America Amplified’s Election 2024 Initiative
America Amplified has expanded its work supporting public media stations across the country in the lead up to the general election in November. 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 voting, 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.
With funding from the Knight Foundation, America Amplified hosted an in-person gathering for station participants at WFYI in Indianapolis in early April. Nearly 60 newsroom staff from across the country flew in to attend the two-and-a-half day fly-in where discussions centered around the specific challenges and questions that attendees had about community engagement strategies. We brainstormed ways to engage with and gain the trust of new communities, and tackled challenges and blockers that stations are all facing in making engagement part of their newsrooms’ workflow. The design of the fly-in curricula was entirely based on the needs described in a pre-event survey, and on the ongoing conversations America Amplified staff have with stations.
The fly-in was a high-energy experience both for America Amplified staff as well as station attendees — the opportunity to meet in-person for the first time created a sense of enthusiasm and excitement for the entire Elections 2024 initiative. Among the many activities, station participants were asked to write headlines for the event — “Public media stations brace for over eager AmAmp teammates,” “Hey newsrooms! Go outside and play! The future of news is in your neighborhood,” “How can we serve you this election season? Journalists reimagine how to serve our communities.” Attendees left the meeting with more than headlines, though. They told us they were also going home with concrete ideas about how to engage new communities and with renewed determination to bring others in their newsrooms along on this community engagement journey.
Fly-in attendees returned to newsrooms that are taking a two-pronged approach to engagement, with the support of America Amplified. All participating stations have been given access to a Hearken question prompt embed that allows them to gather questions and feedback from their audiences and communities. With the assistance of a newly-developed Election Information Portal and Hearken’s online engagement tools, stations are answering voters’ questions about voting and the elections from coast to coast. In addition, all participating stations have chosen a specific community on which to focus their engagement efforts. Some stations are working to reach young voters; others are engaging with rural populations, or Spanish-speaking communities. 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 million grant from Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) awarded to our host station, WFYI, as well as a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation supporting an in-person gathering of station participants.