My first full-time newspaper job was at The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I started there as a summer intern in May 2006. I wrote a lot of briefs about car accidents, but I also covered floods, murders, kidnapping, county government, FEMA, tornadoes, house fires, and an immigration raid. I learned how to be a reporter from editors like Mary Sharp and Doug Beach.

In 2010 the Des Moines Register hired me as a metro reporter, then shifted me to the business desk. I learned to cover banks, insurance and the economy without always embarrassing myself, and occasionally wrote for the Money section of USA Today.

In June 2012 I took a job covering the economy at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I'm a graduate of Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. My wife and I live a few blocks south of downtown Minneapolis in the Whittier neighborhood.

Twitter: @adambelz
Star Tribune profile

(Photo credit: Jonathan D. Woods)