Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
Raining on Trump’s Military Parade

Raining on Trump’s Military Parade

I Was a Military Officer for 10 Years. I Got Out Just in Time.

I Was a Military Officer for 10 Years. I Got Out Just in Time.

Just the Facts: Canadian Tariffs - June Update

Just the Facts: Canadian Tariffs - June Update

Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Threatens Democracy and Federal Deficit

Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Threatens Democracy and Federal Deficit

News Ambassadors radio pieces begin to air across the country

News Ambassadors logo
The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumApr 25, 2024
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
See More Writings by author

Divisive partisanship continues to threaten democracy, especially in the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

A new program, News Ambassadors — part of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund since 2022 — is working to lessen the divide through a collaborative journalism project to help American communities that hold different political views better understand each other, while giving student reporters a valuable learning experience in the creation of solutions reporting.

The program is directed by Shia Levitt, a longtime public radio journalist who has reported for NPR, Marketplace and other outlets. Levitt has also taught radio reporting and audio storytelling at Brooklyn College in New York and at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., as well as for WNYC’s Radio Rookies program and other organizations.

The project links journalism students to counterparts in politically or demographically dissimilar areas to collaborate on stories exploring solutions to contentious issues. News Ambassadors also fosters collaborations between journalism schools and public radio stations across the country to help fill gaps in local news coverage. The project trains journalism students on strategies to report stories that uplift solutions and common ground, and then students report stories informed by these new tools. The strongest stories are shared with local radio station partners for possible broadcast.

This spring, News Ambassadors has introduced students to solutions journalism and complicating the narratives, a conflict mediation- informed framework designed to help journalists improve their reporting on polarizing issues. This collaborative project helps young reporters better understand the perspectives of people outside the bubbles where they live, and helps American communities that hold different political views better understand each other.

News Ambassadors’ first stories are starting to wrap up from the 2023-24 project cohort.

Today’s audio story

Latinx people have lower voter turnout than the general population of Athens, Ga. Reporter Izzy Wagner visited a local nonprofit, Ulead, that’s working to boost civic engagement to help immigrant students succeed.

Wagner recorded this audio report.

This is the first of what will be many News Ambassadors pieces by radio station partners. For this piece, WUGA has been working in tandem with the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Solutions Journalism Hub of the South to foster new radio voices as a part of its News Ambassadors program. Izzy Wagner is a senior and a News Ambassador.

Latest news

Trump Promised Healthcare Reform. Here’s How To Judge if He Delivers.
Governance & Legislation

Trump Promised Healthcare Reform. Here’s How To Judge if He Delivers.

Prescribing Produce, Powering Markets: How D.C. Is Rethinking Food Access As Health Policy
Governance & Legislation

Prescribing Produce, Powering Markets: How D.C. Is Rethinking Food Access As Health Policy

The Battle for Harvard and Trump’s Authoritarian Playbook
Governance & Legislation

The Battle for Harvard and Trump’s Authoritarian Playbook

Read More

True Confessions of an AI Flip Flopper
Ai technology, Artificial Intelligence. man using technology smart robot AI, artificial intelligence by enter command prompt for generates something, Futuristic technology transformation.
Getty Images - stock photo

True Confessions of an AI Flip Flopper

A few years ago, I would have agreed with the argument that the most important AI regulatory issue is mitigating the low probability of catastrophic risks. Today, I’d think nearly the opposite. My primary concern is that we will fail to realize the already feasible and significant benefits of AI. What changed and why do I think my own evolution matters?

Discussion of my personal path from a more “safety” oriented perspective to one that some would label as an “accelerationist” view isn’t important because I, Kevin Frazier, have altered my views. The point of walking through my pivot is instead valuable because it may help those unsure of how to think about these critical issues navigate a complex and, increasingly, heated debate. By sharing my own change in thought, I hope others will feel welcomed to do two things: first, reject unproductive, static labels that are misaligned with a dynamic technology; and, second, adjust their own views in light of the wide variety of shifting variables at play when it comes to AI regulation. More generally, I believe that calling myself out for a so-called “flip-flop” may give others more leeway to do so without feeling like they’ve committed some wrong.

Keep ReadingShow less
People on their phones. ​

In order to achieve scale, many civic efforts must also reach Americans as media consumers, where Americans currently spend much more time.

Getty Images, Xavier Lorenzo

Reaching Americans As Media Consumers – Not Only As Participants – To Improve the Political Environment

Current efforts to improve how Americans think and feel about those across the political spectrum overwhelmingly rely on participation. Participation usually involves interpersonal interaction, mostly to have dialogues or to collectively work on a project together.

These can be valuable, but in order to achieve scale, many efforts must also reach Americans as media consumers, where Americans currently spend much more time.

Keep ReadingShow less
Scams Targeting Immigrants Take Advantage of Fears of Immigration Status and Deportation

Scam incoming call alert screen on mobile phone.

Getty Images/Stock Photo

Scams Targeting Immigrants Take Advantage of Fears of Immigration Status and Deportation

WASHINGTON–When my phone rang and I saw the familiar DC area code, I picked up, and a man with a slight Indian accent said: “Ma’am, this is the Indian Embassy.”

Expecting a response from the Indian Embassy for an article I was working on, I said, “Is this in regards to my media inquiry?” He said no. He was calling about a problem with my Indian passport. I asked who he called, and when he said a name I didn’t recognize, I informed him he had the wrong person and hung up, figuring it was a scam.

Keep ReadingShow less
The American Schism in 2025: The New Cultural Revolution

A street vendor selling public domain Donald Trump paraphernalia and souvenirs. The souvenirs are located right across the street from the White House and taken on the afternoon of July 21, 2019 near Pennslyvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Getty Images, P_Wei

The American Schism in 2025: The New Cultural Revolution

A common point of bewilderment today among many of Trump’s “establishment” critics is the all too tepid response to Trump’s increasingly brazen shattering of democratic norms. True, he started this during his first term, but in his second, Trump seems to relish the weaponization of his presidency to go after his enemies and to brandish his corrupt dealings, all under the Trump banner (e.g. cyber currency, Mideast business dealings, the Boeing 747 gift from Qatar). Not only does Trump conduct himself with impunity but Fox News and other mainstream media outlets barely cover them at all. (And when left-leaning media do, the interest seems to wane quickly.)

Here may be the source of the puzzlement: the left intelligentsia continues to view and characterize MAGA as a political movement, without grasping its transcendence into a new dominant cultural order. MAGA rose as a counter-establishment partisan drive during Trump’s 2016 campaign and subsequent first administration; however, by the 2024 election, it became evident that MAGA was but the eye of a full-fledged cultural shift, in some ways akin to Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2025