This article considers top-down vs. bottom-up approaches to reviving local news, and the variety of strategies local entrepreneurs are employing to provide this civic service to their communities.

Crises can also create opportunities. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, community colleges and four year universities went their separate ways. But the pandemic encouraged them to make it easier for students to take courses in both systems and transfer credits. Other innovations including reforming curriculum to better prepare students for the workforce and real-life challenges.

In an age when scientists face widespread mistrust, the proliferation of fake or plagiarized scientific studies published in respected journals can cause a crisis in confidence. An academic system that rewards publication above all else contributes to the problem. An intriguing part of this story recounts the methods individual scientists devised to root out the fakes.

I’ve long been fascinated by failure, and how necessary it is to creative thinking. It’s a topic that never gets old. I wrote this blog post for Longreads in 2015, but it still holds true. Failure is always something we can learn from.