Engaged
and informed-- that's been Alisa Joyce Barba's mantra throughout her
journalism career and as KJZZ's Senior Editor for Fronteras: the
Changing America Desk.
Barba
is an award-winning journalist, producer, writer and editor with more
than 25 years’ experience in commercial and public broadcasting.
One
of her primary responsibilities now is to work with
KJZZ News Director Peter O’Dowd and Managing editor Al Macias to help
drive the content, style and focus of the Changing America Desk.
While
she often works remotely from her San Diego base, she makes it a point
to immerse herself in the communities she’s covering-- visiting sites to
get first-hand accounts or sending field correspondents to report back
to her. Armchair journalism is not a comfort zone for her.
Barba
traveled to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico with Fronteras Desk correspondent
Mónica Ortiz Uribe in January 2012, to see for herself what life is like
in one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
“My
reasoning was easy, simplistic,” said Barba. “I regularly ask Mónica
to go into Juárez; I often insist she travel to Juárez in pursuit of
some of the stories that document the mayhem and brutality of that city.
If my job is to assign her to go, then I should be willing to go as
well.”
Before
her tenure with the Changing America Desk, Barba served as NPR’s
Western Bureau Chief for 12 years. During that time, she was responsible
for the editorial content and production of member station, reporter
and staff pieces featured on All Things Considered and Morning Edition.
While
monitoring news in the western US, she specialized in covering border
and immigration issues and won numerous awards for editing series and
stories on issues ranging from the failed "war on drugs," western water
policies, and border corruption.
Prior
to her work with NPR, Barba was a producer for ABC News in Beijing,
covering, among other stories, the Tiananmen Square uprising. In
addition, Alisa was a producer and reporter for MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour
in New York and Washington D.C 1989-1995.
Independent
of NPR, she won the coveted Dupont Award for her work as Executive
Producer of the 2001-2002 documentary Culture of Hate: Who Are We?
Barba also won the Jerry Schumacher Award for Best Program about Health
Care Issues: Under the Knife: San Diego Medicine Confronts the Bottom
Line in 1997.
Her
journalism work has focused heavily on immigration, military and health
care concerns. She holds a Master’s Degree in Chinese History from UCSD
and a BA from Middlebury College.
Barba
has become a trusted pundit for local, national and international media
outlets such as KPBS’s Midday Edition, PBS NewsHour and BBC News,
providing expert analysis of how the day’s news affects people living in
the Southwest.
Contact Alisa Barba at [email protected].
|