Meet the River Town Team

Tina Casagrand Foss is the founder, publisher, and editor-in-chief of The New Territory. Raised in the Gasconade River Valley of the northern Ozark border, her love for mossy woods knows no bounds. She graduated from the University of Missouri with degrees in magazine journalism and anthropology and worked as a freelance environmental journalist before starting The New Territory. As executive director of The New Territory Magazine’s newly formed nonprofit, she looks forward to a long future of reaching more readers, fostering Midwestern writers and editors, and nurturing connections among New Territory readers both on and off the page. Tina lives in Jefferson City, Missouri, just a mile away from the Missouri River.

Abigail is a freelance audio producer and reporter working with clients like At Will Media, The University of Missouri, The Sporkful podcast, and on personal projects. She spent seven years at Stitcher, most recently as a senior producer for Witness Docs. She has been the force behind the scenes making shows like Rubirosa, Toxic: The Britney Spears Story, Unfinished: Short Creek, (named one of the best podcasts of the year by the New Yorker) and All-American: Tiger Woods. Before making serialized documentaries, Abigail produced Unladylike, named one of Spotify’s top podcasts of 2018.

Janet Saidi is KBIA’s long-form audio producer and serves on the Missouri School of Journalism’s faculty and graduate faculty. Janet’s many and varied media projects are about building community through audio. She has written and produced pieces for NPR, PBS, the BBC, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Los Angeles Times, and she spent seven years leading KBIA’s award-winning news team. Her most recent projects include KBIA’s podcast Cover Story with Stephanie Shonekan; she hosted KBIA’s live, national-award-winning talk show The Check-In; and she has co-created two award-winning, collaboratively-produced series combining oral history with audio journalism, You Don’t Say and Missouri on Mic. In 2014 and 2016, Janet co-produced two journalism-on-the-stage theater productions with playwright Michelle Tyrene Johnson: Justice in the Embers, with Kansas City’s Living Room Theatre, and The Green Duck Lounge with MU Theatre. Janet began her public-media work at KPBS in San Diego, on a live, nightly talk show called The Lounge. While in California, Janet helped produce the national PBS series “Remaking American Medicine” about healthcare in America, and worked as an editor at the Gay & Lesbian Times and Uptown Newsmagazine. As vice president for news at Kansas City Public Television, Janet led a team of multiplatform journalists to launch KCPT’s digital magazine FlatlandKC, and co-produced the Beyond Belief interfaith journalism project for AIR’s Localore “Finding America” series. Janet lived for several years in England, where she earned her master’s in Literature from University College, London. Her Substack newsletter and podcast is the Austen Connection. Ask her anything you want about Jane!

Jessica Vaughn Martin is a food journalist and gastronomic enthusiast. Her work centers around the people involved in food and agriculture, and the idea of food as memory, tradition, and cultural roadmap. She is a co-founder of Leftovers Community, an emerging food media platform that celebrates and sees potential in the scraps of life: leftover food, overlooked places and unheard voices. Jessica is an alumna of the Missouri School of Journalism and a former contributing editor for Feast magazine; she has also contributed to Food Network, Farm Journal, and COMO magazine, among other publications. Most recently, she’s taken a dive into audio, managing the Canned Peaches and River Town podcasts for mid-Missouri’s local NPR affiliate, KBIA. She lives in Jefferson City, Missouri, with her young family in an old bungalow, where she’s running out of space for her growing collection of vintage Missouri cookbooks.

Tadeo Ruiz Sandoval currently studies journalism at the University of Missouri. He hails from Mexico City, but the adventure flowing within him has taken him across states, countries and continents. Journalism and travel have become a way of beind for Tadeo. Coffee, books and friends he's made along the way made him realize that a real home can be anywhere.

Olivia Mizelle is a junior at the University of Missouri studying journalism with a minor in Spanish. Her passions lie in long-form audio producing and multimedia editing. As a Wisconsin native, she is more familiar with lakes than rivers, but this project helped her discover a new body of water and the stories that lie within it.

