Worried about mass layoffs, publication closures, and how the collapse of the media industry undermines democracy? It’s time to organize. 

On April 9, 2024, Brandi Collins-Dexter, Matt Pearce and Victor Pickard joined the National Writers Union – Freelance Solidarity Project for a panel discussion about the present and future of the media industry. The panelists considered how we got here —the structural problems and bad actors that brought us to this point of crisis — and what we do next to build a better, more equitable, and more sustainable industry. FSP-NWU’s Kate Harloe moderated the discussion.

Brandi Collins-Dexter is a MacArthur Public Voices fellow, Schuster Media and Technology Fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, and author of the book Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future. As former Senior Campaign Director of media, culture, and economic justice at Color Of Change, she led several successful and visible campaigns for corporate and government accountability in Silicon Valley.

Matt Pearce is the president of Media Guild of the West, a rapidly growing local union of The NewsGuild-CWA that represents journalists in 13 digital and print newsrooms across Southern California, Arizona and Texas. On behalf of the Guild, he has served as a policy advocate on numerous pieces of legislation affecting journalist safety and the media economy.

Victor Pickard is the C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. He is the author of numerous articles and author or editor of six books, including America’s Battle for Media Democracy and Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society. 

Kate Harloe is an independent journalist whose work has appeared in Mother Jones magazine, The Drift, Nieman Lab, and elsewhere. She often writes about media and politics, with a special focus on New York State, where she grew up and currently lives. She’s a member of the new cooperative publication, Flaming Hydra, and an author of the Mediaquake column, published at Popula.