KBIA wins national award for series about sustainable agriculture
Schleis interviews farmer Arlyn Kauffman in Weldon, Iowa, for an episode about peer-to-peer farmer training and support.
By Austin Fitzgerald
Photos by Cory W. MacNeil, Ph.D. ’24
COLUMBIA, Mo. (July 7, 2025) — KBIA-FM, the Missouri School of Journalism’s NPR-member radio station, has won a first-place national award from the Public Media Journalists Association Awards.
The station won in the Series category for “The Next Harvest,” which covered the environmental and economic challenges facing the Midwest’s agriculture industry over the course of seven episodes (a second season of episodes will air this fall). The awards competition pitted KBIA against public media outlets of similar size nationwide.
“This award honors community-centered reporting that matters to mid-Missourians, which is at the heart of KBIA’s mission,” said David Kurpius, dean of the School of Journalism. “It’s great to see that work — on a topic that resonates locally but has impacts nationwide —recognized on a national scale.”
It’s the second major award for the series after a regional Edward R. Murrow Award in the News Series category, with the further potential for a national Murrow Award when those honors are announced in August.
The series was reported and produced by Jana Rose Schleis, one of several staff members at the station who both create their own content and help students perform hands-on reporting as part of the Missouri Method of learning by doing. Schleis joined KBIA last year as a news producer after earning her master’s degree from the School in 2023.
Having grown up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, she brought a passion to the story that encouraged it to grow from a single planned installment to a series examining the many factors affecting Midwestern agriculture, including the impacts of climate change and potential solutions for sustainability.
“Reporting and producing The Next Harvest was a fantastic experience,” Schleis said. “The work took me all over the state of Missouri and beyond to hear from farmers, scientists, researchers and advocates working on ways to make agriculture more resilient — ecologically and economically.”
For Stan Jastrzebski, KBIA’s news director, the story puts the value of public media on full display.
“The Next Harvest is a great example of what public media does best: looking at many sides of an issue and not shying away from telling a complicated story in ways that break new ground,” Jastrzebski said. “We’re really proud of Jana Rose and excited to air season two about new topics.”
Listeners can harvest the second season of “The Next Harvest” Wednesdays this fall on KBIA.
Updated: July 7, 2025