KidNuz

More About KidNuz

The show description is, Kids Deserve a Daily Newscast, all their own to kickstart their morning with five minutes of timely, unbiased, and age appropriate stories professionally written professionally delivered by four Emmy winning journalists who also happened to be moms.

The length of each episode is about five minutes. It is hopefully, obviously totally kid-ear friendly. The show is ongoing and new episodes are available every weekday. 

FPG Partner Bookshop.org

I love using bookshop.org because I can support local bookstores. Even when I can’t visit them physically right now, at least not very often with three kids in tow. You can also support local bookstores, but buy books online. You can find a specific local bookstore that you would like to support, and they will receive the full profit off your order, or your order will contribute to an earnings pool that will be evenly distributed among independent bookstores.

You can see some of my favorite books for me and for my kiddos by going to my affiliate link at bookshop.org/shop/FPG. 

How KidNuz Started

Yeah, so KidNuz was founded by four women who were all colleagues at a TV station in the San Francisco area.

Our founder, who had two young children at the time, was so excited when they started becoming interested in the news, but she realized every time they came into the kitchen for breakfast, she had to turnover the front page of the New York Times. Because the headlines were so traumatic and she thought, there’s gotta be a place or somewhere where I can find news that’s appropriate for kids.

And she looked and looked and really couldn’t find anything that she thought was decent. So, you know, kind of, that’s the whole, you know, mother of invention, find a need and fill it. So she approached one of us, who was the head writer, and then she approached me to do the voice, and then we approached another gal to do the backup voice.

And that’s where it all started. And we launched, gosh, about three and a half years ago. 

There are movies for kids, there are books for kids. There should be news for kids as well, because there’s some, most of the, everyday normal news can be pretty scary. And even for adults it can be pretty scary. So that’s why we try and introduce age appropriate stories and when they’re big, you know, heavy stories that are just too big to ignore, we try and handle them very carefully in an age appropriate way so that, you know, kids learn what’s going on, but hopefully aren’t too freaked out about it.

The Vibe of KidNuz

The value of, KidNuz is primarily to be trustworthy. For both kids and adults because we realize we’re asking a lot from parents and teachers to trust us. You know that when they hit play for KidNuz and kids hear something, you can’t un-hear it. So they need to trust that when they are playing our podcast, that it’s gonna be age appropriate as we say it is.

We try to be very reliable.  We are very unbiased.  We try and stick right down the middle of the road. Just the facts, you know? And, and then the adults who are listening with the kids, if they wanna add their own interpretation or their own message, they’re welcome to do that.  We are respectful, obviously professional,  and we work very hard to be very fair.

And we try to have a little fun too. So. I say that’s kind of the vibe. I think it’s important to be respectful of kids and not dumb down, the wording or the voice and not, have too much little razzled dazzle. Obviously we have a few little sound effects, but, not too many. It’s a kid version of adult news basically. And I think that’s one of the reasons it’s been so well received.

Tori’s Favorite Episodes

One cute little story. I don’t know why it stays with me, but it just was just, the picture in my mind was so cute.

These are the stories we like of kids doing cool things, you know, like an average kid doing, an extra cool thing. And so there was a little boy, I think in Brooklyn, New York, and he loved to sew, you know, it was like his little hobby. And he loved to sew bow ties, so that was like his little signature.

And he went with his parents to an animal shelter. And there were a lot of older dogs who weren’t getting adopted. So he decided to make bow ties for the older dogs. And then they all got adopted and I just thought it was so sweet. 

The story that I recorded today was about a 13 year old who’s come up with all these non fungible tokens, NFTs, cuz he figured out how to do coding at five and so it’s kind of cool. 

Then there’s a girl, she’s 19 years old, who flew around the world and, set all these records.  So yeah, so it’s just kind of a little, off the beaten path news that’s in legitimate news. Obviously we choose our sources very carefully, but, things that you might not know about. 

I think it’s stories of kids doing really cool things that kind of stick with me.