During a press conference on November 14, 2016, then-President Barack Obama made clear that he had no intention of trying to hamstring President-elect Donald Trump, and that once out of office, he’d step back from public life for a period of time.
“I think it’s important for us to let him make his decisions,” Obama said. “And I think the American people will judge, over the course of the next couple of years, whether they like what they see and whether these are the kinds of policies and this is the direction that they want to see the country going.”
Much in the way that offering a gracious concession speech is meant to help heal divides between supporters of winning and losing candidates, so too is the informal tradition of outgoing presidents not immediately criticizing their successors. (Obama didn’t criticize Trump by name until October 2018.) And much in the way that Trump didn’t offer a concession at all after losing the 2020 election, it’s a safe bet that he’s not planning to press pause on his political commentary in 2021.
For years, people have asked what the press will do once Trump is gone. It’s a fair question. Since announcing his run for president in June 2015, Trump has been the center of the news media’s solar system. Just as Earth could not survive without the sun, the American press has developed a similarly dependent relationship to Trump. And just as the sun isn’t going anywhere soon, neither is Trump. He may leave office on January 20, but he won’t truly be out of power until the press stops treating him as an inherently newsworthy figure.
Mainstream media organizations need to quit Trump cold turkey, but won’t, potentially giving rise to a new sort of Shadow President Trump. Since Trump has tens of millions of devoted followers and the potential to make another run for president in 2024, it’s easy to see how mainstream news outlets will find themselves in a position to justify treating him as a leader in temporary exile as opposed to a powerless retiree. By doing this, the press will risk delegitimizing the actual government in favor of a shadow president temporarily unable to enact policy until an expected January 2025 return to power.
If there’s hope of avoiding such a fate, journalists must be deliberate in how they cover Trump once he leaves office. He will probably hold rallies, he will inevitably use Twitter to play armchair quarterback with the Biden presidency, and he’s likely to continue to claim that the election was rigged against him. Whether the public comes to view these as the sad cries of a man unable to accept reality or as the beginning of the greatest comeback story in American history will rely entirely on the press.
Parker Molloy is editor-at-large at Media Matters for America.
During a press conference on November 14, 2016, then-President Barack Obama made clear that he had no intention of trying to hamstring President-elect Donald Trump, and that once out of office, he’d step back from public life for a period of time.
“I think it’s important for us to let him make his decisions,” Obama said. “And I think the American people will judge, over the course of the next couple of years, whether they like what they see and whether these are the kinds of policies and this is the direction that they want to see the country going.”
Much in the way that offering a gracious concession speech is meant to help heal divides between supporters of winning and losing candidates, so too is the informal tradition of outgoing presidents not immediately criticizing their successors. (Obama didn’t criticize Trump by name until October 2018.) And much in the way that Trump didn’t offer a concession at all after losing the 2020 election, it’s a safe bet that he’s not planning to press pause on his political commentary in 2021.
For years, people have asked what the press will do once Trump is gone. It’s a fair question. Since announcing his run for president in June 2015, Trump has been the center of the news media’s solar system. Just as Earth could not survive without the sun, the American press has developed a similarly dependent relationship to Trump. And just as the sun isn’t going anywhere soon, neither is Trump. He may leave office on January 20, but he won’t truly be out of power until the press stops treating him as an inherently newsworthy figure.
Mainstream media organizations need to quit Trump cold turkey, but won’t, potentially giving rise to a new sort of Shadow President Trump. Since Trump has tens of millions of devoted followers and the potential to make another run for president in 2024, it’s easy to see how mainstream news outlets will find themselves in a position to justify treating him as a leader in temporary exile as opposed to a powerless retiree. By doing this, the press will risk delegitimizing the actual government in favor of a shadow president temporarily unable to enact policy until an expected January 2025 return to power.
If there’s hope of avoiding such a fate, journalists must be deliberate in how they cover Trump once he leaves office. He will probably hold rallies, he will inevitably use Twitter to play armchair quarterback with the Biden presidency, and he’s likely to continue to claim that the election was rigged against him. Whether the public comes to view these as the sad cries of a man unable to accept reality or as the beginning of the greatest comeback story in American history will rely entirely on the press.
Parker Molloy is editor-at-large at Media Matters for America.
José Zamora Walking the talk on diversity
Errin Haines Let’s normalize women’s leadership
Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli Defund the crime beat
Jennifer Choi What have we done for you lately?
Nabiha Syed Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships
Ståle Grut Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox
Jacqué Palmer The rise of the plain-text email newsletter
Celeste Headlee The rise of radical newsroom transparency
Renée Kaplan Falling in love with your subscription
Bo Hee Kim Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture
Rodney Gibbs Zooming beyond talking heads
Cory Bergman The year after a thousand earthquakes
Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes A shift from conversation to action
Benjamin Toff Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse
Nikki Usher Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
Mike Caulfield 2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)
Hossein Derakhshan Mass personalization of truth
Nicholas Jackson Blogging is back, but better
Sarah Marshall The year audiences need extra cheer
Andrew Ramsammy Stop being polite and start getting real
Gordon Crovitz Common law will finally apply to the Internet
Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin Media reparations now
María Sánchez Díez Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok
Gonzalo del Peon Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side
Eric Nuzum Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder
Zizi Papacharissi The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth
Janet Haven and Sam Hinds Is this an AI newsroom?
