Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Podcast: Making outrage addictive

Podcast: Making outrage addictive

Social media has become a part of our daily lives, as we scroll endlessly through curated feeds. But it’s clear that these platforms are having a negative impact on our lives and our society in ways we never imagined.

Platforms that were once a way to connect people have become a place where disinformation flows freely, controversy and division turns a profit, and people are pushed into echo chambers where everyone believes the same things and get fed disinformation that amps up their views.


In episode 39, Weston unpacks social media’s psychological and cultural ramifications, but also its impact on our democracy and politics — looking at where we can go from here and discussing the need for increased transparency and accountability.

Listen now

Read More

Community is Keeping this Young News Outlet Alive

Left to right: Abigail Higgins, Christina Sturdivant Sani, Maddie Poore, George Kevin Jordan, Martin Austermuhle

Photo Credit: Rodney Choice

Community is Keeping this Young News Outlet Alive

In 2018, WAMU 88.5 – Washington, D.C.’s NPR member station – saved beloved local publication DCist from certain death. WAMU’s funding and support kept DCist alive and enabled it to continue serving the community with the thoughtful journalism readers had come to love. Six years later, however, WAMU announced it would shut down DCist in favor of prioritizing audio-first content. DCist then joined the thousands of newspapers and news sites that have disappeared across the United States in the last 20 years.

Frustrated by decisions to axe newsrooms being made by suits in high offices, six former workers of DCist and WAMU decided to build their own, employee-run newsroom — and thus, The 51st was born.

Keep ReadingShow less
“There is a real public hunger for accurate, local, fact-based information”

Monica Campbell

Credit Ximena Natera

“There is a real public hunger for accurate, local, fact-based information”

At a time when democracy feels fragile and newsrooms are shrinking, Monica Campbell has spent her career asking how journalism can still serve the public good. She is Director of the California Local News Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former editor at The Washington Post and The World. Her work has focused on press freedom, disinformation, and the civic role of journalism. In this conversation, she reflects on the state of free press in the United States, what she learned reporting in Latin America, and what still gives her hope for the future of the profession.

You have worked in both international and U.S. journalism for decades. How would you describe the current state of press freedom in the United States?

Keep ReadingShow less
Person on a smartphone.

The digital public square rewards outrage over empathy. To save democracy, we must redesign our online spaces to prioritize dialogue, trust, and civility.

Getty Images, Tiwaporn Khemwatcharalerd

Rebuilding Civic Trust in the Age of Algorithmic Division

A headline about a new education policy flashes across a news-aggregation app. Within minutes, the comment section fills: one reader suggests the proposal has merit; a dozen others pounce. Words like idiot, sheep, and propaganda fly faster than the article loads. No one asks what the commenter meant. The thread scrolls on—another small fire in a forest already smoldering.

It’s a small scene, but it captures something larger: how the public square has turned reactive by design. The digital environments where citizens now meet were built to reward intensity, not inquiry. Each click, share, and outrage serves an invisible metric that prizes attention over understanding.

Keep ReadingShow less
Congress Must Lead On AI While It Still Can
a computer chip with the letter a on top of it
Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

Congress Must Lead On AI While It Still Can

Last month, Matthew and Maria Raine testified before Congress, describing how their 16-year-old son confided suicidal thoughts to AI chatbots, only to be met with validation, encouragement, and even help drafting a suicide note. The Raines are among multiple families who have recently filed lawsuits alleging that AI chatbots were responsible for their children’s suicides. Their deaths, now at the center of lawsuits against AI companies, underscore a similar argument playing out in federal courts: artificial intelligence is no longer an abstraction of the future; it is already shaping life and death.

And these teens are not outliers. According to Common Sense Media, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families, 72 percent of teenagers report using AI companions, often relying on them for emotional support. This dependence is developing far ahead of any emerging national safety standard.

Keep ReadingShow less