KQED’s tri-weekly news podcast The Bay builds trust and a genuine connection with its San Francisco Bay Area audience by covering impactful local stories with an authentic sense of curiosity and empathy. The team — senior editor Alan Montecillo, host-producer Ericka Cruz Guevarra, and producer Jessica Kariisa — leverages the strength of the award-winning KQED newsroom to platform a wide variety of important topics, with a tireless commitment to sound-rich, immersive, narrative storytelling. The host and tone of the show have a unique combo for news: fresh, conversational, and authentic as well as knowledgeable, trustworthy, and accurate. We’re submitting three episodes that demonstrate the range and depth of our coverage.
California is the epicenter of America’s homelessness crisis. In recent years, cities across the state, including in the Bay Area, have ramped up efforts to prevent people from sleeping in public. But homeless residents and advocates have argued that this escalation dehumanizes people sleeping outside and puts lives at risk. On Christmas Eve, a 58-year old homeless man named James Oakley was accidentally crushed to death in a city-run trash cleanup. While San Francisco and Oakland receive the majority of coverage on this issue, the episode “Three Months After Homeless Man Is Killed in City Cleanup, Vallejo Pauses Encampment Sweeps” takes us to a less-covered Bay Area city where people are reckoning with the unintended consequences of this policy shift.
The U.S. also faces a rapidly aging population, alongside a nursing home system struggling to provide adequate care. In “Nursing Home Staff Shortages Leave Patients Waiting in Hospitals,” KQED health correspondent Lesley McClurg brings us the story of a Berkeley resident who tried desperately to get his wife into a nursing home, only to find that his only viable option was to leave her in the emergency room. This episode weaves together personal narrative with expert analysis, highlighting the systemic neglect that millions of aging Americans face.
On September 26, 2024, the Oakland Athletics played their final MLB game in the city before leaving for Las Vegas. A sold-out crowd, clad in green and gold, packed the Oakland Coliseum to bid farewell to a team beloved by generations of Bay Area residents over its 57 years in “The Town.” Breaking with the usual show format, “The Last A’s Game in Oakland” is a non-narrated episode featuring interviews with fans, sounds from the stadium, and a running audio diary from KQED reporter (and lifelong A’s fan) Joseph Geha. This episode captures the pride and heartbreak felt by Oaklanders who feel that a community pillar has been taken from them. As one fan at the Coliseum told KQED, “This was home. Now it’s gonna be just a memory.”
The Bay helps Bay Area residents understand what’s going on in the region, beyond the headlines and hot takes, by illuminating and explicating crucial information and helping listeners create deeper connections to their homes and to their fellow citizens.
