Why the “Trump Bump” didn’t deliver much revenue to news publishers
It’s hard not to appreciate the irony that Donald Trump’s war against the media has resulted in one of the most sizable boosts to the news industry in over a decade.
In the wake of the 2016 election, millions of Americans, horrified by the level of misinformation and fake news that had proliferated online, began opening up their wallets and actually subscribing to newspapers. For the first time since the invention of the internet, consumers considered it their civic duty to pay for digital news, and this led to what many within the industry refer to as the “Trump Bump.”
According to ProPublica president Richard Tofel, the investigative nonprofit saw donations “running at about 10 times the rate that we’re used to” in the days following the election. National newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post experienced substantial jumps in subscriptions, with the Times reporting a 10-fold year-over-year increase. Publications ranging from The Atlantic to Mother Jones to the LA Times all claimed to see subscription boosts. Even smaller publications received a lift; Ben Cohen, the editor of a small progressive opinion site called The Daily Banter, told me that his membership program ticked up considerably after he wrote a post-election screed promising to hold Trump to account.
