The 2022 Reuters report revealed trust in news is declining worldwide, with 42% of people saying they trust most news most of the time. The report also states that trust in news is lowest in the United States and that figure has fallen in almost half the countries in the report and risen in only seven.  What's more, this decline is not limited to one media, one geography, one demographic, or one country, and the antecedents and consequences of it are significant.

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Charles Whitaker joined the faculty at Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications in 1992, and has served as Dean since 2019. He is also the first alumnus of the school to serve as dean. He previously served as the Helen Gurley Brown Professor and associate dean of journalism for the school.  For nine years, Whitaker also directed the Academy for Alternative Journalism, a summer fellowship program that trained young writers for work at the member publications of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies in an effort to address the field’s lack of diversity. He has taught courses in news writing, magazine writing, magazine editing, and blogging, and also serves on the board of directors of ProPublica. Notably, Medill also is also home to the Local News Initiative, and the Spiegel Research Center, including the Subscriber Engagement Index, comparing reader and subscription behaviors in the area of Local News.