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Meet the change leaders: Shia Levitt

Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.

Shia Levitt is the director of News Ambassadors, a project of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund that links student reporters with their counterparts in politically or demographically dissimilar areas to collaborate on stories exploring solutions to contentious issues.

Levitt has 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 and other organizations.


Her teaching builds on two decades of working in radio, primarily reporting for public radio outlets including NPR, Marketplace and KQED. Most recently (2022) Levitt was a news editor at KALW, where she launched the poetry segment, “Bay Poets.”

She has reported domestically and internationally, including in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and her main beats have been covering science, health, labor and the environment.

Her vast experience includes producing and reporting radio features and news spots on issues including business, economics, labor, social trends and environment/health from the U.S., Japan, Philippines, India, Israel, Kenya and Ivory Coast.

She is also a freelance photographer for various magazines and occasionally produces for television.

To learn more, visit newsambassadors.org. (Disclosure: Like News Ambassadors, The Fulcrum is a project of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.)

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I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Levitt in May for the CityBiz “Meet the Change Leaders” series. Watch to learn the full extent of her democracy reform work:

The Fulcrum Democracy Forum Meets Shia Levitt, Director of News Ambassadorswww.youtube.com

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The NFL Playoffs Are Prime Time for Digital Piracy

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The NFL Playoffs Are Prime Time for Digital Piracy

The NFL playoffs are an exciting time for football fans to watch the chase for the Super Bowl. It was a uniquely American obsession that has increasingly captured the attention of live sports fans worldwide.

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To help heal divides, we must cut “the media” some slack

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A few days ago, Donald Trump was inaugurated. In his second term, just as in his first, he’ll likely spark passionate disagreements about news media: what is “fake news” and what isn’t, which media sources should be trusted and which should be doubted.

We know we have a media distrust problem. Recently it hit an all-time low: the percentage of Americans with "not very much" trust in the media has risen from 27% in 2020 to 33% in 2024.

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King's Birmingham Jail Letter in Our Digital Times

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King's Birmingham Jail Letter in Our Digital Times

Sixty-two years after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s pen touches paper in a Birmingham jail cell, I contemplate the walls that still divide us. Walls constructed in concrete to enclose Alabama jails, but in Silicon Valley, designed code, algorithms, and newsfeeds. King's legacy and prophetic words from that jail cell pierce our digital age with renewed urgency.

The words of that infamous letter burned with holy discontent – not just anger at injustice, but a more profound spiritual yearning for a beloved community. Witnessing our social fabric fray in digital spaces, I, too, feel that same holy discontent in my spirit. King wrote to white clergymen who called his methods "unwise and untimely." When I scroll through my social media feeds, I see modern versions of King's "white moderate" – those who prefer the absence of tension to the presence of truth. These are the people who click "like" on posts about racial harmony while scrolling past videos of police brutality. They share MLK quotes about dreams while sleeping through our contemporary nightmares.

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Trump Must Take Proactive Approach to AI and Jobs

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly disrupting America’s job market. Within the next decade, positions such as administrative assistants, cashiers, postal clerks, and data entry workers could be fully automated. Although the World Economic Forum expects a net increase of 78 million jobs, significant policy efforts will be required to support millions of displaced workers. The Trump administration should craft a comprehensive plan to tackle AI-driven job losses and ensure a fair transition for all.

As AI is expected to reshape nearly 40% of workers’ skills over the next five years, investing in workforce development is crucial. To be proactive, the administration should establish partnerships to provide subsidized retraining programs in high-demand fields like cybersecurity, healthcare, and renewable energy. Providing tax incentives for companies that implement in-house reskilling initiatives could further accelerate this transition.

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