Ellie Lin is a senior at the University of Missouri studying journalism and pursuing a certificate in media technology and design. In addition to being a lifelong public radio nerd, she enjoys data visualization and motion graphics. Originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, her heart belongs to The Mississippi River but through River Town she has grown to love the Big Muddy almost as much.

Kiana Fernandes is a senior journalism student at the University of Missouri in Columbia. She prefers reporting on arts and culture, with an emphasis on classical music. She was drawn to radio because of its connection to humanity's history of oral storytelling and the power the spoken word can have. Fernandes hopes to work with an NPR affiliate station as an arts editor and/or reporter.

Kaylin Hellyer is a graduating senior at the University of Missouri. She started her college journalism experience with an interest in TV news production but was quickly captivated by public radio. She also has a passion for learning about ancient civilizations and is graduating with a minor in history. Kaylin thoroughly enjoyed putting her major and minor to use by learning a bit about the history of the Missouri River and by getting to explore the people and communities around it.

Caroline McCone is a visual storyteller and photo editor based in Columbia, Mo. She is currently an Assistant Director of Photography at the Columbia Missourian. She received her bachelor’s degrees in Journalism and International Studies from the University of Kansas but decided to continue her academic journey in graduate school at the Missouri School of Journalism. Born and raised in Northwest Arkansas, she is no stranger to the river lifestyle and the community the waters can create.

Vanina is an undergraduate senior at the University of Missouri and a staff photographer at the Columbia Missourian. In her semester at the Missourian, she’s worked on a variety of different stories but has found herself falling in love with sports photography. Outside of their journalistic work, I specialize in equine photography and equine portraiture.

Ellie is a former Public Defender Investigator back at school to get her master’s degree in photojournalism. She is a staff photographer for the Columbia Missourian, working on news stories, sports, and everything in between. Ellie has worked on the Pictures of the Year and the College Photographer of the Year photo competitions in addition to her studies. Her dream after graduation is to be a public radio photojournalist!

Elena is a graduate student at the University of Missouri. Her focus is photojournalism and documentary.

Ashlee Klotzbuecher is an undergraduate student pursuing a bachelor’s degree in journalism with an emphasis in photography. She is currently a staff photographer with the Columbia Missourian. She enjoys nature and wildlife photography and intends to pursue these after graduation as passion projects. Along with these, she enjoys capturing moments in everyday life whether it be someone who loves to listen for bird calls or has run a forge for 20+ years.

Caroline Larson is an undergraduate pursuing a bachelor’s degree in photojournalism and documentary at the University of Missouri. In her career, she has worked with The Maneater and The Columbia Missourian, working on different stories. She absolutely loves taking sports photography and documentary-style photography. Outside of her journalistic work, she also loves photo and video editing.

Jj Measer is a Documentary Journalism student at the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri. Previously a cinematographer and editor for Mizzou Athletics and currently the Cinematic B-Roll Cinematographer for the Mizzou XTra show on KOMU 8 News. Measer’s past work includes documentary editing: “The Tattooed Truck of Nepal” directed by Ron Ranson, Director of Photography: “Mind Alchemy” directed by Devon Bidjou and Director of Photography: “Concepto de Ciudadano” directed by Sharon Quintana Ortiz.

Halle is a student at the Missouri School of Journalism studying to become a visual journalist. As a staff photographer for the Columbia Missourian, she enjoys capturing stories using a documentarian approach, making mere moments last a lifetime. Post-graduation, Halle plans to use her background in journalism to tell stories of goodwill and share the voices of many.

Elise is a journalism student studying documentary journalism in particular. She has spent her time in school working either with the Columbia Missourian or doing independent work, like with The New Territory Magazine. This River Town project has been very fun and fascinating for Elise, working with Kathy Borgman for these past couple of months has given her another grandmother. Elise and Kathy normally chatted about how much Kathy enjoys living in such a small town, and how much her bed and breakfast is affected by the waves of tourism that come through seasonally.