Legacy news on its heels as second Trump era begins, but not abandoning mission

NEW YORK (AP) — As Donald Trump prepares to assume the presidency for a second time, he faces a news establishment on its heels — but not flat on its back.

Last year’s presidential campaign suggested that many traditional outlets are not depended upon, or trusted, nearly as much as they used to be. Some face leadership transitions and financial problems. Incoming power brokers, and their supporters, seek and receive information on friendly turf.

Yet as with most times of transition, opportunities abound for new voices to emerge.

When Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg wanted to publicize Trump-friendly policy changes this month at the social media giant, the choice of outlets was telling. One was “Fox & Friends,” the cable news program that was an agenda-setter during the president-elect’s first term and poised to be again. Another was an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan.

The New York Times? The Washington Post? CBS News? CNN? Those legacy outlets had to follow other leaders.

“No old rules apply,” said Robin Sproul, longtime former Washington bureau chief for ABC News. “Not just because of the anti-press approach of this (incoming) administration, but also because these business models are on fire.”

There have been leadership changes at several legacy news outlets

Several prominent outlets have seen recent leadership changes. In November, The New York Times appointed Dick Stevenson as its new Washington bureau chief; in December, CNN elevated David Chalian to lead its bureau. Both men have deep experience covering the capital.

The Wall Street Journal’s political and government has undergone a dramatic restructuring, and this month it announced Damian Paletta would be its Washington coverage chief.

The Washington Post, whose coverage of the first Trump term led to a surge in readership, has been in a free fall this past year. Publisher Will Lewis has sought to right the ship, but the hometown newspaper has bled money and subscribers, many angry that the Post backed off a presidential endorsement at the last minute. Recently, the Post has seen more than a half-dozen defections of its journalists to other outlets, including managing editor Matea Gold, who joined the Times.

MSNBC’s president, Rashida Jones, announced this week she was leaving as that network undergoes a restructuring in corporate management. Politico said that its influential Playbook newsletter is getting a new author. C-SPAN has a new CEO in ex-CNN executive Sam Feist.

That’s an unusual amount of flux, even given that the arrival of a new president is often a time for change at news outlets that cover Washington.

The most disruptive change, though, is news outlets coming to terms with their new place in the world.

With mistrust in traditional media so high, consumers have many different ways to seek out news, including newsletters, podcasts and partisan sites, said Jim VandeHei, a former political reporter at the Post who co-founded Politico and is now co-founder and CEO of Axios. Axios’ lane is nonpartisan — it doesn’t do editorials — and it seeks readers who value brevity and a clinical, non-emotional approach to covering Washington, he said.

“You can’t just live on the fact that ‘I work for the media’ or ‘I work for the Washington Post,’” VandeHei said. “You have to be able to tell people things that they need to know and they have to have the trust that you’re trying to get them to the closest approximation to the truth so that you’re useful to them.”

Outlets with points of view — he mentioned Bari Weiss’ company, The Free Press, and the conservative media empire Ben Shapiro built after starting The Daily Wire in 2015 — are important pieces of the puzzle now, too.

Time for some humility?

The mainstream media “needs to be humble enough to realize that you’re no longer the most important player in the information landscape,” Vandenhei said. “There are a lot of players. You can be a significant player. You’re not going to be the dominant player. You’re no longer going to shape the narrative.”

Shortly after the election, Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, argued that conservative-oriented media like Fox News, Newsmax, Sinclair Broadcasting, podcasts like Rogan’s and Elon Musk’s X now set the country’s news agenda.

“This was the year in which it was obvious that right-wing media has more power than mainstream,” Tomasky wrote. “It’s not just that it’s bigger. It’s that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and (are) your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.”

Trump may occasionally grumble about Fox News, but it’s clearly the place he and his team most frequently choose to deliver their message. as they disparage legacy news.

There was a time that the triumvirate of ABC, CBS and NBC had great news power, but that has diminished with viewership. Exhibit A: President Biden didn’t choose a broadcast anchor like David Muir or Lester Holt for his exit interview; he went to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.

CNN has struggled mightily to find a mix that appeals to television viewers, and has recorded historic low audience levels while new CEO Mark Thompson tries to pivot toward a more digital future.

“The old model of a panel of people arguing with each other is not appealing to people anymore,” said Sproul, who led ABC’s Washington bureau from 1993 to 2015. “You had that at your own dinner table at Thanksgiving. You don’t need that on your TV.”

One outlet that has been staffing up instead of retrenching on the eve of Trump’s inauguration is The Atlantic. Among the online site and magazine’s new hires recently were political writers Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer from the Post.

“Our mission right now is to do accountability reporting and it’s our role to apply ourselves as aggressively as possible to whatever is going to happen when Trump takes office,” said Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic.

The Atlantic is positioning itself as a home for reporting, not Trump resistance. “I tell my journalists all the time that if Trump does something that shows his judgment is good or is effective, I want you to report that,” he said. At a fraught time for news organizations, he and his colleagues plan to put their heads down and work, and consumers will sort out where it all stands.

“I think we’re in a moment where the burden really does fall on the individual,” VandeHei said. “There is an embarrassment of riches of free, easily accessible content right now. But you have to know where to find it.”

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

David Bauder, The Associated Press