There will be no second Trump Bump

The last Trump presidency catalyzed a movement around the importance of journalism. Billionaire-led newspapers crafted bold, public-facing mission statements like “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Budgets soared. So did pageviews. When I told people what I did for a living at a party, I’d get a nod and a “So important.”

And journalism organizations, for the most part, rose to the challenge. The four Trump years were chaotic, and full of so much great public-interest journalism.

Then Trump lost, and that movement slowly eroded. The threat to democracy seemed to vanish. Nonprofit and for-profit news organizations experienced wave after wave of layoffs. And when Trump returned, there wasn’t much of a movement left. Yes, there was excellent journalism done. But the billionaires who lead those newspapers didn’t dream up any big, defiant slogans. Instead, they spiked endorsements of Trump’s opponent and made journalists the problem. Trump encouraged violence against journalists and threatened to use the full force of the government against us. He won the popular vote.

Things are about to get worse.

There will be no second Trump Bump. Some potential donors will be scared of retribution. Some won’t be happy with their investment. Some will just be tired. Some will instead send their money to things like Trump’s inauguration party.

The courts will start to erode the protections we’ve long enjoyed, like New York Times v. Sullivan. The Justice Department will target journalists for doing their job. We’ll face escalating harassment and bullying. The government will build a propaganda machine. Media businesses will get threatened by regulators for unfavorable coverage. More media owners will mimic Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong.

We simply won’t have the same movement and money behind us. That will start us on a generational path toward completely rebuilding journalism from the bottom up. Not just the business model, which we’ve been tinkering with over the last two decades, but the entire model.

We will become more centered in our communities. We’ll understand, reflect, and represent them better. We’ll truly serve them and begin to rebuild trust. We will triple down on accountability journalism. We will continue to detail the consequences of Trump’s actions, yes. And with the same fervor, we’ll examine the ways our leaders on all levels and all parties are failing to fix our many problems and forgetting to represent the people they’re supposed to serve. We’ll deliver our communities the information in the ways they need and want it, not in the way we always have.

It’s a rebirth that will take decades to realize. It will be painful and scary. But it starts this year.