Jim Bell is KUHF's local host in the afternoons on HD-2 and KUHF News online. He has been anchoring and reporting for KUHF since spring of 1993. He has received numerous awards for his work at KUHF, including the Press Club of Houston's Radio Journalist of the Year for two years.

He covers all types of stories, but does have a few specialties, including the arts, NASA, economics and energy. His knowledge of Texas History is so valuable to the entire newsroom that he almost has a full-time job serving as our personal "news room almanac."

Jim got his start in radio back in 1965, as a DJ on an easy listening FM station in the Clear Lake area. That station was owned by the late Col. John "Shorty" Powers, the former voice of Mercury Control in the earliest days of the space program. Powers used his radio station as the flagship for a national network he formed to carry his live coverage of space flights during Projects Gemini and Apollo. Powers's DJs were expected to double as reporters during space flights, and that was Jim's first exposure to broadcast news reporting. He was hooked and that's what he's done ever since the late 1960's.

Jim has worked in every aspect of electronic news at radio and television stations in Houston, Austin and the east Texas area, as an anchor, reporter and news director. He was a news producer, editor and writer for NBC Radio News in New York for a time in 1976. Jim has been the anchor of Morning Edition since 1997.