Kevin Diaz

Kevin Diaz has been in journalism for more than four decades, starting out as a night crime reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1984. Before that, he was the managing editor of the University of Minnesota’s college newspaper, the Minnesota Daily.

Throughout the 1990s he also worked as an adjunct instructor of public affairs reporting at the University of Minnesota, teaching students how to cover city, county and state government. He became a senior writer at the Washington City Paper in 1999, writing magazine-length cover stories about city politics, including an investigative piece on former Mayor Marion Barry.

In 2001 he became a Washington correspondent for the McClatchy Newspapers, primarily covering Congress. He also covered the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S.-Cuba trade relations, and the disputed 2006 presidential election in Mexico. Moving to the Houston Chronicle in 2014, he covered Texas politics, immigration, border issues, and the 2016 presidential election.

Kevin’s last newspaper job was back in Minneapolis, where he returned in 2019 as an editor leading a team of reporters covering state government and national politics. The team collaborated in the paper’s Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the 2020 police killing of George Floyd.

Since semi-retiring to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Kevin has worked part time as a public radio producer at WHCP in Cambridge and at Delmarva Public Media in Salisbury and Princess Anne, where he also mentors students.