‘Look at the charts’: Democrats desert legacy media for new outlets

<p><img src="https://img.semafor.com/e401bb00c10a656612073d2dc6b04edc0582bb9b-5000x3…; alt="e401bb00c10a656612073d2dc6b04edc0582bb9b"></p><div><p>Establishment media corporations’ capitulation to the Trump administration has alienated Democrats — and opened the door for a new crop of independent partisan outlets hoping to capitalize on left-of-center audiences’ discontent.</p><p>Disney’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel after lobbying from FCC commissioner Brendan Carr is the latest in a string of moves by corporate media companies that have infuriated the left-of-center Americans who have often been their <a href="https://apnews.com/article/poll-latenight-tv-colbert-kimmel-7d920a5b1ad…;. Critics on the left have bemoaned Paramount’s decision to settle a winnable lawsuit against Trump over the editing of a <em>60 Minutes</em> interview; Disney’s settlement of a slightly more complicated lawsuit against anchor George Stephanopoulos; The Washington Post’s decisions <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/10/25/2024/editor-resign-subscribers-ca… to endorse</a> in the 2024 election and to rein in its <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/04/20/2025/bezos-hunts-for-new-post-opi… section</a>; and trips by prominent anti-Trump MSNBC personalities to Mar-a-Lago for meetings with the president.</p><p>These audiences have tried to make legacy media outlets pay for their pro-Trump transgressions, with some success.</p><p>The Washington Post reportedly lost nearly 300,000 paid subscribers following its non-endorsement. In recent months, Democratic elected officials have blasted Disney and promised inquiries into its capitulation to the FCC. In California, as Semafor first reported, <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/05/30/2025/california-opens-inquiry-int… legislators</a> have initiated their own probe into Paramount’s handling of the<em> 60 Minutes</em> saga. And New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last week <a href="https://x.com/updatesaoc/status/1969210230748684546">called</a&gt; for supporters to boycott Disney if the company doesn’t reinstate Kimmel. Clearly a few Democrats have heeded the call: Online searches for how to cancel Disney+ <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/gelliottmorris.com/post/3lzbrh2wm522q">jumped<…;, and the company’s stock dropped.</p><p>Meanwhile, anti-Trump YouTubers are consistently topping the platform’s podcast charts — and snagging VIP invites to YouTube’s upfront advertising and media presentations in New York. Substack’s leaderboard filled with anti-Trump voices furious over the silencing of the mainstream media. And Democratic elected officials are making a concerted effort to spoonfeed their digital online personalities to sympathetic Americans, often at the expense of their former legacy media allies.</p><p>Few outlets have benefited more from the Democratic disillusionment with legacy media than the Bulwark.</p><p>As Semafor first reported last September, the digital outlet, launched by never-Trump Republicans in 2018, has become one of the most popular new political media companies, with more than 100,000 paid subscribers on Substack and 1.5 million on YouTube.</p><p>Those audiences “feel deeply betrayed by a lot of the mainstream news organizations that they felt like they could rely on when things started to go off the rails back in, you know, 2017, 2018,” said Sarah Longwell, founder of The Bulwark. “They feel betrayed by a lot of those organizations and those people.”</p><p>Longwell told Semafor that the publication has experienced surges of new subscriber growth on both platforms around major news moments, as well as after legacy media companies have attempted to placate Trump.</p><p>Crooked Media, the podcast company launched by Obama White House veterans Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, and Jon Lovett, has also seen a resurgence in podcast downloads and audience interest over the last year; its YouTube channel has grown from 600,000 subscribers a year ago to over a million today, with watch times doubling, and viewership increasing by 75%. A person familiar with the company’s data told Semafor that it saw an uptick last week in subscribers across YouTube, Substack, Supercast, and the company’s podcast feeds.</p><p>The Bulwark has held talks in recent months with outlets including Crooked Media about partnerships and even potential consolidation, though people involved cautioned that the discussions were mostly friendly and speculative.</p><p>Longwell did not speak about specifics of conversations with other companies, though she acknowledged that The Bulwark is looking to grow in the coming months, and said she was in touch with a number of publications, individuals, and outlets that she imagined could be part of the organization or some big media rollup.</p><p>Democrats’ disgust with established players has also helped newer social media platforms.</p><p>While not a part of legacy media, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter prompted many of its users to try out alternatives like Bluesky. Much of the political conversation there now centers around bashing Trump, Musk, establishment Democrats who haven’t pushed back hard enough, and a legacy media that many users find to be overly compliant.</p></div>