Janet Saidi
Producer | Assistant ProfessorJanet Saidi is KBIA’s long-form audio producer and serves on the Missouri School of Journalism's faculty and graduate faculty. Janet has twice been honored to serve as KBIA's news director for the station's amazing award-winning news team. As news director she led the station to join ambitious national collaborations with Harvest Public Media, Side Effects Public Media, the KBIA Health and Wealth desk, the Center for Religion and the Professions, and the Mississippi Basin Ag & Water Desk. Her work has been supported by grants from CPB, PRX, AIR/Localore, the Reynolds Journalism Institute and the Missouri School of Journalism, the Missouri Foundation for Health, Missouri Humanities, the Missouri State Historical Society, America Amplified, and others. She has written and produced pieces for NPR, PBS, the BBC, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Los Angeles Times.
Janet's varied collaborative media projects are about building community through audio, including recent projects like the collaborative podcast River Town, the food podcast Canned Peaches, and the music podcast Cover Story with Stephanie Shonekan. In 2020, Janet hosted KBIA’s live, national-award-winning talk show The Check-In; and she has co-created two award-winning, collaboratively-produced series combining oral history with audio journalism, You Don’t Say and Missouri on Mic. In 2014 and 2016, Janet co-produced two journalism-on-the-stage theater productions with playwright Michelle Tyrene Johnson: Justice in the Embers, with Kansas City’s Living Room Theatre, and The Green Duck Lounge with MU Theatre.
Janet began her public-media work at KPBS in San Diego, on a live, nightly talk show called The Lounge. While in California, Janet helped produce the national PBS series “Remaking American Medicine” about healthcare in America, and worked as an editor at the Gay & Lesbian Times and Uptown Newsmagazine. As vice president for news at Kansas City Public Television, Janet led a team of multiplatform journalists to launch KCPT’s digital magazine FlatlandKC, and co-produced the Beyond Belief interfaith journalism project for AIR’s Localore “Finding America” series. Janet lived for several years in England, where she earned her master’s in Literature from University College, London. Her Substack newsletter and podcast is the Austen Connection. Ask her anything you want about Jane!
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Welcome to this special bonus episode of River Town! Our producers traveled to Weston, Missouri for "Hearing Place," an inspiring day in Weston, Missouri, hosted by our partners at The New Territory magazine. We joined a roster of creators, writers and scholars - all gathered to talk about the ways we listen to a place, and how a sense of place inspires us. -
Here's a roundup of headlines from across the mid-Missouri region. -
On this special season finale of "Cover Story with Stephanie Shonekan," Cheryl Henson and Nick Raposo join the podcast to discuss "Bein' Green," a song from our beloved childhood friend Kermit the Frog. Cheryl Henson is the daughter of Jim Henson, Kermit’s original voice actor and creator of The Muppets. And Nick Raposo is the son of Joe Raposo, a songwriter and composer who was one of the producers for Sesame Street. Together, they break down the cultural significance of Kermit’s song and how Ray Charles interpreted the universal ode to self-acceptance just a few years later. -
Nina Simone's "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," released in 1964, is both a personal plea for acceptance and a collective cry for justice. The Animals' version of the song — released just a few months later — maintains the same lyrics, but has a much lighter sound. On this episode of "Cover Story with Stephanie Shonekan," Craig Thompson joins Stephanie to discuss the two versions and how they reflect the cultural landscape of the 1960s.
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Kelvin McIlwain joins Stephanie Shonekan on this episode of "Cover Story with Stephanie Shonekan" to discuss the song "Superstar." It was originally released in 1969 by Delaney & Bonnie under the name "Groupie," a word that describes someone who follows around a celebrity in the hopes of one day meeting them. The Carpenters released their own version of the song in 1971 and named it "Superstar." Luther Vandross released a cover of "Superstar" in 1983. Shonekan and McIlwain unpack the differences in the Carpenters and Vandross versions of the song, as well as the legacy the artists have left behind.
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In this episode of "Cover Story with Stephanie Shonekan," Michelle Appel joins Shonekan to discuss Peter Gabriel's "Biko." They explore the song's embodiment of the anti-apartheid movement and how Joan Baez's version resonated with Appel's story as a young activist in the 80s.
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The fourth season of Cover Story with Stephanie Shonekan is kicking off with "Jolene," a song by Dolly Parton that burst back into the forefront of our minds when Beyoncé released her own version of the song earlier this year on her album "Cowboy Carter." Susan Rivera, the dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland, sits down with Stephanie Shonekan to discuss how the song has evolved across 50 years.
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Here's a roundup of the day's headlines from the KBIA newsroom.
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A special bonus episode of River Town! Our producers traveled to Marthasville, Missouri to interview hikers, cyclists, conservationists, musicians and all manner of people visiting the Peers Store, a historic landmark along the Katy Trail, on a summer Saturday. -
Here's a roundup of headlines from across the region.
