Photo by Alex Kolyer
Elizabeth Baier is currently the Rochester bureau chief for Minnesota Public Radio.
Since taking the position in August of 2009, she has covered a wide-range of 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 and tornadoes in the Midwest.
She 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.
She’s received numerous awards and fellowships for her work, including: a National Heath Journalism Fellowship; Northwest Broadcast News Association Award; Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists Page One Award; National Headliner Award; Institute for Justice and Journalism Fellowship; Minnesota AP Broadcasters Award; Knight Digital Media Center Multimedia Fellowship; Florida Society of News Editors Award; and an Inter-American Press Association Fellowship. She was also part of a Pulitzer Prize finalist team for 2005 coverage of Hurricane Wilma.
Born in Chicago to a Colombian mother and German father, Baier’s background inspires her to find stories that take listeners to new places and introduce them to compelling characters.
She has undergraduate degrees in journalism and international relations from the University of Miami and 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.
