Episode opens with journalism's "race to the bottom," described by a journalist who lived it, followed by what "The Facebook Files" revealed about social media's relationship to news [8:00], the tactics of parallel journalism [27:00}, the difference between fake news and fake journalism [38:00], the fate worse than death for periodicals, but not books [48:00], what the acquisition of Twitter taught us about technofeudalism [65:00], and a call to return to institutional media [82:00].

Cast (in order of appearance): Samuel Freedman, Matt Seybold, Jeff Horwitz, Gil Duran, Andie Tucher, Jeff Jarvis, Yanis Varoufakis, Tressie McMillan Cottom

Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective

For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Newspapers, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com