Media

The old media grapples with its new limits

THE SCOOP

With the final days of the 2024 campaign approaching, Sen. John Fetterman was campaigning hard for fellow Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Bob Casey when he got an invitation to appear on The Joe Rogan Experience.

He couldn’t leave the state for long, so his campaign chartered a private flight to Rogan’s Austin studio and back in time for a Casey campaign event.

“I wanted to get in front of the Rogan audience,” Fetterman told Semafor in an interview this week. “It’s such an important audience, and I never thought for a second that they weren’t going to play it straight.”

MAX’S VIEW

Donald Trump’s victory in the face of what would be ruinous news coverage for most candidates (again) speaks to his unique political resilience, a difficult inflation-fueled global environment for incumbents, and various unsuccessful political calculations by the Biden inner circle and the last-minute Harris campaign.

In the wake of Trump’s victory, some media critics have returned to self-flagellation or blaming their competitors for “missing” Trump’s popularity. But unlike 2016, the news media was not caught off-guard. Major outlets took him seriously as a candidate and dedicated time to covering his policy proposals. Polling analysts emphasized how his voters could (once again) be undercounted in their surveys, and those voters (once again) outperformed polling, but the forecast models still showed Trump likely to win the election.

The argument that the media didn’t do enough to communicate about Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric doesn’t hold up, either. Outlets like CNN and The New York Times ran daily coverage about Trump’s strongman impulses — I flipped to CNN earlier this month and happened to catch a segment in which one of the shows pulled up the dictionary definition of “fascism.” (Trump’s ideology qualified.)

Other critics confusingly suggested that the media “missed” other elements of Trump’s support, such as the rise of tech’s right wing — a head-scratching assertion given the volume of coverage given to the politics of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, the “All In” podcasters, and others.

Trump’s victory isn’t a result of a failure by news outlets to sufficiently hold him accountable. The real answer is one that is a lot more uncomfortable to grapple with: The national news media is more limited in its reach and influence than ever in the modern era.

Progressive donors and funders fear Trump investigations

Some of the largest donors to Kamala Harris and to progressive causes worry they could face investigations and retaliation from the Trump administration next year — and are preparing for the possibility, Semafor reported Saturday.

At least one of the groups receiving LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman’s vast contributions has consulted lawyers about the possibility of an investigation, a person close to the group said. And leaders of progressive nonprofit organizations were brought together Thursday at the East 62nd Street mansion that houses the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation by that group’s leader, Elizabeth Alexander, and the president of the JPB Foundation, Deepak Bhargava. One focus was how to present a common front in the face of politicized investigations, a person briefed on the gathering said.

Gannett probes possible leak of bombshell Iowa poll

Gannett, the publishing chain that owns the Des Moines Register, has launched an investigation into the apparent leak of Ann Selzer’s bombshell Iowa poll, two people familiar with the matter confirmed to Semafor.

Selzer’s Iowa poll was publicly released by The Des Moines Register/Mediacom on the evening of Nov. 2, making nationwide news and giving Democrats what would turn out to be false hope by showing Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by three points in the state. (Trump ended up winning Iowa by 13 points.)

But roughly 45 minutes prior to the poll’s public release, a stray tweet predicted the poll’s findings. Its author said that Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Duke University alumnus, had mentioned the not-yet-released poll during a Duke Democrats meeting that day. (A spokesperson for Pritzker did not respond to an inquiry about the apparent leak.)

The Des Moines Register is legendarily careful with Selzer’s polls, which shape perceptions of crucial early caucuses in both parties, though it also now coordinates with Gannett flagship USA Today on high-profile national news.

Now, Gannett is investigating how Pritzker and possibly other political actors could have learned of the poll early, and is reviewing employees’ emails, one of the sources said.

A Gannett spokesperson declined to comment on “internal matters.”

Time for a ‘gourmet cheeseburger’

In: escapism. Out: politics. On the latest Mixed Signals — the last of our first season — Janice Min set expectations for new-Trump-era in entertainment. What’s selling in Hollywood right now, Min says, are young adult programming, sports, “white guy with a gun” shows, and so-called “prestige-urals,” of which Suits is perhaps the most successful. Netflix content boss Bela Bajaria is shopping for what she calls a “gourmet cheeseburger.” Left out, however, will be anything political, anything where you need to pay attention to the dialogue, anything that isn’t resolved in an episode. It’ll be a good decade to catch up on Shogun.

