Sam Liebeskind

All kids need the same things from their parents:

• To know they’re acceptable exactly as they are


• To know that no matter what, their parents will be there to help them, take care of them, protect them, give them food and shelter, and emotional/physical love


• To be delighted in

This research looks at the influence of three commonly cited features on the success of digital local news outlets: the background of the publisher, experimentation with different revenue streams, and the wealth of the surrounding community. Of the three, only the wealth of the community is statistically correlated with “success” (which we define... See more

Remember: You'll be left with an empty feeling if you hit the finish line alone. When you run a race as a team, though, you'll discover that much of the reward comes from hitting the tape together. You want to be surrounded not just by cheering onlookers but by a crowd of winners, celebrating as one.

My own contribution to this has been to say that yes there is genuine and widespread despair in the US1, but the primary reason isn’t economic2, rather it is because human fulfillment requires more than material wealth, which in our quest for more stuff, we have forgotten. People need physical communities, and while the US excels at material... See more

The thought experiment also shows how important it is for local organizers and businesses to find different idioms than “loneliness” for framing their social projects. “Solving loneliness” is like “solving mental health:” a fool’s errand. It’s counterproductive to think this way. In my experience, it is the positive content of a social group that... See more