KBIA welcomes health reporter Najifa Farhat
Farhat will also begin teaching during the upcoming spring semester
By Austin Fitzgerald
Photo by Nate Brown
COLUMBIA, Mo. (Oct. 8, 2025) — Multimedia journalist Najifa Farhat has joined KBIA-FM, the Missouri School of Journalism’s NPR-member radio station, as its newest health reporter. Her presence further strengthens a team that produces a variety of award-winning podcasts, projects and community reporting.
Stan Jastrzebski, KBIA’s news director, said Farhat’s experience at Montana Public Radio — where she interned while earning her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Montana — bodes well for her ability to cover the communities of mid-Missouri.
“Her supervisors raved about her willingness to drive many hours into rural Montana to make meaningful, lasting contacts with even those people who might have been skeptical of a public media journalist,” Jastrzebski said. ‘We’re excited about the synergies she offers to our existing team.”
Farhat further developed that knack for immersing herself into a community with Watershed Voice, an award-winning, nonprofit local news organization serving southwest Michigan. There, she covered everything from local government proceedings and crime to the environment and culture.
“I want to really focus on the ‘wealth’ part of health and wealth. What are the economic policies, money factors or other social factors of human life that don’t look like they are very connected to health at first but end up being all about health?”
Najifa Farhat
Having flourished in Montana and Michigan, she will now work in a third “M” state, where she plans to infuse her work at KBIA’s “health and wealth” desk with an understanding of how economics and health intertwine — just the latest reflection of an eclectic approach to life and her career that saw her earn a degree in criminology from her home country of Bangladesh before finding a passion for journalism.
“I want to really focus on the ‘wealth’ part of health and wealth,” Farhat said. “What are the economic policies, money factors or other social factors of human life that don’t look like they are very connected to health at first but end up being all about health?”
In addition to reporting, she will also teach journalism students starting in the spring. Though the specific course is yet to be determined, she is looking forward to building on the experience she gained at the University of Montana as a teaching assistant — including helping manage students on an international reporting trip that took her back to Bangladesh.
“One summer, I took 13 students and a professor to Bangladesh, and they spent two weeks reporting and navigating in the capital and the southern part, which is a very climate-vulnerable portion of the country,” she said. “So I’m familiar with the kind of responsibility that comes with teaching, but I’m excited to lead a class by myself and experience how that feels.”
But while she will take the lead in the classroom, her approach to audio journalism is all about letting others grab the spotlight.
“I think in audio, the journalists kind of take a backseat,” she said. “We shape the story, but the characters take the center stage, and that actually strengthens the story.”
Updated: October 9, 2025