And — thank you for listening to Mixed Signals, and making it a hit in its first season. If you’ve got advice, ideas, or criticism for the next one, please let us know at this email!

TikTok astrologers are convinced this election isn’t over

In a despondent video viewed by more than a million users on TikTok, @blisabutimspamming confessed that Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election had shaken her faith in the stars.

“I’m sad about the election too, but what I’m especially sad about is that I can no longer trust a single TikTok astrologer on this app.”

On TikTok, where they’ve collectively racked up millions of followers, many popular astrologists predicted before the election that Vice President Kamala Harris would win. Trump’s victory has sent the community into a tailspin, with many wondering whether they misread the signs in the cosmos or if factors more earthly were to blame.

Brendon Kleen is a media commentary writer and host of the sports media podcast “The Play-By-Play” at Awful Announcing.

⁌ TV

Who’s watching: While TV ratings were down 25% from election night 2020, the networks are still touting their ratings wins. Unsurprisingly, Fox beat everyone else by a mile, while MSNBC’s election night broadcast beat CNN’s for the first time with an average of 6 million viewers to CNN’s 5.1 million.

First: NewsNation is taking a victory lap following Tuesday night’s election. The network celebrated that it was the first television broadcaster to call the presidential race on Tuesday night for Trump (as well as the key battleground states of North Carolina and Georgia).

⁛ News

Posting through it: Last week, Washington Post CEO Will Lewis announced that by the first half of next year, the company expects all of its staff to be back in the office five days a week, marking the formal end to the paper’s pandemic-era remote work schedule. Staff, many of whom remain frustrated with the paper’s last-minute decision to withhold its endorsement of Harris in last week’s presidential election, unloaded internally on the paper’s CEO.

In a series of Slack messages shared with Semafor, employees expressed frustration with the decision and lack of an all-staff meeting to discuss recent internal newsroom turmoil. “Won’t lie, I thought the ‘thank you for all your hard work during the election’ email would look a little different,’” one staffer wrote in Slack in a message that received hundreds of emojis expressing agreement.

The Post wasn’t the only newspaper to use last week as an opportunity to get staff back in the office full-time. The Los Angeles Times, which saw a similar internal uproar over its non-endorsement in the 2024 presidential contest, also sent out internal guidance earlier this month asking staff to return to the office (though the paper is only asking staff to come in two days a week).

Clarification: An earlier version of this story said Post staff were expected to be in full time early next year. They are expected to be in by June.

✦ Marketing

Broad appeal: Ad agencies and brands are preparing for a second Trump administration differently than the first time around by embracing campaigns that acknowledge “the spectrum of beliefs in America, without alienating any specific audience.”

ROI: The 2024 election also demonstrated the limits of television advertising. Democrats spent $460 million more on traditional advertising than Trump and still managed to lose handily.

⁜ Tech

Musk bucks: Elon Musk is poised to reap the rewards of his investment in Trump. In addition to regulatory friendliness to his businesses, Musk’s purchase and refashioning of X in his image, with much lower costs, and the return of a tweeting addict to the White House could end up paying off better for Musk than skeptics anticipated.

☊ Audio

Stream of consciousness: No one could stop talking about Rogan’s impact on the election. But this election was definitely a boon for the podcast and YouTube streaming community.

On election night, millions of people tuned in to watch some of the most out-there streams, such as comedian Dave Smith, former mafia member Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, and Lil Pump breaking down election results on Patrick Bet-David’s YouTube stream. I (Max) spent the evening checking in on historian Allan Lichtman’s nearly six-hour-long livestream. It was a bit dark watching Lichtman and his son slowly realize that he would be incorrect in his highly-publicized prediction of a Harris victory, but it astoundingly garnered over a million views.

✰ Hollywood

Winning: Hollywood may be one of the seats of power for liberal America, but many of the entertainment and media industry’s top figures are excited that Trump may allow them to pursue mergers and acquisitions that a Democratic administration may have scrutinized.

⁋ Publishing

Boom times: Trump’s first term was objectively good for the business of book publishing, even if some of the books and authors did not sit well with many left-leaning employees at publishing houses. Just a week in, the same dynamic already appears to be playing out.

The previous two US administrations played mostly defense when it came to tech policy. The first Trump term focused on curbing the ability of China to rip off American innovation. Biden officials picked up where Trump left off, with new export restrictions on US technology and the CHIPS Act, aimed at onshoring and diversifying the semiconductor supply chain. But the next four years will likely include a hefty bit of offense, Semafor’s Reed Albergotti writes.