What’s Really Killing the News Media? w/ Victor Pickard

Paris Marx is joined by Victor Pickard to discuss the continued layoffs in news media, and how they are symptomatic of a deeper, structural crisis in journalism.

Victor Pickard is Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at University of Pennsylvania. He’s also the author of Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation and produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris will be speaking in Christchurch on February 4 and Wellington on February 8.
• Victor wrote for Niemen Lab about the need to divorce news and capitalism, and argued for public newspapers in the Washington Post.
• In the US, two-thirds of newspaper jobs, or 43,000 journalists, have been lost since 2005.
• Robert McChesney and John Nichols propose a Local Journalism Initiative.
• Police raided a newspaper in Kansas on August 11, 2023, setting off a major scandal that’s now seen the police chief suspended.