Sam Liebeskind

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

There are two mindsets that allow these atrocities to happen. One is dehumanizing , where you consider other groups of people less than human. Then there's demonizing , where you consider them to be fully human, which makes them all the more contemptible because of the evil choices that they've made. Daniel Goldhagen has set up a 2 X 2 taxonomy of... See more

I think that all the clamor around the need for new institutions has been right, but the premise of actually building new institutions has proven nearly impossible to fulfill. Institutions are definitionally things that are legally and culturally entrenched, with processes that are economically and culturally load-bearing. You can’t “just” make new... See more