Big Tech S3E16: Victor Pickard on the Future of Journalism

June 24, 2021

Listen to this week’s new episode of Big Tech, where Taylor Owen speaks to Victor Pickard, a Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the Annenberg School of Communication and a Co-Director of the Media, Inequality and Change Center at the University of Pennsylvania on the potentials of new business models for the journalism industry to better serve democratic ideals.

The journalism industry in America has grown and adapted over its 300-year history. Different business models and ownership schemes have been tried, mostly in an attempt to establish an independent free press. Social media platforms have contributed to both the decline in revenue for news outlets and the echo-chamber effect that results when users are only consuming news that fits their political viewpoint.

In this episode of Big Tech, Taylor Owen speaks with Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy and political economy at the Annenberg School for Communication and a co-director of the Media, Inequality and Change Center at the University of Pennsylvania. In his work, Pickard explores how the journalism industry could be transformed to meet the needs of society and support a functioning democracy.

Pickard has studied the different stages in the American news industries’ history, which we explore in this episode, and concludes that there has never been a time when the industry was properly configured to support democracy. The current debates focus on restoring ad revenue sources that have been diverted to social media platforms but, as Pickard explains, small tweaks to the market will not solve the problem. “I think clearly we’re seeing something that is irredeemable, especially for providing local journalism. We don’t need to shore up these commercial models.” Instead, Pickard says, we need to shift away from large corporations that consolidate all news markets at a national level to new funding models that support local community-based journalism.