Photo by Alex Kolyer
Elizabeth Baier is currently the Rochester bureau chief for Minnesota Public Radio.
Since taking the position in August 2009, she’s covered many topics, including demographic changes in rural America, agriculture, the environment and health care issues.
She reports, edits and produces stories from southern Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin that air on MPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. No stranger to natural disasters, she’s also covered hurricanes in South Florida, wildfires in Southern California, and floods, blizzards, tornadoes and droughts in the Midwest.
Baier began her career as a journalist for The Miami Herald and also spent time covering crime, local government and general assignments for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Her writing has appeared in Newsday, the Star Tribune, La Tercera (Chile), the Associated Press, USAToday.com and several other print and digital publications. Her radio stories have aired on NPR and WBUR.
Baier’s work has been recognized by the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists, the Florida Society of News Editors, the Northwest Broadcast News Association and the Minnesota AP Broadcast Association. She’s also received fellowships from the USC Annenberg-California Endowment, the University of Oklahoma’s Institute for Justice and Journalism, UC-Berkeley’s Knight Digital Media Center and the Inter-American Press Association. In 2005, she was part of a Pulitzer Prize finalist team for coverage of Hurricane Wilma.
Born in Chicago to a Colombian mother and German father, Baier’s background inspires her to find stories that introduce listeners to new places and compelling characters.
She studied journalism and international relations at the University of Miami and received a certificate in Contemporary Latin American Studies from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago.
In 2006, she fell in love with multimedia storytelling. That’s one of the reasons she landed in public radio. When she’s not looking for a good story, she travels, takes pictures, reads and attempts to cook new recipes.
Connect with her on LinkedIn or follow her Twitter. Send her a note. Say hi.
