America Amplified: Our Mission, Our Team
Mission Statement
The America Amplified initiative will empower public media journalists with the skills and resources needed to put listening to their communities at the center of the reporting process. We seek to inspire public media news organizations to better reflect America, build trust and uphold principles of democracy.
America Amplified has expanded its work supporting public media stations across the country in the lead up to the 2024 general election. The Elections 2024 initiative is aimed at helping public media stations ensure that their audiences and communities get the information they need to confidently participate in local, state and federal elections. Our goal is to strengthen public media newsrooms' engagement efforts by giving them the tools, training, and critical time they need to map an effective strategy for serving new and current audiences.
For the 2022 midterm elections we collaborated with 30 stations across the country to help them gather questions about the election, and answer those questions on multiple platforms. Our Elections 2024 initiative has expanded to reach audiences in all 50 states and has begun much earlier in the election season to foster deeper engagement and build relationships of trust.
Additionally, with the assistance of a newly-developed Election Information Portal and Hearken’s online engagement tools, America Amplified stations will answer voters’ questions about voting and the elections from coast to coast. Using a customized engagement tracker, stations are monitoring the impact of their outreach efforts and fine-tuning them in order to better serve their communities.
This work is supported by a $1.5 mill grant from Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) awarded to our host station, WFYI.
America Amplified Elections 2024
The America Amplified team is delighted to announce we’ve been awarded a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to host a 2 day in-person workshop for public media stations in the lead up to the 2024 election. This workshop will build on work already underway in America Amplified’s Elections 2024 initiative, supported by a $1.5 million grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
More About Us
America Amplified aims to help newsrooms organize engagement efforts by giving them tools, training, and the critical time needed to map an effective strategy for serving new and current audiences.
America Amplified was originally launched in 2019 to help public media stations better engage with their communities in reporting on the 2020 presidential election. Ultimately, the collaboration also helped shape public media coverage of the pandemic to include perspectives from communities across the country
In 2021 and 2022, America Amplified worked with 19 small and medium-sized public media stations across the country to expand the use of journalism practices that meaningfully address local information needs through active listening and engagement, especially in communities that have been traditionally underserved by public media.
The initiative is funded by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
America Amplified strives to help stations put people, not preconceived ideas, at the center of their reporting process. We are sharing resources and tools to support stations in their efforts to listen and engage with their current audiences, as well as reach communities that are not yet part of their listening audiences. The public service mission of public media includes meeting the information needs of all communities.
Meet the team
Alisa Barba
Managing Editor
Alisa Barba is an award-winning journalist and editor with extensive experience in local, regional, and national news production on multiple platforms, including radio, TV and multimedia. She also mentors and coaches public media professionals in management and leadership. She’s managed a national media career somehow always based in San Diego.
Email: alisa@americaamplified.org
Chelsea Naughton
Digital Engagement Manager
Chelsea Naughton is a public media journalist living in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge mountains. Previously they were the Digital Content Manager for member station KUER in Salt Lake City, Utah. In that role, she overhauled the station's digital presence, launched multiple podcasts, and won a regional Edward R. Murrow award for excellence in social media. Chelsea is a believer in the power of the sticky-note brainstorming session. The avid skier, rock climber and whitewater rafter can also be found painting the landscapes she sees on her adventure in her downtime.
Email: chelsea@americaamplified.org
Consultants
Paola Marizán
Engagement Trainer
Paola Marizán was the multimedia reporter at WNIN in Evansville, IN. She’s also the host of the bilingual podcast ¿Qué Pasa, Midwest?, a three-time National Edward R Murrow Award winning podcast. Her work includes coverage of immigrant communities, farming, emerging systems in public media and culture. She enjoys community journalism and is a big supporter of multilingual newsrooms.
Email: paola@americaamplified.org
Brittani Howell
Engagement Trainer
Brittani Howell is a community-engaged journalist living in Indianapolis, Indiana. She was a beat reporter at a newspaper for many years before switching to public media. As an engagement specialist at WFYI, she led community engagement initiatives for Side Effects Public Media focusing on COVID-19 information, housing, and Medicaid accessibility. She believes journalism is a community service and that local media is accountable to its community. She also loves reading, hiking and traveling.
Abbie McCafferty
Project Manager
Abbie McCafferty was a project manager at Indianapolis Public Schools and CVR. She is a highly accomplished project manager with a passion and background in education and tech. What sets her apart is her background as a former teacher. Her passion for education extends beyond her role as a project manager, as she believes in the transformative power of knowledge and its impact on community engagement.
Email: abbie@americaamplified.org
Jesikah Marie Ross
Engagement Trainer
jesikah maria ross has three speeds: listening, making and sharing. jesikah specializes in leading participatory, place-based storytelling initiatives and designing live public events. She’s honed her expertise over 25 years of working in and with newsrooms, universities, community media centers and development organizations around the globe. She makes media work: for change, for healing, for belonging, for everyone.
Email: jmr@praxisprojects.net
Jennifer Brandel
Training Consultant
Jennifer Brandel is a serial entrepreneur and innovator who works between industries to address the same problem set: how to design systems that listen, respond and evolve with their stakeholders. Her curiosity and listening-based approach has yielded the kind of change that shifts sectors toward a co-creative paradigm. She is co-founder of Hearken, Zebras Unite, Civic Exchange Chicago, Election SOS, Democracy SOS, Advancing Democracy and WBEZ’s Curious City. Brandel received the Media Changemaker Prize by the Center for Collaborative Journalism, was named one of 30 World-Changing Women in Conscious Business, is a Columbia Sulzberger Fellow, an RSA Fellow, a member of the Guild of Future Architects and the National Civic Collaboratory.