Conservative Publications Take the Biggest Post-Trump Media Hit

Conservative media outlets have led the industry’s double-digit decline in readership since President Joe Biden entered the White House, according to new engagement data.

Publishers that have suffered the least significant declines since former President Donald Trump left office include The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Reuters, according to Comscore data first obtained by Axios. Between February and May, those publications saw visitors to their web properties decline by 18 percent. Left-wing blogs — including Mother Jones and Raw Story — experienced a decline of 27 percent, while right-wing websites — including Breitbart, Newsmax, and The Federalist — experienced a drop of 44 percent.

Sites that the study classified as right-leaning (Fox News and the Daily Caller), meanwhile, saw traffic decline by 22 percent, while left-leaning sites (BuzzFeed and The Atlantic) witnessed declines of 16.7 percent.

The year after a presidential election is typically a slow one for the industry, though the 2016 election served as an exception. Companies including The New York Times and Washington Post saw digital subscriptions rise as interest

along with  interest in Trump’s new administration.

Adding to conservative media’s travails, tech companies have increasingly accounted over the last several years for driving traffic to publishers. While that has not been a problem for conservatives as it pertains to Facebook, Google has taken a more active role in suppressing certain conservative platforms — including Breitbart — while Twitter banned numerous conservative users over the course of the 2020 election, including the former president.