''Life'' was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, ''Life'' was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest ma ...

'' and the '' Los Angeles Times''. Warga received a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology from UC Davis in 1995 and a Master of Arts in visual anthropology from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2003.

Work

Film

During and after college, Warga worked as an assistant cameraman on several Hollywood films including, '' Witchboard 2: The Devil's Doorway'' (1993), '' Nice Guys Sleep Alone'' (1999), '' The Prophecy 3: The Ascent'' (2000), '' Mimic 2'' (2001), and many others. He was also the

cinematographer The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the photographing or recording of a film, television production, music video or other live action piece. The cinematographer is the ch ...

for the films ''Lineage'' (1997), ''Sleep When You're Dead'' (1997), and numerous short projects.

Radio

In 1996, while working in Hollywood, Warga became interested in public radio almost by happenstance. When a colleague asked him for help recording an audio documentary about homeless people's pets, he went online in search of technical help and found a website called Transom.org. Using tools recommended by Transom and working with Transom editors, Warga co-produced his first piece, "Street Dogs," which aired on Seattle's National Public Radio affiliate KUOW (94.9FM). Since then, Warga has contributed a number of stories to public radio programs, including National Public Radio's '' All Things Considered'' and '' Day to Day''; American Public Media's ''

Weekend America ''Weekend America'' was a weekly public radio program dealing with news, popular culture, the arts and more. The program was produced for American Public Media and hosted by John Moe in Saint Paul, Minnesota. ''Weekend America'' launched Saturday ...

''; and Public Radio International's '' The World'', '' Studio 360'', '' This American Life'' and ''

The Savvy Traveler ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in En ...

''. His stories have been broadcast throughout the world and are archived on th
Hearing Voices website
and th
Public Radio Exchange
A personal essay of his, "Father's Day," which aired on ''

'', won the 2005 Golden Reel Award from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. From December 2009 to January 2010, Warga embedded with U.S. soldiers in Iraq, reporting for '' Marketplace'' and ''The World''. He did a popular series of radio pieces asking what soldiers were listening to on their iPods as a way to understanding their personal experiences about deployment. In December 2012, Warga embedded with U.S. Forces in Afghanistan to produce the radio series “The Things They Carry” for PRX.org, inspired by the Tim O’Brian book “The Things They Carried”.

Photography

In 2008, Warga published his first photo essay, ''Asses of the World'', containing pictures of donkeys taken in various parts of the world set to humorous captions. Warga recently had an exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum called “Faces”, a multi-media project combining one hundred photographic portraits of various Africans with ambient sounds collected from the field. Warga’s stock photography is represented by

Getty Images Getty Images Holdings, Inc. is an American visual media company and is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets— creative ...

Teaching

Warga was a lecturer in the Stanford Storytelling Program (2015-2019), and formerly a faculty member at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences teaching various media production courses and general humanities core courses. He also taught the following classes and workshops in the USA: Writing for Radio; Documentary Studies and Production; Photography, Cinematography, Mixed-Media, Production Sound and Lighting. Warga has been a guest lecturer at the University of London, the University of Southern California, the University of Washington, and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.

Awards

*Society for Professional Journalists' 2002 Mark of Excellence Award for "Radio Feature Reporting" *National Federation of Community Broadcasters' 2005 Golden Reel Award for "Personal Essay" *Golden Reel Award 2005 for "Father's Day," National Federation of Community Broadcasters *Clarion Award—Association for Women in Communications (2x) for "Home from Africa" and "Islamic Feminism"

References

External links

Jake Warga, Stanford Profiles

Jake Warga's Homepage
*
Jake Warga
on

Jake Warga
on Public Radio Exchange
"Faces" exhibit at Seattle Art Museum

Jake Warga at Getty
{{DEFAULTSORT:Warga, Jake 1972 births Living people American public radio personalities NPR personalities University of California, Davis alumni