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. Her book about Jane Austen is due out from Simon & Schuster imprint Adams Media in September 2025.
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In this episode of "Cover Story with Stephanie Shonekan," Jordan Embrack, a vocalist and graduate of the University of Maryland, joins Stephanie to discuss "Home," Dorothy's finale song in the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz. "Home" was first performed by Stephanie Mills, and Diana Ross sang it for the film adaptation of The Wiz that premiered in 1978. Jordan and Stephanie discuss the song's national impact and the personal meaning it holds for Jordan as she begins her career as a singer and entertainer. -
In this episode of "Cover Story with Stephanie Shonekan," University of Maryland graduate Mekhi Abbott joined Stephanie to discuss the thematic differences between “Bound” by Ponderosa Twins Plus One and “Bound 2” by Kanye West. The original song, released in 1969, is full of affection and yearning, and was relatively unknown until Kanye West sampled it in 2013. But Kanye's interpretation of the song is a lot more coarse, and it’s often viewed as a dark twist on a love song.
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Here's a roundup of the day's headlines from across the region. -
University of Maryland Associate Director of Bands Andrea Brown joins Stephanie Shonekan on this episode of "Cover Story with Stephanie Shonekan" to discuss "The Way We Were" by Barbra Streisand and Beyoncé. The tear-jerking ballad was produced for a film by the same name in 1973, and the feeling of longing for a love gone by is still just as touching decades later.
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In this season premiere of Cover Story with Stephanie Shonekan, Stephanie sits down with KBIA Morning Edition host Darren Hellwege to discuss "Living After Midnight" by Judas Priest. It's a rebellious track about running amok under the cover of night. The Donnas covered it in 2001.
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Here's a roundup of headlines from across the region.
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Good morning, here's a round-up of news headlines from across the region.
