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Professor Victor Pickard frames U.S. 'journalism crisis,' cites job and title losses and urges public models
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Summary
Victor Pickard, a University of Pennsylvania communications professor, told a Thurston County forum that decades-long structural shifts and the takeover of advertising revenue by big tech have left local news in steep decline; he urged public and nonprofit models to sustain local reporting.
Victor Pickard, professor at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, laid out what he called a structural ‘‘journalism crisis’’ in the United States at a public forum hosted by the Jolt and the League of Women Voters. He said the nation has lost large shares of newsroom capacity and local outlets in recent decades and warned that the trend is damaging to democratic life.
Pickard said the industry has lost tens of billions of dollars in advertising revenue and ‘‘tens of thousands of newspaper jobs,’’ citing recent industry reports. ‘‘We now know that we've lost 75% of our newspaper staff, 40% of our newspapers since the early 2000s,’’ he said, and added that journalists per 100,000 people have fallen from about 40 to roughly 8.2 in recent years. Those declines, he said, have produced ‘‘news deserts’’ where residents have little access to original local reporting.
Why it happened, Pickard said, is partly historical. He traced the sector's dependence on advertising back decades and described how the internet—together with platform concentration by Meta and Google and the rise of private-equity and hedge-fund ownership—eroded the ad-based business model that once supported local newsrooms. ‘‘Advertising pays pennies on the dollar compared to traditional print ads,’’ he said, and most of that revenue now flows to a small number of technology companies.
Pickard linked the decline of local news to measurable civic harms. He said communities with diminished local reporting see lower voter knowledge and turnout, higher levels of corruption and polarization, and less effective public-health communication in crises. He pointed to comparative research showing stronger democracies tend to have stronger public-broadcasting systems.
Still, Pickard highlighted examples of noncommercial and nonprofit experimentation — Outlier Media (Detroit), City Bureau (Chicago), Billy Penn and WHYY (Philadelphia), and non‑profit ownership models like the Salt Lake Tribune and the Philadelphia Inquirer — as promising efforts to preserve local reporting. He argued public funding, durable endowments and policy safeguards (‘‘firewalls’’) are needed to preserve editorial independence while supporting local journalism at scale.
During audience questions, Pickard warned that artificial intelligence presents a new risk if driven by profit incentives: ‘‘AI is not a very reliable source for news and information’’ and ‘‘it does create junk and so‑called hallucinations,’’ he said, urging policy that aligns technology with public‑interest goals.
The forum concluded with panelists and audience members discussing the role of education, youth engagement and community partnerships in rebuilding trust and readership. Pickard recommended federal planning and local experimentation to create a more resilient news ecosystem.
The forum proceeded to a state study summary and local updates; no formal vote or action was taken at the meeting.
