{"id":33576,"date":"2021-07-05T20:24:31","date_gmt":"2021-07-06T01:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=33576"},"modified":"2021-07-05T20:24:31","modified_gmt":"2021-07-06T01:24:31","slug":"but-what-does-it-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/07\/05\/but-what-does-it-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"But What Does It Mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>News sites have seen a drop in traffic since former President Trump left office and President Biden was sworn in, <em><strong>Axios<\/strong><\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/partisan-media-biden-trump-26f54a8b-d4e2-4319-a185-bd5f55ac661f.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the months since former President Donald Trump left office, media companies\u2019 readership numbers are plunging \u2014 and publishers that rely on partisan, ideological warfare have taken an especially big hit.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why it matters:\u00a0<\/strong>Outlets most dependent on controversy to stir up resentments have struggled to find a foothold in the Biden era, according to an Axios analysis of publishers\u2019 readership and engagement trends.<\/p>\n<p><strong>By the numbers:\u00a0<\/strong>Web traffic, social media engagement and app user sessions suggest that while the entire news industry is experiencing a slump, right-wing outlets are seeing some of the biggest plunges.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>A group of far-right outlets,\u00a0<\/strong>including Newsmax and The Federalist, saw aggregate traffic drop 44% from February through May compared to the previous six months, according to Comscore data.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Lefty outlets<\/strong>\u00a0including Mother Jones and Raw Story saw a 27% drop.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mainstream publishers<\/strong>\u00a0including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Reuters dropped 18%.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><em><strong>Axios<\/strong><\/em> has cool charts, you should go look at them. But what does it mean? Andrew Sullivan <a href=\"https:\/\/andrewsullivan.substack.com\/p\/reasons-to-be-cheerful-part-iii\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">celebrates<\/a> it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is also an unmitigated good that polarizing, dumb-as-rocks cable news is in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/partisan-media-biden-trump-26f54a8b-d4e2-4319-a185-bd5f55ac661f.html\">such sharp decline<\/a>. Part of the promise of Biden is that he would keep tribal drama in its place. And he has! Monthly traffic for far-left outlets has dropped 27 percent in the last ten months; for left-leaning media by 17 percent; and for the mainstream (effectively left) by 18 percent. But look at the collapse of far-right media traffic: down 44 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m not so sure. I&#8217;d love to think that traffic to partisan sites is down because people have become repulsed by it, but how can we be sure? I&#8217;d be a lot happier if, say, broadcast news such as NBC, CBS, and ABC (think: 60 Minutes) was reporting concurrent jumps in ratings, <a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/04\/25\/a-renaissance-ctd\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">as they were about a year ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s worth noting that the 2020 Presidential Election campaign and its post-election consequences were extraordinary, between <strong>Covid-19<\/strong>, special changes to the voting laws, absurd denials of reality by Trump and his little mob of lawyers &#8211; yeah, you can&#8217;t call that group a team, and even <em>lawyers<\/em> is more than stretching a point, as they begin to lose their lawyering privileges &#8211; the January 6th insurrection and concurrent wild-eyed theories of Republican members of Congress determined to betray their oaths, and a few other factors.<\/p>\n<p>This contaminates virtually any conclusion, absent more evidence.<\/p>\n<p>But it also remains fascinating. <em><strong>NewsMax\/OAN<\/strong><\/em> traffic down 44%? <strong><em>Fox News<\/em><\/strong> down 22%? <em><strong>Mother Jones<\/strong><\/em> down 42%? (As much as I&#8217;d like to attribute that drop to Kevin Drum&#8217;s retirement, I fear that&#8217;s beyond the realm of possibility.) (Yes, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/partisan-media-biden-trump-26f54a8b-d4e2-4319-a185-bd5f55ac661f.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">go look at the charts<\/a>!) Did we all abruptly learn that the partisan sites are misleading?<\/p>\n<p>Or are we all just exhausted?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>News sites have seen a drop in traffic since former President Trump left office and President Biden was sworn in, Axios reports: In the months since former President Donald Trump left office, media companies\u2019 readership numbers are plunging \u2014 and publishers that rely on partisan, ideological warfare have taken an \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/07\/05\/but-what-does-it-mean\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33576"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33577,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33576\/revisions\/33577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}