Alexa D'Amato - About Me

Hi, I'm Alexa! I first became interested in journalism in 8th grade, when my teacher gave us a group project to create our own news broadcast with relevant headlines. I enjoyed the process and wanted to continue doing something similar in high school, so I volunteered with my school's daily live broadcast my freshman year. My sophomore year, I joined the Media Communications class and made some of my closest friends and fondest memories. When I began to learn more about article writing and video creation, I started to branch off and do more things that interested me, such as writing baseball editorials and creating highlight reels for sports events happening at my school.

PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs

When I became more confident in my skills, I applied to the PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs Summer Academy and was accepted! The Summer Academy was a one week program in Phoenix where the fellows were put into small groups and had to create a news segment. Four weeks before we met in Phoenix, my group came up with our topic and spent the next month planning what we needed to do once we got to Arizona. In just one week, I was able to learn so much about myself and the people around me. I had conversations with people who had very different life experiences than me, and we all wanted to learn as much as possible about each other. Even after the program ended, I was able to make connections throughout PBS, from other fellows to producers for the local Massachusetts PBS station, GBH. My time at the Summer Academy gave me so many valuable lessons, from teamwork to empathy, and I hope to always grow those skills.

Our video was about Phoenix mural artist Lalo Cota, who came to the screening to watch it with us! You can click here, or go to the videos page on my website to check it out! Cota told our group that it was the most comfortable he felt on camera, a compliment that will stick with us for a long time!

After my experince in Phoenix, I helped my Media Communications teacher join the PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs. From there, we participated in their first Journalism Challenge, where I created a video about digital literacy classes in schools. At the end of 2022, I was highlighted as one of the 20 Under 20 Young Storytellers for making a difference in my community through my journalism work.

The Media Communications Class

I fell in love with creating videos when I was in 8th grade, when we had an assignment to create our own news segment. That project led me to join the high school's daily live morning broadcast, where I helped out every day until COVID-19 shut it down. My sophomore year, I officially joined the Media Communications class, where I learned how to write proper articles and started to develop my video editing skills. I loved being part of a team and producing something that I could show to everyone. Through the Media Communications class, I met people who I enjoy talking to about anything, but we can always maintain our focus and composure to produce an amazing final product. That class taught me so much about myself and showed me that when it mattered, I was capable of stepping up and being a leader in a group, but also knowing when to follow other people.

I'm the editor-in-chief of our school newspaper, the Chieftain Chronicle, where we publish articles every week. I enjoy writing articles about issues my classmates have questions about, Major League Baseball, and events going on in my community. Some of my responsibilities as editor-in-chief include making sure my classmates are finishing articles on time, assigning article topics, reviewing the newspaper for consistency, design, and grammar, and writing longer, well-researched articles. I'm beyond thrilled that my classmates and teacher trust me with this position and feel comfortable to turn to me with questions about their articles and things they want me to double check. There's so many interesting events going on in my community, so I'm always working on an important article involving the school administration!

Alongside being the editor-in-chief, I'm also the director of our school's weekly, prerecorded broadcast, the Morning Update. Each week, administrators, classmates, and teachers email us announcements that they want the whole school community to know about. As a class, we take it upon ourselves to make it as entertaining as possible, as we know that having information thrown at you can be boring. My job as director is to help my classmates as they create entertaining videos. Other responsibilities include editing the entire broadcast each week, adding graphics, greenscreens, lower thirds, and music. I also organize the creative aspects of the Morning Update, so if there's ever an instance where we don't have a creative introduction or outro, it's my job to create one quickly.

I also run our class Instagram, which was created many years ago to promote the Morning Update. I have changed it so we promote the Morning Update, as well as the Chieftain Chronicle because we cover many important topics that students should know about. I post multiple times a week, on both the story and as an actual post.