Schudson publishes in both academic and general-interest journals. In the Winter 2019 edition of the Columbia Journalism Review he authored a history of "trust" issues related to journalistic reporting in the United States, a historical review of such issues, and the origin of the term, "the media", that is entitled, "The Fall, Rise, and Fall of Media Trust". He offered an assessment of whether and how trust may be cultivated by journalists and publishers. Its subtitle is, "There are worse things than being widely disliked".