Donald Trump does not have much love for the mainstream media. Yet his first term as president was a boon for the industry. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal all saw an influx of new subscribers. Likewise, the country’s three major cable news networks — Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNN — enjoyed a big boost in viewership. The Trump bump was the most pronounced at the NYT.
Interest in the never-ending flow of Trump stories could be hard to sustain as fatigue and apathy take over. More fundamentally, the media landscape has also changed drastically over the past eight years. Traditional sources of information — television and newspaper — have seen their influence steadily chipped away by TikToks and Instagrams.