Some of the many bad aspects of the continuous state of outrage that Donald Trump has—I’m at a loss of finding the right word—enjoyed is that the media appear to be running out of other subjects and we’re in grave danger of outrage fatigue. None of the problems that existed in 2015 when Trump was primarily known for hosting his own reality show have gone away. They just no longer receive the same attention.
The slant of far too many opinion pieces is “how can it be used to bash Trump?” And all too often Trump obliges with a tweet.
But there’s a terrible drought of articles about anything else. I can’t make bricks without straw, you know.
Trump is very good at keeping the attention on himself and the media obliges. The media did see a big spike in ratings in 2017 because of this, and it has tapered a bit, but it is a lot cheaper for them to just cover Trump I suspect. Still, even though places like CNN are down compared with last year, they still had their second best periods in their history. (Now if you are referring to OTB, yes, I think they are overdoing it a bit.)
https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/may-2018-ratings-cnn-posts-second-most-watched-may-in-network-history/365843
Steve
I think that Doug is just following the lead of the major media outlets. On any given day on the opinion pages of the NYT, WaPo, etc. at least half of the pieces are anti-Trump diatribes. Most of the rest are commentaries on local issues which doesn’t leave a lot for remarks on issues of the day other than Trump.
Forgot. A lot of stuff still being written about, just not in prime coverage. Since you write about retailers dying out, I thought this was kind of interesting.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/06/private-equity-kills-toys-r-us-workers-get-no-severance.html
I certainly think that LBOs killed Toys ‘R Us. That and generational change in the management.
OTB
Doug used to be my favorite writer over there. I don’t think he had a stroke. So, in the usual shorthand, it’s TDS.
It’s fine if he doesn’t like Trumps policies or him personally. But the torrent of writing has devolved into the petty, bizarre and unnatural. Either that or he is cheaply just playing to his commenters.
Oh well, these are first world problems.
I do tire of OTB’s penchant for the outrage du jour, but I’m glad to see James is back and writing a lot of interesting and thought-provoking pieces.
As for the rest, I’ve mostly tuned it out and I don’t see the daily outrage unless it gets a notable mention here, on Facebook, or a handful of other sites.
I suspect outrage fatigue is why Trump’s favorability ratings are now almost within normal president range, given mass media has trained us to forget anything that happened later than five minutes ago.
The Sanders wing was correct that a focus on “Horrid Trump” could easily backfire.