Robert McChesney, the Great Champion of Journalism and Democracy, Has Died

Robert Waterman McChesney passed away on March 25 at age 72. He was a globally respected communications scholar who was wholly welcome in the halls of academia, yet he was never satisfied working within an ivory tower. He was a rigorous researcher into the worst abuse of corporate and political establishments. Yet he refused to surrender his faith in the ability of people-powered movements to upend monarchs and oligarchs and, in the words of Tom Paine, “begin the world over again.” McChesney loved scholarship, loved activism, and loved collaborating with people who made connections between the two—sharing writing credits with former students at the University of Wisconsin and later at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, working with unions of media workers and, perhaps above all, strategizing with the team at Free Press, the media reform group he cofounded in 2003 to advocate for diversity in ownership, robust pubic media, net neutrality and always, always, democracy.