Aaron J. Brown

Aaron J. Brown

Aaron J. Brown has worked in Iron Range media since 1996, writing about Iron Range news, politics and culture since 2001.

On a cold December 1979 night in the heart of northern Minnesota’s Iron Range one Aaron James Brown joined the rag-tag lot of babies born in the waning operation of the old Hibbing General Hospital. The hospital would later be razed to become a senior living community where, one day, Brown endeavors to expire in the precise physical location of his birth. Meantime, since 2006, he has run MinnesotaBrown.com, the regional blog with global perspective you are now reading.

Aaron J. Brown is a writer, radio producer and college instructor living and working by choice among the pine forests, tamarack swamps and hardscrabble mining towns near where he grew up on a family owned salvage yard in the Sax-Zim peat bog.

Brown has written a weekly column for Hibbing Daily Tribune since 2001, serving as the paper’s editor from 2001-2003. In 2020 the paper merged to become the Mesabi Tribune, retaining Brown’s column about Iron Range politics, news, and history. He is also a monthly political columnist for the Minnesota Reformer, a non-profit statewide news and commentary site.

A past radio announcer and reporter, Brown wrote, produced and hosted the traveling variety program, the Great Northern Radio Show, on Northern Community Radio from 2011 to 2019. He is also contributing producer and commentator for several programs on NCR, including the acclaimed podcast “Dig Deep,” a friendly exploration of liberal and conservative political concepts.

Brown is the author of the book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range,” winner of the 2008 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award. He’s working on a new book for the University of Minnesota Press called “Power in the Wilderness” about the life and political impact of former Hibbing mayor Victor L. Power (1880-1926). Related to this project, he and independent filmmaker Karl Jacob are producing a serialized podcast, also called “Power in the Wilderness.”

An instructor of communication at Minnesota North College in Hibbing by day, Brown is a raconteur and longtime Range community organizer. His political and historical commentary often appears on the public television show Almanac, Almanac North, Minnesota Public Radio, and other news outlets of varying size and disposition.

Aaron J. Brown is married to Christina Brown, an academic advisor with the TRIO program. They have three sons, Henry, Douglas and George, and live in the woods of Itasca County, home to more than 1,000 of Minnesota’s famed “10,000 lakes.”