Sam Baker currently serves as Senior Editor of News and Public Affairs and as local host for Morning Edition on KERA. The Beaumont, Texas, native also edits and produces radio commentaries, edits Art & Seek reports for radio broadcast, and has produced KERA versions of the NPR series This I Believe and StoryCorps. He also was the longtime host of KERA 13’s Emmy Award-winning public affairs program On the Record, which addressed a wide range of issues from a North Texas perspective. He won an Emmy in 2008 for KERA’s Sharing the Power: A Voter’s Voice Special, and also has earned honors from the Associated Press and the Public Radio News Directors, Inc.
Sam worked in commercial television at NBC and CBS affiliates for six years before moving to public broadcasting. He was News Director and Morning Edition host at KWGS-FM in Tulsa, Oklahoma for three years and joined KERA in 1991. He has served on the Board of Public Radio News Directors, Inc. and is a member of the Dallas-Fort Worth Association of Black Communicators.
As a volunteer, Sam produces a weekly series, Jazz in Words and Music, for Reading and Radio Resources, an agency serving the visually impaired. He also serves on the board of Southwest Transplant Alliance, a private non-profit organization that provides organs and tissues for transplantation.
