Cami Koons covers rural affairs in the communities surrounding Kansas City for Kansas City PBS. Koons has served as a volunteer features reporter for The Eudora Times, a paper dedicated to bringing news back to a small Kansas town. Reporting for The Times taught Koons the importance of community journalism which led her to Report for America. Throughout the pandemic, Koons has worked with Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health as a communications intern to help inform her community about COVID safety and local guidelines. Koons was also heavily involved with 90.7 FM KJHK, the campus radio station at the University of Kansas, where she produced video, audio, print and on-air content. In 2020, Koons received local and national awards for her reporting with KJHK and for her weekly French radio show. Koons spent a semester in France and is known to show up to gatherings armed with baguette, cheese and a playlist of French tunes.
Beat: Rural issues in Missouri
The beat focuses on multimedia storytelling in rural parts of our 35-county coverage area that have not gotten our attention in recent years. Key topics include rural attitudes in an election year, the economic sustainability of small towns in rural America, issues of aging in rural America, the effects of climate change in rural areas, and growing signs of an emerging farm crisis.