E. W. ("Easy") Ziebarth (October 4, 1910 – February 27, 2001) was a Peabody Award winning radio broadcaster as well as a professor and administrator at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

. Born in 1910 in

Columbus, Wisconsin Columbus is a city in Columbia (mostly) and Dodge Counties in the south-central part of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 5,540 at the 2020 census. All of this population resided in the Columbia County portion of the city. Columbu ...

, Ziebarth attended the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

for his undergraduate and master's degrees before coming to the University of Minnesota to begin his doctoral studies in speech and communication in 1937. Ziebarth would remain at the University of Minnesota as a professor of speech for over 40 years. He also served as the dean of the College of Liberal Arts from 1963 to 1973 and as interim university president in 1974 after the departure of

Malcolm Moos Malcolm Charles Moos (April 19, 1916 – January 28, 1982) was an American political scientist, speechwriter and academic administrator. He was a professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University for two decades. As a speechwriter, Moos w ...

. Ziebarth also had a long career in broadcasting beginning at the University of Minnesota's

Radio K KUOM (770 AM) – branded ''Radio K'' – is a daytime-only non-commercial educational college/alternative rock radio station licensed to serve Minneapolis, Minnesota. KUOM covers the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, and extends its ...

(then called WLB). Later he joined

WCCO Radio WCCO (830 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and owned by Audacy, Inc. Its studios and offices are located on Second Avenue South in Downtown Minneapolis. WCCO features a talk radio format, with frequent newscas ...

and also served as a foreign correspondence for CBS. His 1950s program ''This I Believe'' was broadcast internationally via

Voice of America Voice of America (VOA or VoA) is the state-owned news network and international radio broadcaster of the United States of America. It is the largest and oldest U.S.-funded international broadcaster. VOA produces digital, TV, and radio content ...

in six different languages. He was also involved in the initial setup of

Twin Cities Public Television Twin Cities Public Television, Inc. (abbreviated TPT, doing business as Twin Cities PBS) is a nonprofit organization based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, that operates the Twin Cities' two PBS member television stations, KTCA-TV (channe ...

's studios on the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus. Ziebarth won two Peabody awards for his work. The first in 1959 was awarded to WCCO for a series of programs on international relations. Ziebarth had traveled to the Soviet Union with a small group of academics and journalists and reported back on his experience. His second came in 1971 for a WCCO radio program he did entitled "The Heart of the Matter" which chronicled his own open heart surgery. Ziebarth retired from teaching in the late 1970s. He died in 2001. A collection of his papers can be accessed at the University Archives, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ziebarth, E. W. 1910 births 2001 deaths Radio personalities from Minneapolis People from Columbus, Wisconsin University of Minnesota alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni University of Minnesota faculty Peabody Award winners