Sam Liebeskind

14. If you win every debate, you’re probably accumulating silent resistance.

I’ve learned to be suspicious of my own certainty. When I “win” too easily, something is usually wrong. People stop fighting you not because you’ve convinced them, but because they’ve given up trying - and they’ll express that disagreement in execution, not meetings.

Real... See more

13. The work that makes other work possible is priceless - and invisible.

Glue work - documentation, onboarding, cross-team coordination, process improvement - is vital. But if you do it unconsciously, it can stall your technical trajectory and burn you out. The trap is doing it as “helpfulness” rather than treating it as deliberate, bounded,... See more

The quest for perfection is paralyzing. I’ve watched engineers spend weeks debating the ideal architecture for something they’ve never built. The perfect solution rarely emerges from thought alone - it emerges from contact with reality. AI can in many ways help here.

First do it, then do it right, then do it better. Get the ugly prototype in front... See more

The engineer who truly understands the problem often finds that the elegant solution is simpler than anyone expected.

The engineer who starts with a solution tends to build complexity in search of a justification.

Regional differences in culture, resources, and context make it difficult to design AI systems that address locally specific concerns (Hsu et al., 2022). The hyperlocal knowledge and values that define a community are hard for nonlocals, such as Report for America-style outsider journalists, to understand (Wenzel et al., 2020). Even when trying to... See more

Participatory journalism aims to involve the communities traditionally ignored by local news, empowering them to observe government directly to improve both representation and engagement (Green, Holliday and Rispoli, 2023). The reorientation of journalism from gatekeepers of information dissemination to facilitators of information gathering is... See more

At the same time, local journalism is not always a pure civic good. It has historically excluded, demonized, and marginalized communities of color, poorer neighborhoods, and immigrant populations (Bedingfield and Forde, 2021). Local media often chases subscribers in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods while applying “if it bleeds it leads” logic in its... See more

While technological innovations such as Facebook and NextDoor have made community-level discussion groups more accessible than ever, the public continues to view local journalism as more interesting, relevant, and trustworthy (Le Quere, Naaman and Fields, 2024). Those who read local news are more informed and more likely to be involved in their... See more

Greater exposure to higher-quality local news leads to more political participation (Shaker, 2014), reduced polarization (Darr, Hitt and Dunaway, 2021, 2018; Moskowitz, 2021), less corporate malfeasance (Heese, Pérez-Cavazos and Peter, 2022), healthier municipal finances (Gao, Lee and Murphy, 2020), and increased political competition (Rubado and... See more