SF Sketchfest 2025

Jim Colgan thinks everything is better when the audience is involved. As a maker of audio and live events, he creates conversations and moments of interaction that create a deeper understanding for everyone. Jim works as an editorial director and interactive programmer for The New York Times as well as independently producing audio and events for media organizations. He was a 2020 John S. Knight journalism fellow, following a career in live radio, podcasts and tech companies.

Jim moved to New York City from Dublin, Ireland as a student in 2000. What was supposed to be a summer abroad turned into a full time job as a staff reporter in a Manhattan newspaper, The Irish Voice. Jim was in the right place at the right time to cover the September 11 attacks for Irish broadcast and print outlets in 2001. Jim then worked as a news reporter and producer for WNYC radio, where he was hired full time. For six years, he was a producer at the flagship news program, The Brian Lehrer Show – a dream job at a show that connected millions of New Yorkers with each other through live conversations on news and culture. While there, Jim launched the station's ambitious crowdsourcing initiatives, as a way to get listeners more involved and connected to the news they had previously only consumed. Those initiatives were called out in the Peabody award the team won in 2008. Jim later used listener text messages to fact-check the mayor over claims about snow-plowing, which won an Online News Association award in 2011. Jim was part of the founding team for the national daily show, The Takeaway. Jim left WNYC in 2012 to work with technology companies like the messaging platform, Mobile Commons, and the social audio platform SoundCloud. At SoundCloud, Jim was Head of Audio, where he worked with radio creators to adapt to a social environment. Jim was also an executive producer at Audible, where he developed and launched original programming.