The #Resistance Is Futile

Donald Trump reporters
It’s reasonable enough to assume that the former president’s return might usher in a second “Trump bump” for news organizations and mediacos. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Dylan Byers
November 7, 2024

On a recent Friday evening, I was at a dinner party with a small group of TV news personalities, talent agents, and other media people, chewing over the inexorable decline of linear television (what else?) when the conversation inevitably turned to the impending 2024 election, then just 11 days away. Among this crowd, at least, the conventional wisdom had already coalesced around a likely Trump victory—though, to be sure, no one seemed to anticipate the full scope of his decisive triumph, nor the broader realignment of the electorate and its spurning of Obama coalition politics. In any event, one of the guests proffered a curious upside: A Trump victory was the only thing that might potentially save the news business.