Stephanie Kelmar remembers driving around the Bay at dawn in the early 2000s, making calls from her car to land guests for KTVU-TV’s Mornings on 2, among them Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Madeleine Albright, and Seymour Hersh. “It was an amazing time to produce a morning show in the Bay Area,” says the Emmy award-winning producer, who graduated from Cal in 1990 with a degree in speech communication and rhetoric.
Fast forward to 2018, Kelmar, then with an 8-year-old son at home, decided to combine her mom instincts and news-producing chops to cofound KidNuz, a short-form podcast covering current events for kids 8 to 13, in language appropriate to their age.
Produced by a team of award-winning journalists and funded primarily through sponsorships, advertising, and listener donations, each seven-minute episodes cover topics ranging from the federal government to Barbie and sports. Teachers play them in classrooms, parents play them at the breakfast table and in their cars on their school commutes, she says. The podcast has amassed about 25 million downloads and has been streamed in more than 200 countries. Sometimes, Kelmar says, KidNuz even receives emails directly from kids asking for a shout-out to their classroom or school. “They don’t just listen passively,” she says. “They really feel part of the KidNuz community.”
California sat down with her to ask a few questions about bringing serious news to young audiences.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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How did the idea for KidNuz come up?
I was in my dining room [with a friend]. My son, at the time, was 8 years old, and he was extremely curious, and we would get The New York Times delivered every day. And every day, he would want to look at the newspaper, and every day, there is death and dying, very serious news, which is appropriate for The New York Times, but not appropriate for kids.
I was talking to another friend of mine who also had a very curious son, also a Berkeley business school graduate, and we were talking and we just realized there’s nothing for our kids. So I went to one of my old colleagues at Channel 2 and said, “Hey, what do you think about doing a podcast?” And by the way, at the time, which is, I think, probably 2015 when we started thinking about it, podcasting was not a thing. But we knew news, and we knew kids. We were all Emmy-winning producers, Emmy-winning journalists, and all moms.
When did you first decide that podcasting was the right medium for kids, and what made you confident the audience was there?
From the beginning, we only envisioned it as a podcast. We wanted a medium that didn’t involve kids being on screens, and at the time podcasting was just beginning to take off. We felt confident there was an audience, because kids are naturally curious, and we believed other parents were looking for trustworthy, age-appropriate news for their children. What we didn’t anticipate was how widely KidNuz would be embraced in classrooms around the world.
How do you make editorial decisions about what goes in and the language used?
We look for stories that will naturally appeal to kids while exposing them to news and events happening around the world. We are solidly nonpartisan and focus on reporting the facts in a clear, accessible way. We also try, whenever possible, and mostly succeed in avoiding stories that center on death or tragedy. Occasionally, there are major events that are too important to ignore, and in those cases we focus on the aspects of the story kids can understand and relate to without feeling overwhelmed or frightened.
We all take turns weighing in on content, and we are beyond fortunate to have an editor who has exceptional news judgment about what belongs in the show and how to present it for young audiences.
How do you compete for kids’ attention in the age of TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram?
As a small nonprofit, we can’t compete with the major platforms for kids’ attention, and we don’t try to. Our goal has always been to create a trusted, professional daily news source for kids that is both informative and engaging. We put a great deal of thought into every story, and we never compromise on quality or trust. The feedback we receive from kids, teachers, parents, and donors gives us confidence that we are providing a high-quality, free service that helps kids engage with current events, think critically and have meaningful conversations.
What would you say to a parent worried that podcasts are just another screen-adjacent distraction?
Podcasts are actually very different from most of the media kids consume today, because they don’t require a screen. Kids can listen while eating breakfast, riding in the car, or getting ready for school without being visually overstimulated. As for the news itself, our goal is never to overwhelm or frighten kids, but to help them understand the world in a way that feels accessible, age-appropriate, and hopeful. We believe kids are naturally curious and that giving them trusted information can actually help them feel more confident and engaged, not more anxious.
