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Meet the change Leaders: Jaisal Noor

Jaisal Noor

Jaisal Noor is the Solutions Journalism Network’s democracy cohort manager, helping newsrooms reinvent the way they cover politics, including deepening their election coverage beyond the horse race. A graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, Noor has reported for Democracy Now!, The Atlantic, Bolts Magazine, The Real News Network and Baltimore Beat.

Noor leads the Advancing Democracy Fellowship with the goal of finding ways to support more newsrooms in improving their important role in our democracy. In 2025, SJN plans to move the program away from a fellowship model to focus more on the support newsrooms need to thrive. In doing so it will continue to support reporters and editors advancing democracy through innovative approaches that build civic engagement, equity, trust in journalism and healthy discourse.


The program is run by three journalism support organizations — SJN, Hearken and Trusting News — and also supported by the experts at Good Conflict. The goal is to help newsrooms shift their political reporting away from horse-race narratives focusing on candidates and opinion polls, toward stories that prioritize the key concerns of communities and highlight problem-solving approaches to address them, as well as adding transparency and nuance to their reporting. Participating news organizations gain skills in the Citizens Agenda approach, solutions journalism, Engaged Elections, Good Conflict and building trust with audiences.

I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Noor a couple of weeks ago for the CityBiz “Meet the Change Leaders” series. Watch to learn the full extent of his democracy reform work:

www.youtube.com

Balta is director of solutions journalism and DEI initiatives for The Fulcrum and a board member of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, the parent organization of The Fulcrum. He is publisher of the Latino News Network and a trainer with the Solutions Journalism Network.

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Could Trump’s campaign against the media come back to bite conservatives?

US President Donald Trump reacts next to Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, after speaking at the public memorial service for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on September 21, 2025.

(Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Could Trump’s campaign against the media come back to bite conservatives?

In the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’sapparently temporary— suspension from late-night TV, a (tragically small) number of prominent conservatives and Republicans have taken exception to the Trump administration’s comfort with “jawboning” critics into submission.

Sen. Ted Cruz condemned the administration’s “mafioso behavior.” He warned that “going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again — wins the White House … they will silence us.” Cruz added during his Friday podcast. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”

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Congress Bill Spotlight: No Social Media at School Act

Rep. Angie Craig’s No Social Media at School Act would ban TikTok, Instagram & Snapchat during K-12 school hours. See what’s in the bill.

Getty Images, Daniel de la Hoz

Congress Bill Spotlight: No Social Media at School Act

Gen Z’s worst nightmare: TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat couldn’t be used during school hours.

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Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN2) introduced the No Social Media at School Act, which would require social media companies to use “geofencing” to block access to their products on K-12 school grounds during school hours.

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New Orleans fights a facial recognition ordinance as residents warn of privacy risks, mass surveillance, and threats to immigrant communities.

Getty Images, PhanuwatNandee

On Live Facial Recognition in the City: We Are Not Guinea Pigs, and We Are Not Disposable

Every day, I ride my bike down my block in Milan, a tight-knit residential neighborhood in central New Orleans. And every day, a surveillance camera follows me down the block.

Despite the rosy rhetoric of pro-surveillance politicians and facial recognition vendors, that camera doesn’t make me safer. In fact, it puts everyone in New Orleans at risk.

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The Manosphere Is Bad for Boys and Worse for Democracy
a skeleton sitting at a desk with a laptop and keyboard
Photo by Growtika on Unsplash

The Manosphere Is Bad for Boys and Worse for Democracy

15-year-old Owen Cooper made history to become the youngest male to win an Emmy Award. In the Netflix series Adolescence, Owen plays the role of a 13-year-old schoolboy who is arrested after the murder of a girl in his school. As we follow the events leading up to the crime, the award-winning series forces us to confront legitimate insecurities that many teenage boys face, from lack of physical prowess to emotional disconnection from their fathers. It also exposes how easily young men, seeking comfort in their computers, can be pulled into online spaces that normalize misogyny and rage; a pipeline enabled by a failure of tech policy.

At the center of this danger lies the manosphere: a global network of influencers whose words can radicalize young men and channel their frustrations into violence. But this is more than a social crisis affecting some young men. It is a growing threat to the democratic values of equality and tolerance that keep us all safe.

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