Here’s an informed prediction about the news business: It’s going to get pretty dark for a while in the aftermath of the 2024 election.
After Trump’s election victory last week, cancellations have shaken U.S. newsrooms and viewers have turned away from traditional TV news. CNN and MSNBC posted their worst ratings in the 25-54 year-old demographic in more than 20 years on Tuesday. And large newspapers have seen subscriber account terminations stack up.
404 Media, an independent news site, boldly said out loud last week what other, bigger publications were also experiencing. “In the days following Donald Trump’s presidential victory,” the website’s founders wrote, “we have seen a larger-than-normal number of people canceling their subscriptions.”
Rather than the “Trump bump” that news experienced in the 2016 election aftermath, the business is enduring a “Trump dump” following 2024. Exhausted audiences are opting out of the Trump news cycle after his decisive election win left little room for poking at the results. And those publications that marketed themselves as institutions fending off a second Trump term are struggling to explain why the plan didn’t work.
The Trump bump in 2016 was a one time thing. Back then, Trump was highly unpredictable, and the uncertainty drove audiences toward coverage of his campaign and administration. Trump won an extremely close election, and journalists followed his campaign’s connections to Russia — and the Kremlin’s manipulation of social media platforms — wondering if they influenced the outcome. Audiences flocked to those stories, and newsrooms went deeper. But after Trump’s decisive victory in 2024, and four years of experience during his first term, the same large, passionate audiences aren’t coming back.
Trump being in his second term also hits the news business. Publications that marketed themselves as resistance-style bulwarks against Trump’s excesses didn’t stop him from getting reelected in 2024. And given that he can’t stand for election again, the stakes of this next term are somewhat lower (if he peacefully steps down at the end). Paying to fund political journalism is a tougher sell when it’s a single-term presidency vs. when a reelection is at stake.
In the news business right now, there’s feeling that audiences spent money on journalism as a way to check Trump, but are now questioning the efficacy of that approach. “Many people have explained that they are canceling not because they do not like our articles,” as 404 Media put it, “but because they feel a general sense of depression, that nothing matters, or that they can no longer bear reading the news.”
Looking back, when newspapers marketed themselves with campaigns like Washington Post’s “Democracy Dies in Darkness” or The New York Times’ “The truth is more important now than ever” they won enthusiastic audiences paying for something beyond the daily stories. The positioning, however, would only hold up as long as those audiences still believed in the mission. And as the Washington Post found out after shelving its endorsement of Kamala Harris, the blowback can be intense. Some 250,000 Washington Post subscribers canceled after that move, and more left after Bezos congratulated Trump on his victory on Twitter.
Meanwhile, there are winners. Pro-Trump Fox News has seen a 21% ratings jump since the election. Twitter-alternative Bluesky hit no. 1 on the App Store. And Meta’s Threads added 15 million new users this month along. But the traditional, anti-Trump marketing playbook hasn’t resonated. The Guardian and Don Lemon’s passionate departures from Twitter, for instance, have fallen a bit flat.
We primarily cover tech here, and I’m not writing this story to take sides, but the Trump dump is an important development as the media seems to reorient itself. Following an election that saw podcasts dominate, Twitter effectively turned into an endorsement machine, and traditional media lose some relevancy, the news business is reshuffling. There will be opportunities in the chaos, and probably some pain.
This article is from Big Technology, a newsletter by Alex Kantrowitz.
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