Victor Pickard is Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. He is the author of America's Battle for Media Democracy and co-author of After Net Neutrality: A New Deal for the Digital Age.

Finalist, Tankard Award, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
Finalist, Frank Luther Mott/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award for the Best Book on Journalism and Mass Communication Published in 2020

"[T]his whip-smart book is a searing examination of how our broken media system is harming America. It not only lays out the deep problems but presents ways to begin fixing them." -- Margaret Sullivan, journalist and author of Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life

"Democracy without Journalism offers a detailed takedown of the relationship between journalism and commercialism that is both remarkably convincing and refreshingly optimistic." -- Jacob L. Nelson, International Journal of Communication

"Written before the pandemic hit, the book is all the more relevant in a world transformed by Covid-19. Among other things, it offers a critical examination of US media history, arguing that at crucial moments, a market-centered understanding of the media has undermined the public good that news outlets provide. Yet the book also offers us an important reminder that it is not too late to right this wrong by creating what Pickard calls 'a permanent public news media shielded from the market." -- Anya Schiffrin, The Nation

"Pickard presents a sharp critique and historical review of the 'discursive capture' of policy discussions by market fundamentalism in the US, which bars as beyond discussion even the commitment of the Founders to an active government role in ensuring that the general public will be informed by a lively, vibrant, diverse media system. An eloquent and carefully reasoned call for revival of what has been lost to overcome the severe structural crisis of the media, with its deleterious impact on functioning democracy. A very important book."-Noam Chomsky, MIT and University of Arizona

"Few topics deserve and receive more attention today than the collapse of democratic practices and institutions, as well as the propaganda barrage emanating from social media and the Internet. Conspicuously absent is arguably the single most important factor: the freefall collapse and disintegration of the commercial news media system such that journalism barely exists in the United States compared to a generation ago. Victor Pickard has done a masterful job of explaining the crisis in his highly original Democracy without Journalism? and has provided an evidence-based roadmap to the range of solutions necessary to make democracy functional. It is in all our interests that this brilliant book be widely read."-Robert W. McChesney, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"This is the best discussion of the crisis of American journalism I have read. Not only does Pickard show how the precarious commercial situation of the press contributes to the fragile state of contemporary democracy, but he charts a path toward more reliable public information and stronger democratic institutions."-W. Lance Bennett, University of Washington, Seattle

"Part journalism history, part policy analysis, and part meditation on the future of the media, Democracy without Journalism? is a stellar book. Pickard expertly describes how markets and public policies have both failed journalism, and offers concrete suggestions for a way forward to support public media in the US."-James T. Hamilton, Stanford University