Kirk Siegler
As a correspondent on NPR's national desk, Kirk Siegler covers rural life, culture and politics from his base in Boise, Idaho.
His beat explores the intersection and divisions between rural and urban America, including longer term reporting assignments that have taken him frequently to a struggling timber town in Idaho that lost two sawmills right before the election of President Trump. In 2018, after the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history, Siegler spent months chronicling the diaspora of residents from Paradise, exploring the continuing questions over how – or whether – the town should rebuild in an era of worsening climate-driven wildfires.
Siegler's award winning reporting on the West's bitter land use controversies has taken listeners to the heart of anti-government standoffs in Oregon and Nevada, including a rare interview with recalcitrant rancher Cliven Bundy. He's also profiled numerous ranching and mining communities from Nebraska to New Mexico that have worked to reinvent themselves in a fast-changing global economy.
Siegler also contributes extensively to the network's breaking news coverage, from floods and hurricanes in Louisiana to deadly school shootings in Connecticut. In 2015, he was awarded an international reporting fellowship from Johns Hopkins University to report on health and development in Nepal. While en route to the country, the worst magnitude earthquake to hit the region in more than 80 years struck. The fellowship was cancelled, but Siegler was one of the first foreign journalists to arrive in Kathmandu and helped lead NPR's coverage of the immediate aftermath of the deadly quake. He also filed in-depth reports focusing on the humanitarian disaster and challenges of bringing relief to some of the Nepal's far-flung rural villages.
Before helping open the network's first ever bureau in Idaho at the studios of Boise State Public Radio in 2019, Siegler was based at the NPR West studios in Culver City, California. Prior to joining NPR in 2012, Siegler spent seven years reporting from Colorado, where he became a familiar voice to NPR listeners reporting on politics, water and the state's ski industry from Denver for NPR Member station KUNC. He got his start in political reporting covering the Montana Legislature for Montana Public Radio.
Apart from a brief stint working as a waiter in Sydney, Australia, Siegler has spent most of his adult life living in the West. He grew up in Missoula, Montana, and received a journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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President Trump again skipped Phoenix during his latest campaign swing through Arizona this week, as the campaign turns to its 2016 playbook hoping rural voters will decide a close election.
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President Trump again skipped Phoenix during his latest campaign swing through Arizona, as the campaign returns to its 2016 playbook — hoping rural voters will decide the close election.
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The presidential race and the balance of power in the U.S. Senate could come down to how the vote goes in this battleground state, which also has among the highest COVID-19 death rates in the nation.
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A Senate race may be a toss-up in Arizona, a coronavirus hot spot. Latino and retired voters — groups the virus hit disproportionately hard — explain how their experience is informing their votes.
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The arrests of militiamen who allegedly plotted to kidnap Michigan's governor echo loudly in the Idaho Panhandle, a region long synonymous with anti-government extremism. -
President Trump's top public lands chief is still helping lead the Bureau of Land Management, despite a federal ruling removing him from the top post there.
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The 2020 wildfire season is a grim reminder that disasters unfairly hit the poor and the elderly. Thousands of people on the West Coast still lack even temporary housing. -
The White House says it will appeal a federal court ruling ousting William Perry Pendley, who led the Bureau of Land Management for more than 400 days without Senate confirmation. -
Many American schools are back in class via distance learning. It's stressful everywhere but especially in rural districts where most students lack high-speed Internet and cell phone service at home. -
The ruling blocks William Perry Pendley from continuing as the temporary head of the Bureau of Land Management, a post he has held for more than a year without being confirmed by the Senate.
