Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
A person in a grocery store, paying with a credit card.

The U.S. Economy: Rebounding or Breaking Down?

‘It is complete chaos’: TPS recipients search for solutions after protections end under Trump

‘It is complete chaos’: TPS recipients search for solutions after protections end under Trump

What Texans need to know about Prop 16, the ballot question on citizenship and voting

What Texans need to know about Prop 16, the ballot question on citizenship and voting

Who’s Pulling Trump’s Strings? Inside Project 2025 and the 7 Think Tanks Reshaping America

Who’s Pulling Trump’s Strings? Inside Project 2025 and the 7 Think Tanks Reshaping America

Two containers, one with a U.S. flag and another with Canada's flag.

Just the Facts: U.S.–Canada Tariff War Escalates As Trump Raises Stakes

Meet the change leaders: Shia Levitt

Shia Levitt
www.citybiz.co
David L. Nevins
By David L. NevinsJun 11, 2024
David L. Nevins
David L. Nevins serves as publisher of The Fulcrum. Additionally, Nevins serves as co-founder and Board Chairman of the Bridge Alliance. Nevins brings business acumen, vision and a tireless this-must-and-can-be-done zeal to the burgeoning movement to bridge divides to transform the political process. As a business leader, Nevins excels at building bridges between people and organizations from the right, left and center for civilized conversation and then action. He co-founded the Bridge Alliance because, as he says, “No matter how well managed and how well funded anyone organization is, significant political reform will not happen without an alliance to further collaborative interactions. Together we can and will raise the collective impact of all.” He is a member of the Aspen Institute Society of Fellows, with a focus on the Aspen Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership, he established and continues to work with The Nevins Democracy Leaders program at Penn State University. Nevins graduated with honors in economics from Penn State in 1969 and received an M.B.A. in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.
See More Writings by author

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.)

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

Latest news

A teacher passing out papers to students in a classroom.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

There’s a Shortage of Teachers of Color—Support Begins in Preservice Education

An illustration of a megaphone with a speech bubble.
Democracy

A Small College Faculty Takes Unprecedented Action to Stand Up for Democracy

The Blind Eye: Selective Empathy in an Age of Violence
Environment

The Blind Eye: Selective Empathy in an Age of Violence

Community is Keeping this Young News Outlet Alive
Media & Technology

Community is Keeping this Young News Outlet Alive

Read More

“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
A person on using a smartphone.

With millions of child abuse images reported annually and AI creating new dangers, advocates are calling for accountability from Big Tech and stronger laws to keep kids safe online.

Getty Images, ljubaphoto

Parents: It’s Time To Get Mad About Online Child Sexual Abuse

Forty-five years ago this month, Mothers Against Drunk Driving had its first national press conference, and a global movement to stop impaired driving was born. MADD was founded by Candace Lightner after her 13-year-old daughter was struck and killed by a drunk driver while walking to a church carnival in 1980. Terms like “designated driver” and the slogan “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” came out of MADD’s campaigning, and a variety of state and federal laws, like a lowered blood alcohol limit and legal drinking age, were instituted thanks to their advocacy. Over time, social norms evolved, and driving drunk was no longer seen as a “folk crime,” but a serious, conscious choice with serious consequences.

Movements like this one, started by fed-up, grieving parents working with law enforcement and law makers, worked to lower road fatalities nationwide, inspire similar campaigns in other countries, and saved countless lives.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2025