News leaders deal with the post-Trump era

News executives from several top publications and outlets say the end of Donald Trump’s presidency is a challenge for their organizations, while the sense of “crisis” in current events shows no signs of abating.

Speaking at a conference hosted by the Financial Times this week, executives from The Atlantic, Time Magazine, Vanity Fair and NBC News acknowledged that Trump’s continued importance in Republican politics is one nod to a relatively unchanged status quo.

“We talk a lot about the post-Trump era. I’m not sure we’re really post-Trump entirely,” NBC News president Noah Oppenheim said. “He’s very much still a factor in our news cycle and our political coverage.”

The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg pointed to the Jan. 6 riot, when dozens of Trump’s supporters breached the Capitol building in an attempt to stop certification of President Biden’s victory.

“I would say that Jan. 6 was not the climax of a trend, not the end of a story. It might very well have been the beginning of the story,” Goldberg said.

Other news executives underscored the intensity of current events around the globe, noting it extends beyond Trump and the former president’s efforts to undermine election results showing his loss.

“We’re not really at the end of something. We’re in the midst of something,” said Time Magazine’s editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal.

“You’ve got, as Jeff says, a democracy crisis, we’ve got a trust crisis, we’ve got an ongoing health crisis. We have a crisis of inequality and injustice. We have a planetary crisis. I mean—we’re still in it.”

Still, the media execs acknowledged that Trump’s absence has made a huge difference.

Oppenheim noted that NBC News’ journalists would often spend “an entire day chewing” on the implications of a Trump tweet or an unforeseen White House policy announcement during the prior administration. 

“[He] created a dynamic in which we were very much reactive in some ways to the news coming out of Washington,” Oppenheim said. 

Now that Trump is out of the White House, the network has more time to plan some of its coverage.

“If you had to say there’s one major change it’s that we’ve tried to shift into a more proactive posture in terms of what type of stories we want to tell. What are the dynamics in American life and around the world that we want to explore,” Oppenheim added.

Vanity Fair’s editor-in-chief Radhika Jones said the Trump-fueled news cycles forced her to reorder her personal priorities, including canceling appearances at awards dinners and other events to focus on news.

“I never would have asked for it to happen this way, but being the editor of Vanity Fair is often a very externally facing role…” Jones explained. “And all of a sudden over the past year, many of those things went away.”

While ratings soared during Trump’s presidency — as supporters and critics alike sought to keep up with the frenetic pace of Washington and track the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic and racial unrest — numbers have dropped in the first five months of Biden’s presidency.

Ratings for cable and broadcast news outlets have all dropped and publications like The New York Times have seen subscription growth rates decline.

Oppenheim and Goldberg acknowledged that Trump’s exit — along with easing pandemic restrictions — have driven down news consumption.

“From an audience standpoint, it is fair to say that we’re in a bit of a down cycle in terms of audience appetite for news,” Oppenheim said.

According to Nielsen Ratings statistics, “NBC Nightly News” averaged 8.26 million viewers at the end of January. That number dropped to 6.32 million in the week ending June 6. 

Goldberg said The Atlantic increased subscriptions in 2020 and credited Trump for at least some of that success. 

“We had a lot of help…” Goldberg said, “and obviously Trump helped us because he attacked us regularly. So every time he did he was sort of operating as our chief marketing officer for a while. And that was incredibly useful.”

Goldberg did not immediately answer questions from The Hill about post-Trump subscription levels, but acknowledged at the conference that audience growth will be a problem this year.

“Obviously this 2021 has challenges that 2020 didn’t have in terms of maintaining audience and growing audience and growing subscriptions,” he said.

Meanwhile, Jones maintained that Vanity Fair was less affected by Trump’s absence given the magazine’s celebrity coverage.

“I also feel very lucky because obviously news happens outside of politics as well,” Jones said. “And we have a very robust tradition of reporting on Hollywood, which at the moment is full of stories of seismic change. We report on the Royal family, which has had a very newsy spring, and will continue to make a lot of news that we can illuminate.”

Jones did not reference specific subscription numbers and Vanity Fair’s parent company Condé Nast did not immediately answer questions.

The news leaders all said that while news audiences may be smaller, there’s no shortage of things to cover — the challenge will be attracting and retaining customers.

“The summer is going to be a challenge, especially [because] I think people are going to go outside,” Goldberg said.

Felsenthal predicted that anxious audiences following other issues, like climate change, will continue reaching out to traditional media outlets for information.

“I see this as an opportunity for us to have an impact on topics that deeply affect people,” he said.

“There was a period where all anybody could talk about in media was the startups. And we’re all well established legacy brands…” Felsenthal added. “I think we’re seeing the value of trust and legacy in our business right now. And that’s encouraging for our titles, I believe.”