In the first week of reclaiming power, the Trump administration has released a dizzying and terrifying flood of Executive Orders, announcements, and directives. The 24-hour scroll cycle is hitting us with headline after headline of the next terrible development, all while confirmation hearings and Cabinet appointments are moving forward with little resistance in Congress. It’s a lot happening at once, and that’s an intentional strategy. The Democratic response has been scattered and ineffective, while the attention of the general public is pulled in a hundred different directions, leading to burnout and a sense of futility.
For those of us in the information business, it’s a tricky landscape to navigate. How do we keep people informed while also focusing on the most important threats? We know many of the Executive Orders aren’t going anywhere — they’re stunts designed to generate support (or outrage). But that doesn’t mean they’re unimportant. They’re still ugly declarations of the attacks on our rights and freedoms that this administration and their base want to see — and often designed to distract us from more harmful decisions being made behind closed doors.
As we work to finalize our organizational and strategic plans for the year ahead, our newsrooms are staying focused on continuing to deliver to our audiences a high volume of content on the big fights and battles where public opinion could have an impact, such as the Hegseth confirmation hearings, while also driving some of the most viral online reach of inspiring voices standing up to this new regime.
And so far, this balance seems to be successful. Following Trump's victory, there were predictions that an engaged opposition wouldn’t rise to this moment, and that people would instead tune out and bury their heads. While many surely have made that decision, we’re seeing the opposite reaction when it comes to our national coverage. COURIER’s national TikTok has gained +268k followers and over 214M views in the last week alone, and our national Instagram account has gained +26k followers and over 60M views in the same period of time.
It’s clear that there is still an actively engaged audience hungry for good, current news and information about what the administration is up to and what we can and must do to fight back — both in real time and for the long haul ahead. We have some incredibly ambitious plans to scale our reach and content offerings further, and we hope that you will all support us in those efforts over the coming months.
In the meantime, take care of yourselves this weekend. We’ve got a long road ahead of us.
Tara
Weekly highlights from our national coverage
TikTok: Billionaires get the front row
14.1M views, 1.9M likes, 21.2K comments, 131.8K shares
TikTok: Melania’s hat
13.2M views, 1.7M likes, 8.7K comments, 365K shares
TikTok: Asking MAGA bros girly Qs (w/ Liz Plank)
12.5M views, 1.6M likes, 13.1K comments, 237.1K shares
IG: Hegseth thinks women shouldn’t vote
330K views, 25K likes, 1.3K comments, 7K shares
IG: Hegseth accused of being abusive towards ex-wife
230K views, 12.4K likes, 316 comments, 598 shares
Deep State Radio: The Democrats’ response to the first few days of Trump has sucked
Yesterday I joined David Rothkopf and Simon Rosenberg on DSR to discuss how Dems have (or haven’t) handled the first week of the Trump administration and how they can build a more effective resistance.
What I’m reading/listening to
“In the months leading up to election, hosts had more politicians and pundits on their shows and discussed the issues more frequently. Of the broadcasters’ videos that reached over 1 million views on YouTube during the time span Bloomberg reviewed, more than a third of videos mentioned voting or the US elections — often with the host explicitly calling on listeners to vote.”
The Ezra Klein Show: Democrats Are Losing the War for Attention. Badly.
“[...]how Trump wields and uses attention. He’s a master at it. And I’d say he has a disciple, an ally, in Elon Musk. Musk is probably the most attentionally rich person in the world alongside Donald Trump, and Musk’s attentional riches might be more important now than his financial riches. And so if you’re going to think about politics predictively, you have to scrutinize how attention is being spent, amassed and controlled. And that’s what this conversation is about. It’s a curtain raiser on the attentional regime we’re about to enter.”