Who is Gabe Bullard?
good question
I’m a journalist, writer, and audio producer who grew up in the Midwest.
My journalistic work includes investigative reporting, features, and digital strategy. My other writing largely covers nostalgia and popular culture.
I’m interested in how culture and technology shape our identities and our perception of time.
I was a member of the 2015 class of Nieman Journalism Fellows at Harvard University and I completed an M.A. in Literature, Culture, and Technology at American University in 2021.
Scroll down to read a chronological biography with a long list of achievements, etc. You don’t have to, though. It’s very awkward writing these things.
The country I come from is called the Midwest
I grew up in southern Illinois. I studied journalism, political science, and video production at Webster University in St. Louis. In 2008, I began working at Louisville Public Media, first as a reporter, later as news director and eventually as director of news and editorial strategy. In my time at the station, web traffic and radio ratings reached record highs.
While living in Louisville, I noticed a rise in nostalgia for the old ways of doing things—older music styles, pre-industrial foodways, vintage fashion. Nostalgia has always been a part of our culture, but the focus on agrarian Southern nostalgia was surprising to see.
In 2014, I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a Nieman Fellowship. My focus of study was on how nostalgia shapes our popular culture and our politics. In the time, I accidentally became an authority on the history and politics of the television show Hee Haw.
When I completed the fellowship, I moved to Washington, D.C., to work on the digital desk at National Geographic. There, I commissioned, edited, and wrote stories on history and culture. I also advised on digital strategy.
In 2016, I left Nat Geo to join the launch team for 1A, a new public radio show. My job as digital director was to put together an audience engagement strategy that could shape, support, and extend the conversations we had on air. We used a combination of SMS, bespoke apps, voicemail, and social media to reach a new and expanding audience. We also Photoshopped a fan’s drawing of a cowboy every week.
From 1A, I joined the WAMU newsroom as an editor. I steered local news coverage on air and online, and eventually served as interim news director of the combine WAMU/DCist newsroom.
Still fascinated by nostalgia, in 2020, I enrolled in the MA program in Literature, Culture, and Technology at American University. I graduated eighteen months later. My capstone project on nostalgia in media won the school’s Kessler-Roberts prize. I presented one piece of this capstone—a Susan Sontag tribute focused on the TV show Riverdale—at the 2022 Popular Culture Association conference.
Later that year, I joined the staff of the NPR show Here & Now. I’m currently the show’s managing producer.