Brian Bull grew up playing with his dad’s cassette recorder and a friend’s reel-to-reel, and watching the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite with his grandparents.  A member of the Nez Perce tribe, he also appreciated the power of oral narrative in his culture in relaying values, history, and stories.  These all spurred him to explore a career in broadcast journalism, and he’s left tracks at radio stations including at Lewiston Senior High School, Macalester College, and small and major markets in South Dakota, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Washington D.C. 

Bull eventually hit an Oregon Trail of his own, joining NPR-affiliate KLCC in Eugene in 2016. He quickly tackled stories involving homelessness, social justice, economic development, wildfires, and may have poked his microphone into a Bigfoot feature.  In 2019, his writing scored KLCC its first national Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association, and a feature story on the Eugene-Springfield housing market also won him an Excellence in Consume Finance Reporting Award from PRNDI-NEFE in 2017.  

Other notable work at KLCC includes a half-hour documentary on the 20th anniversary of the Thurston School Shooting, and a two-part series on the problem of wildlife poaching across Oregon. His coverage of wildfires has included features and video work on the revisitation of prescribed burns (or cultural burns when practiced by Indigenous/Native firefighters) as a way to offset more destructive wildfires as climate change continues to make the Pacific Northwest hotter and drier.

Bull also co-mentored UO students in 2022 for a Science Journalism class as they covered the aftermath of the Holiday Farm Fire.  Other mentoring includes working with the Snowden Fellows every year on reporting for KLCC, and Bull has also been part of NPR’s Next Generation Radio Project since 2001.  The five-day projects help aspiring journalists from underrepresented communities learn how to produce audio stories with other seasoned professionals.

Bull joined the UO SOJC in December 2023, and enjoys working with tomorrow’s journalists in areas related to audio production, writing for broadcast, covering diverse communities, and effective interviewing.  He still files with KLCC and other outlets, including NPR, National Native News, APM’s Marketplace, and Underscore. His articles have also appeared in The Oregonian, Indian Country Today, and The Eugene Register-Guard. 

Bull lives in the Eugene area with his wife and family, which includes four cats.  When not nose deep in news, he’s hiking, cooking, doing photography, or enjoying a Godzilla movie.