America Amplified

America Amplified America Amplified is a public media collaboration and community engagement journalism initiative to amplify America's needs and aspirations.

Funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and WFYI in Indianapolis.

Our website is full of all the trainings, case studies, blogs and tips we accumulated in our six-year run. Here you’ll f...
04/30/2025

Our website is full of all the trainings, case studies, blogs and tips we accumulated in our six-year run. Here you’ll find:

📖 Our community engagement playbook → Broken down by newsroom/organization role, this is a how-to guide from soup to nuts to jumpstarting community engagement journalism in your newsroom.

🌌 Beyond the Playbook → Tips and strategies from our experiences and our stations’ experiences in our training blog; engagement project case studies showcasing tried and tested engagement methods; and Q&As with experienced engagement journalists.

📰 Story Archive → Our talk show, audio diary and special project collections.

🧑🏽‍🏫 Training → Our six-part engaged elections boot camp, plus a plethora of helpful webinars!

📨 Newsletter → All editions of The Amplifier, going back to March 2020.

Oriented? Great. Start your community engagement journey by visiting our website, or see keep exploring our feed!

Visit AmericaAmplified.org

📖 Playbook → The America Amplified playbook, most recently updated in April of 2025, is a collection of strategies, reso...
04/30/2025

📖 Playbook → The America Amplified playbook, most recently updated in April of 2025, is a collection of strategies, resources, tools and lessons learned from newsrooms across the country that have embraced engagement journalism as the center of their reporting process. We’ve broken it down by newsroom role so you can find the section that works best for you, as well as the sections and resources that would best assist the colleagues you’re bringing along for the journey. Templates, worksheets, exercises to help you flesh out ideas and build skills–we’ve got ‘em all.

Find it all at AmericaAmplified.org/playbook

Explore the PDF version or print it out to mark up at your convenience at AmericaAmplified.org/playbook-download

🔊 Amped Up → Seeing our members do amazing engagement work gets us really excited! These community engagement practition...
04/30/2025

🔊 Amped Up → Seeing our members do amazing engagement work gets us really excited! These community engagement practitioners show that great projects with big impact are possible, and lay out the steps they followed and challenges they navigated to get them done. It’s a page FULL of ideas you can steal and adapt for your work and your communities. From road trips to soccer tournaments, youth listening sessions and Reddit engagement, these creative endeavors run the gamut and show that engagement can look like whatever you want it to.

Get inspired at AmericaAmplified.org/ampedup

📚 Ultimate Reading List → With so much great research and writing about community-engaged journalism out there, where do...
04/30/2025

📚 Ultimate Reading List → With so much great research and writing about community-engaged journalism out there, where do you even begin? Picking a starting point can be daunting. That’s why we did it for you! We’ve read *hundreds* of pieces over our six years (and written many of them ourselves!), and for your convenience, we’ve curated what we feel are the most helpful, essential writings about community engagement journalism. This will help you get your feet under you quickly and keep you well-supplied with additional reading for the next few months. Happy reading!

Start reading at AmericaAmplified.org/ultimatereading

America Amplified has signed off, but our legacy lives on in the resources, trainings, writings and case studies gathere...
04/30/2025

America Amplified has signed off, but our legacy lives on in the resources, trainings, writings and case studies gathered in our playbook and on our website — we’ve pinned the best ones here to the top of our feed.

📖 For six years, the America Amplified initiative has encouraged, supported, coaxed, and ultimately inspired public media newsrooms to deepen their relationships with the communities they serve, so that they can better serve them. Through working with and training hundreds of public media journalists, America Amplified laid the foundation and built the scaffolding for a new framework for public media journalism: one that re-prioritizes local news and puts local information needs and local engagement at the core of its news operations. From the very beginning, as we were drawing up our blueprints, we knew we wouldn’t be able to finish this work ourselves. So we taught journalists how to use the tools and shared all of the blueprints with them.

💫 We’re sharing them with you, too. These pinned posts will guide you to our resources: our community engagement playbook, the Ultimate Reading List, and our (EXTENSIVE) archive of case studies, blogs, station interviews and training materials to help you on your engagement journey.

📣 If there is any message that America Amplified wants to leave public media with, it is the same: the time for major organizational and cultural change is NOW. Use the growing threats to the future of public media and of an increasingly fractured and untrusted news environment as a time to rethink who you are serving and how you are serving them. Make the case for community. When you show up and meet their needs, your community will show up for you as well.

Start your journey at AmericaAmplified.org

🤩 Q&As → Hear directly from the journalists whose engagement work we felt was particularly worthy of highlighting. Learn...
04/30/2025

🤩 Q&As → Hear directly from the journalists whose engagement work we felt was particularly worthy of highlighting. Learn how these stations created their first voter guides, bridged partisan perspectives, empowered civic engagement and even won a Pulitzer through their engagement journalism. It’s a great way to get inspired.

Read up at AmericaAmplified.org/QA

🧑🏽‍🏫 Training Blog → Want some straightforward advice on the nuts and bolts of community engagement? That’s what you’ll ...
04/30/2025

🧑🏽‍🏫 Training Blog → Want some straightforward advice on the nuts and bolts of community engagement? That’s what you’ll find in our training blog, with advice from the America Amplified trainers, engagement specialists, and respected colleagues throughout the industry. These practical tips and resources should answer any questions you still have about your community engagement journey.

