We make documentaries for your ears.
Gray Area launched in 2017 to share true stories of people who are dealing with this whole thing we call “justice,” people who are trying to get beyond labels of right and wrong or good and evil, crime and consequence, to get to something bigger – redemption.
Our work is strengthened by a belief that people and communities can and should take a lead role in telling their stories. This kind of respectful, trauma-aware collaboration informs how journalists can work with subjects who have long been marginalized by news outlets and other gatekeepers.
As an Auntie-Niece team, we’ve harnessed our unique dynamic as an inter-generational duo with a strong base of mutual respect and trust to create a growing body of work that is proving not just thought-provoking, but life-changing.
Executive Producer: Julie Reynolds
Julie is a career investigative journalist. Her work has been broadcast and published by outlets including PBS, NPR, The Nation, Newsweek and Mother Jones.
Reynolds has received numerous journalism honors including a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, and awards from the Society for Professional Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Evident Change and others.
Her 2006 PBS documentary “Nuestra Familia, Our Family” won Investigative Reporters and Editors’ highest honor, the Tom Renner Award and NAHJ’s best documentary.
Reynolds co-founded the nonprofit bilingual news site Voices of Monterey Bay and produces the podcast “Gray Area: a Show About Justice and Redemption.” Gray Area’s season two documentary series AFTER LIFE, supported by California Humanities, won the Institute for Nonprofit News’ INNY award and was a finalist in the Media for a Just Society Awards. Our pilot episode of the ELDERS project, Uncle John, won INN’s 2024 Breaking Barriers Award.
Co-producer & Creative Director: Mara J. Reynolds
Mara is a fourth-generation Santa Cruzan and a third-generation journalist. Since the beginning, Mara’s work as an educator and editor has shaped narrative form and content of Gray Area, and she serves as producer, writer, researcher and art and music director for the podcast, piecing each episode together from hours of source material.
She is a contributing writer for Voices of Monterey Bay as well as an entrepreneur and creative consultant.
Teamwork Making the Dream Work
As a pair, our work together began decades ago with research and administrative assistance over summer breaks, but has blossomed into a creative partnership that we both cherish as both personally and professionally unique. While Julie brings her expertise and rigor as a veteran investigative journalist, Mara brings an educator’s perspective that prioritizes meaningful questions, context and outcomes above answers.
Julie sets the course and tone of the project, finding our leads and narrating each episode. We review the audio compose and edit the scripts in shared cloud documents and platforms. Then Mara composes each episode and builds the soundtrack before passing it back to Julie for final edits. Mara also creates all the artwork.
But you don’t have to take our word for it.
We’ve got nothing but five-star reviews on Healing the Children of Horse Nations, a collaboration between The Imprint’s Indigenous Children and Families Reporter Nancy Marie Spears, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma; podcast producers Julie and Mara Reynolds; and visual storyteller Josué Rivas, who is Mexica and Otomi.
“This story shows what is possible when Indigenous communities harness their historical knowledge to support their youth through the reclamation of healing relationships that were lost to them — through no fault of their own.”
– Nancy Marie Spears (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma)
Co-Producer, “Uncle John,” interviewed in The Local Fix”
As in 2023 (for Season Two: AFTER LIFE), in 2024 Gray Area Podcast was honored to win the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Nonprofit News Awards in the Breaking Barriers category (micro division) for our “respectful, trauma-aware reporting” with uniquely meaningful impacts.
Some of the coverage we received for “Uncle John”:
- Mara, Julie and Nancy interviewed for The Imprint‘s weekly podcast by host John Kelly.
- “Uncle John” (Episode One of Season Three, ELDERS) presented at the 42nd annual NICWA conference in Seattle to critical acclaim. What followed were some incredibly heartfelt and healing gatherings, as first reported by Underscore: Honoring the Lost Kids of Chemawa Indian School
- OPB’s Think Out Loud Our interviewed our incredible co-producer Nancy about the project and (Dr.) Uncle John Spence’s work: How some of Oregon’s Indigenous youth are using equine therapy
- The Local Fix interviewed Julie and Nancy about the unique partnerships and process behind the making of “Uncle John” in Reflecting on Indigenous pain and healing: Behind Voices of Monterey Bay and The Imprint’s award-winning reporting.