Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done to Fix It

Essays by Thomas Frank, Clay Shirky, David Simon, and others: “Anyone concerned about the state of journalism should read this book.” ―Library Journal
 
The sudden meltdown of the news media has sparked one of the liveliest debates in recent memory, with an outpouring of opinion and analysis crackling across journals, the blogosphere, and academic publications. Yet, until now, we have lacked a comprehensive and accessible introduction to this new and shifting terrain.
 
In Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights, celebrated media analysts Robert W. McChesney and Victor Pickard have assembled thirty-two illuminating pieces on the crisis in journalism, revised and updated for this volume. Featuring some of today’s most incisive and influential commentators, this comprehensive collection contextualizes the predicament faced by the news media industry through a concise history of modern journalism, a hard-hitting analysis of the structural and financial causes of news media’s sudden collapse, and deeply informed proposals for how the vital role of journalism might be rescued from impending disaster.
 
Sure to become the essential guide to the journalism crisis, Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights is both a primer on the news media today and a chronicle of a key historical moment in the transformation of the press.

Robert W. McChesney (1952–2025) was the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the author of some two dozen books on media and political economy, including Digital Disconnect, Communication Revolution, and the award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy; a co-author, with John Nichols, of Tragedy and Farce; and a co-editor, with Ben Scott, of Our Unfree Press, and, with Victor Pickard, of Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights (all published by The New Press). McChesney and Nichols are also the co-authors of the award-winning Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America. McChesney’s work has been translated into thirty-one languages.