Start learning at AmericaAmplified.org/getengaged

🤓 Brain Trust → The Brain Trust is the panel of community engagement champions we’ve trusted to carry our torch forward ...
04/30/2025

🤓 Brain Trust → The Brain Trust is the panel of community engagement champions we’ve trusted to carry our torch forward and work with engagement-curious journalists! These America Amplified alumni are experienced in community engagement, open to the need for ongoing experimentation and innovation, and familiar with the resources that America Amplified has created and curated. They have graciously agreed to volunteer some time to consult with and/or mentor other public media stations that need some help getting going on engagement. If you have a burning question or want to run an idea past someone, look at our members’ areas of expertise and reach out to the engager who seems right for you!

Visit AmericaAmplified.org/braintrust

📰 Story archive → America Amplified didn’t just write about everyone else’s journalism – we produced a fair bit of our o...
04/30/2025

📰 Story archive → America Amplified didn’t just write about everyone else’s journalism – we produced a fair bit of our own as well. Our story archive is deep, containing special collections of our COVID-19 and elections talk shows, audio diaries and stories amplifying voices and issues from rural America.

Find them all at AmericaAmplified.org

The Alaska Public Media team wanted to do an elections-focused listening tour to inform their 2024 coverage. The problem...
04/29/2025

The Alaska Public Media team wanted to do an elections-focused listening tour to inform their 2024 coverage. The problem? Alaska is BIG. At 586,000 square miles, it’s the biggest state in the US, much of it federal land. Even if the roads were smooth, the weather clear and the ferries running on schedule, it still took a lot of time. And in many of the places they visited, people hadn’t even heard of Alaska Public Media. Where do you meet people when they have no reason to come to you?

“We didn’t do a scientific sample; we tried to find places where we could encounter a lot of people, hang out, talk to them,” said reporter Eric Stone. “And it turned out: Post offices!”

Because of the infrastructure challenges, it doesn’t make sense for everywhere in Alaska to have streetside mail delivery. A lot of people have P.O. boxes instead, making the post office a common community touch point. The team tried to get half a dozen people to talk to them at each post office they visited. To get to those towns’ post offices, the team drove a cumulative 800-plus miles in a branded Subaru that Stone christened the “Alaska Public Mediamobile.” Sometimes they relied on ferry travel; a few times, they had to fly. (Alaska is BIG!)

It was challenging to have two full-time reporters out on the road instead of in the office, so they planned the road trips around Stone and Liz Ruskins’ schedules — summer is always a bit of a lull after busy legislative sessions. AKPM relied on its statewide network to help take up the slack and free up Stone and Ruskin for the project.

And it was worth it. “We really got outside not just our Anchorage bubble but our public media bubble,” editor Annie Feidt said. Stone and Ruskin “talked to people who had no idea who we were.”

Not only that, but the coverage meant a lot to the people who got it, especially because those communities very rarely saw themselves in the news. The issues pieces did particularly well in terms of web traffic, Feidt said, and they underscored the similarities between Alaskans despite their political differences. “It’s a big, diverse state, but it’s amazing how connected we are as Alaskans because of the challenge of living here,” Feidt said. “There are many challenges that bind us together.”

Just one example: In Homer, a town on Kachemak Bay in Cook Inlet, salmon runs had another unproductive year. When fisheries underproduce, they’re eligible for disaster funding from the federal government, but that funding often came long after it was helpful. Nine hours away in Valdez, people who made their living fishing reported the same thing. It’s not a hyperlocal issue, but a statewide one, Stone said. “It’s not one I would have known about if I had not spent time in Homer and Valdez.”

Read more about the AKPM team's road trip, what they learned and how they'll carry their experience forward:
https://americaamplified.org/2025/04/28/planes-ferries-and-automobiles-akpms-election-road-trip/

A deep and honest conversation should be like an orchestra, with all participants listening closely to each other. As ...
04/14/2025

A deep and honest conversation should be like an orchestra, with all participants listening closely to each other.

As part of an effort to put together a tip sheet on engaging with these communities to regain trust, America Amplified spoke with Celeste Headlee, journalist, radio host and author of "Speaking of Race: Why Everyone Needs to Talk About Racism – and How to Do It."

Headlee’s expertise in fostering meaningful conversations and addressing racial biases offers valuable lessons for stations wanting to engage with Black and other harmed communities through deep conversations.

Learn more at americaamplified.org

With the hurricane season just around the corner and forecasts that say it will be more active than average, it's time t...
04/07/2025

With the hurricane season just around the corner and forecasts that say it will be more active than average, it's time to develop a solid emergency plan for your newsroom and get it up and running.

While national media coverage of a disaster typically lasts about 12 months — peaking immediately after the event before a steep decline — local reporters often cover the impact for years.

Although there is no single blueprint for covering natural disasters, and even less literature on how to engage communities when they happen, one thing is clear: Newsrooms must continue listening to their audiences and serving their communities.

Check these tips on conducting engagement journalism initiatives in the aftermath of a natural disaster and include them in your plan.

Learn more at americaamplified.org

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Indianapolis, IN
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Who we are

The America Amplified team is a 2020 initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Through working with public media stations across the country, the team aims to help produce innovative journalism using community engagement efforts. This can range from online questionnaires to potluck dinners to town halls.

Our mission statement: The Election 2020 initiative will empower public media to create innovative journalism by listening to communities and elevating diverse voices. The effort will strengthen collaboration within public media, build trust in local journalism and deepen understanding of America’s needs and aspirations.

The core team is based in Kansas City, Missouri, at KCUR.