Amara Aguilar Journalism schools emphasize listening
Raney Aronson-Rath To get past information divides, we need to understand them first
Parker Molloy The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump
Bill Adair The future of fact-checking is all about structured data
Garance Franke-Ruta Rebundling content, rebuilding connections
Sarah Stonbely Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity
Talmon Joseph Smith The media rejects deficit hawkery
Mike Ananny Toward better tech journalism
Jer Thorp Fewer pixels, more cardboard
Marcus Mabry News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)
Victor Pickard The commercial era for local journalism is over
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves
Jonas Kaiser Toward a wehrhafte journalism
Matt DeRienzo Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality
Steve Henn Has independent podcasting peaked?
Ben Collins We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists
Don Day Business first, journalism second
Matt Skibinski Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it
Tim Carmody Spotify will make big waves in video
Hadjar Benmiloud Get representative, or die trying
Meredith D. Clark The year journalism starts paying reparations
J. Siguru Wahutu Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different
Loretta Chao Open up the profession
Jesse Holcomb Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism
Pia Frey Building growth through tastemakers and their communities
Ben Werdmuller The web blooms again
John Ketchum More journalists of color become newsroom founders
David Skok A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation
Anthony Nadler Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy
Rishad Patel From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers
Beena Raghavendran Journalism gets fused with art
Tanya Cordrey Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values
M. Scott Havens Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption
Ryan Kellett The bundle gets bundled
Chicas Poderosas More voices mean better information
Cindy Royal J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability
Jennifer Brandel A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation
Francesco Zaffarano The year we ask the audience what it needs
Colleen Shalby The definition of good journalism shifts
Catalina Albeanu Publish less, listen more
Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula Expect to see more translations and non-English content
Sara M. Watson Return of the RSS reader
Pablo Boczkowski Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?
Nico Gendron Ask your readers to help build your products
Marissa Evans Putting community trauma into context
Ashton Lattimore Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry
Charo Henríquez A new path to leadership
Mark Stenberg The rise of the journalist-influencer
Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation
Masuma Ahuja We’ll remember how interconnected our world is
Logan Jaffe History as a reporting tool
Cherian George Enter the lamb warriors
Megan McCarthy Readers embrace a low-information diet
Alyssa Zeisler Holistic medicine for journalism
Joni Deutsch Local arts and music make journalism more joyous
Jeremy Gilbert Human-centered journalism
Mariano Blejman It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism
Linda Solomon Wood Canada steps up for journalism
Ray Soto The news gets spatial
Samantha Ragland The year of journalists taking initiative
Ariane Bernard Going solo is still only a path for the few
Edward Roussel Tech companies get aggressive in local
Delia Cai Subscriptions start working for the middle
Nisha Chittal The year we stop pivoting
Natalie Meade Journalism enters rehab
Tonya Mosley True equity means ownership
Kerri Hoffman Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem
Ernie Smith Entrepreneurship on rails
Rick Berke Virtual events are here to stay
Mark S. Luckie Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy
Danielle C. Belton A decimated media rededicates itself to truth
Mandy Jenkins You build trust by helping your readers
Tamar Charney Public radio has a midlife crisis
Sumi Aggarwal News literacy programs aren’t child’s play
A.J. Bauer The year of MAGAcal thinking
John Garrett A surprisingly good year
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Stop pretending publishers are a united front
Laura E. Davis The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change
Candis Callison Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)
Juleyka Lantigua The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned
Jody Brannon People won’t renew
Sue Cross A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save
Sonali Prasad Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise
Jessica Clark News becomes plural
Kevin D. Grant Parachute journalism goes away for good
Ariel Zirulnick Local newsrooms question their paywalls
Brandy Zadrozny Misinformation fatigue sets in
Patrick Butler Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration
Kristen Muller Engaged journalism scales
Joshua P. Darr Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis
Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund The virus ups data journalism’s game
Doris Truong Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage
An Xiao Mina 2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary
Richard Tofel Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)
David Chavern Local video finally gets momentum
Gabe Schneider Another year of empty promises on diversity
Chase Davis The year we look beyond The Story
Burt Herman Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities
Joanne McNeil Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
Whitney Phillips Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods
Marie Shanahan Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo
Heidi Tworek A year of news mocktails
Imaeyen Ibanga Journalism gets unmasked
Zainab Khan From understanding to feeling
Francesca Tripodi Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes
Kawandeep Virdee Goodbye, doomscroll
Brian Moritz The year sports journalism changes for good
Nonny de la Pena News reaches the third dimension
Jim Friedlich A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses
John Saroff Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites
Astead W. Herndon The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again
Michael W. Wagner Fractured democracy, fractured journalism
Christoph Mergerson Black Americans will demand more from journalism
John Davidow Reflect and repent
Julia Angwin Show your (computational) work
C.W. Anderson Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?
Kate Myers My son will join every Zoom call in our industry
Aaron Foley Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, a push for pluralism
Robert Hernandez Data and shame
Andrew Donohue The rise of the democracy beat
Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui Millennials are ready to run things
Taylor Lorenz Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy
Anna Nirmala Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots
Annie Rudd Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”