We all learn in school that democracy requires a free and by implication a functional press

system.

But now we have the data to show what happens to local communities when they lose their local

newspapers.

And sure enough, we see that they're less likely to vote, less civically engaged, less

likely to run for office.

And yet we see higher levels of corruption, higher levels of

extremism. So we know it's bad, and we've got to figure out structural alternatives to these

failing commercial models.

Thank you. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us made in partnership with The Nation magazine.

I'm your host, Paras Marks, and this week my guest is Victor Picard.

Victor is a professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania. He's also the author

of Democracy Without Journalism, confronting the Misinformation Society. If you're in the United States,

I'm sure you've seen the stories recently about the layoffs hitting news media, major publications,

and smaller ones. And this is not a new thing. It's been happening for a long time. A lot of journalists have been losing jobs. And this has

just been kind of a continual process over many years now. And I'm sure the United States is not

unique in this. Canada, of course, where I live, has seen a lot of layoffs for journalists as well,

both recently and in the past number of years. And I'm sure it's the case in many other countries

as well. And often this story is told through the lens of technology, right? The internet

emerged. It changed the economics of how the news media works. And so it's just because we're

all dependent on these platforms now and the platforms are taking the ad revenue, that the news media works. And so it's just because we're all dependent on these platforms now

and the platforms are taking the ad revenue that the news media is suffering. But does that really

...