Over 500 journalists lost their jobs last month. The brutal news follows a year of mass layoffs for the industry. Some of the biggest names in news—such as the Washington Post, CNN, and the Los Angeles Times—have terminated several employees. 2024 may bring even more firings and downsizing. These contractions at the largest media corporations are surprising developments in an election year, and especially in a presidential election year. We certainly aren’t starving for news at the moment. With all the wars and political insanity, you’d think the media would be on a hiring spree. But not so.
The Right, of course, loves the layoffs. Right-wingers, for good reason, see the media as the enemy. The media overwhelmingly leans left. Many journalists dedicate their careers to ruining the lives of conservatives and “wrong-thinkers.” Seeing this class suffer pleases the Right.
But schadenfreude isn’t the real reason to celebrate this news. It also shows that the media will be less capable of whipping up Trump Derangement Syndrome for the 2024 election and for a possible Trump second term. Fewer journalists obviously means fewer attack dogs.
The media environment is completely different from when Trump first ran for president and assumed office. In the mid-to-late 2010s, there was a surge of new online media. Subscriptions for traditional newspapers went up and traffic for online media increased. A big reason for this increase was Donald Trump himself, but there was a major increase in digital media production in the years prior to the 2016 race. The mid-2010s were the days when Buzzfeed listicles and quizzes ruled the internet. Upworthy was still a thing at that time, and so was Gawker.
With Trump, much of this digital media landscape was switched from frivolity to shrieking about the “fascist” menace. Instead of listicles and cat videos, online reporters began obsessing over Trump and the “alt-right,” all with the intention of terrifying their audience.
The 2016-2018 era was also a time when the old media titans lost their minds. The Washington Post made “Democracy Dies In Darkness” its slogan in response to Trump. The New York Times published Louise Mensch and other crazies. CNN frequently invited guests who would swear about Trump in primetime. Whether it was fringe outlets like HuffPost or the established network nightly news personalities, the media incessantly browbeat America with stories that Russia and racism were taking over the country. And the pervasive media environment of the time allowed for unimportant events such as Charlottesville to be turned into world historic matters.
The large number of journalists and the hysteric climate meant major outlets would spend a lot of resources to track down random people accused of wrongthink. This was the age when a dox had its most potency. Hardly any conservatives would defend the target, and the media would elevate the most obscure people to “very dangerous” level just because of a meme. CNN did a full investigation of a man who made a meme of Trump body slamming the outlet’s logo. The outlet threatened to dox the man unless he gave up memeing. This was a normal occurrence at the time. Many journalists became appendages of Antifa and relentlessly attacked anyone they perceived as bigoted.
Most of the Antifa journalists have been laid off. Big outlets no longer care as much about random meme accounts and shitposters. It’s probably bad for business to do in-depth investigations of literal sub-100 follower accounts posting pictures of frogs or mocking the appearances of journalists.
The media of the 2010s could also bring down politicians with the scantiest of evidence. Steve King’s political career was ruined over one oddly-worded quote defending western civilization. The media went into full hysterics over it and the GOP kicked him off his committees and refused to back his re-election bid. The media has failed to do similar defenestrations against Tommy Tuberville, Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other Republicans for much more “offensive” comments. No one cares about Trump’s “poisoning the blood” comments despite the media’s best efforts. Journalists know they no longer have the juice they once had.
The media’s decline was brought about in large part by the people. The public was hungry for news during the Trump years. Millennials were very politically active in those years. The lockdowns made people even further engaged in current events. News outlets were able to reach even more people thanks to the algorithms of tech platforms. Every site desperately tried to perfect the best SEO to get the best Google results. Many spent fortunes to cultivate a large audience on Facebook. Social media was filled with political content, much to the chagrin of some Americans who didn’t want to see their high school friends comment on every breaking news event.
Hyperpoliticization reigned supreme during the Trump years. But we’ve seen a significant retreat since 2021. America shrugged at Trump’s indictments last year. They neither generated protests, nor a decline in his approval ratings. Cable news ratings and newspaper subscriptions have plummeted. The number of Americans who say they avoid the news stands at a high of 36 percent.
Americans are preferring the more apolitical social media platforms. The user base for X/Twitter has fallen precipitously since the late 2010s and early 2020s. TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube—which primarily offer non-political content—are far more popular. Facebook changed its algorithms in 2021 to diminish news and political content. This likely played a notable role in the decline of online news media. All of these sites depend on the algorithms of Facebook and Google. It’s a major blow to news media if those platforms no longer allow pervasive distribution of political content.
There are downsides to people not paying attention to politics. Many people will overlook the serious problems and just direct all their passion to sports betting, video games or any number of distractions. It would be ideal if more Americans cared about what really matters. But the reality is that a lot of these normies would just be brainwashed into Trump Derangement Syndrome if they started paying attention to the news. It’s a bad sign when the guys with sports teams in their bios angrily tweet how Trump is a racist fascist.
A media environment in serious decline prevents that possibility. Without TDS at hysteric highs, Trump can win the election and govern with fewer obstacles.
The more journalists are laid off, the more we can achieve our goals. We have every reason to celebrate the decline of the enemy of the people.
Random, but whatever. Looking back through my retweets. I'm still laughing at the final blow you gave to Pedro GONZO. I'm wheezing.
I wish I shared your optimism, Scott. Traditional media has been in decline for two decades. Still, look at the problems facing America:
1. millions crossing our borders, filling our cities with growing numbers living on our streets.
2. Inflation squeezing the middle class and the poor
3. The threat of global world wars
4. The suppression of free speech
5. Gender confusion of young people
6. A worsening fentanyl drug epidemic
7. High rates of suicide
8. Virulent anti-white racism.
9. Fraudulent elections
10. No political leadership whatsoever
Sorry, hard to share your optimism.