How publishers are strategizing for a second Trump administration: softer news and more social media

But for some publishers, it is still too early for any significant changes in editorial strategy. Three editors at major news organizations — who requested anonymity for the sake of candor — told Digiday late last year that they felt ready and prepared to cover Trump’s second term and didn’t think it would be necessary to shift resources or news schedules.

But it’s no secret that publishers are hoping traffic will increase this year as a new presidential administration kicks off a busy news cycle — a welcome change given problems with declining referral traffic and a fragmented audience.

“We see a big audience opportunity in the next nine to 10 months after the election,” said Kevin Ponniah, BBC News’ head of digital for North America. BBC has relaunched its website in late 2023 to be more aligned with the North American market and to double the size of its news teams in Washington, DC and New York City.

And of course, more eyes mean more money.

The publishing executive said the new president’s first year is when they outline “their most ambitious political agenda” and when “money will flow” from brands to publishers reaching business leaders. That’s likely one reason why the publisher’s pre-booking revenue — which represents a “significant percentage of total revenue” for the publisher because of limited newsletter ad inventory — beat its target in December compared to the same period a year earlier, the exec said. In December, the publisher’s local team was on track to exceed its sales target by “double digits” by the end of 2024, and its live events team also exceeded its sales target in the fourth quarter, they added. The exec declined to share raw numbers.

It remains to be seen how exactly Trump will affect traffic for news publishers this time around. News publishers have seen less consistent traffic to their sites compared to past elections, likely in part due to a growing trend away from news and audiences seeking information from other sources, such as independent creators and social media. A lot has changed since 2016, and it remains to be seen how publishers will adjust to Trump’s second run.

Here are some of the changes publishers are making in 2025:

Shifting schedules

The biggest change to the social strategy of one political news publisher is changing staff work schedules and expanding social tracking.

Trump is “most active when our journalists are not,” the first social affairs chief said. Trump posts on Truth Social, the conservative social media platform he owns, or X between 5pm and midnight, while most of their team works normal 9-5 days, they added.

“Like most news organizations, you typically don’t deploy your most experienced people on weekends or after hours,” the social media executive said. “But if we think it will be very active, we will hire more experienced people [who know] what editorial decisions need to be made vs. someone who can be out of school for a year J.’

Josh Awtry, head of audience development at Newsweek, said his focus in 2025 is “more interactivity with our readers.” This means engaging readers more in the comments on your own website and on social media. Newsweek expanded its social team to five people last October when it hired a community manager to oversee engagement on the site, such as managing comments and conducting reader polls. This month, new tools were added to Newsweek’s pages that highlight certain comments and can host “Ask Me Anythings” and polls on the site.

Newsweek receives an average of 8,000-10,000 comments on its articles each day, according to Awtry. Users must register on the Newsweek site to comment, prompting reader sign-ups — another focus of Newsweek this year on growing first-party data and helping personalize recommendations for readers, he said. But Awtry declined to say more about the strategy or share the number of people who registered to comment.

Focus on lifestyle

Execs at Newsweek, The Independent and HuffPost told Digiday that they will focus on softer, more lifestyle news content in 2025.

Awtry said this strategy can also help drive traffic. “Many days, the majority of our audience comes from Google Discover,” a platform that “favors increasingly softer lifestyle and consumer content,” he said (he is not alone in coming to this conclusion).

HuffPost will invest in its lifestyle section this year with stories focused on “the American family,” executive editor Kate Palmer said. This includes stories such as using technology to enhance readers’ well-being and covering different kinds of relationships and parenting styles.

“One of the things we recognize is that there is no one who only cares about politics and nothing else. You can follow politics really closely, but you also need advice about your marriage. We try to recognize that people need a little bit of everything,” Palmer said.

Half of The Independent’s content is no longer in the hard news category, according to Blair Tapper, US svp The Independent hired Louise Thomas as US editor six months ago to build lifestyle coverage in travel, personal finance and culture this year. . The Independent plans to increase its US newsroom staff by about 25% in 2025 (The Independent currently has about 60 newsroom staff in the US).

This strategy also provides more inventory to advertisers who are concerned about brand safety issues when spending against news publishers’ content.

“I think the general feeling in the market is that a news site that exists only around breaking news is not going to be able to continue to generate long-term renewable [direct] advertising partnership,” Tapper said.

While that investment would happen regardless of who enters the White House this month, the focus on non-hard news content gives readers and advertisers more space from the clutter of the divisive political landscape. (The Independent is also in the process of changing its URL from “.co.uk” to “.com,” she said, which “reflects our commitment to the US”).

Good for business, hard on employees

While a second Trump term could bring more readers (and money) to publisher sites that cover a president like Trump it can also take a toll on reporters.

Another social media executive at a major news publication said he was looking forward to the increase in readership and subscriptions spurred by the Trump-led news cycle. They recounted the Trump years as when their publication was “at its most impressive” and “at the peak of our traffic,” with White House reporters constantly breaking the news.

“Every day there was a different mound at 5 p.m.,” they said.

But the head of the social department was aware of the risk of burnout. They compared the news cycle during the Biden administration compared to the Trump administration as a “slow stream vs. gushing river”.

“I could definitely see it being good for the business side of news, but for the people side – we’ll have to look at that. I think we will all have to take care of ourselves as journalists in this environment,” they said.

What in TikTok?

Still in May 2024, directors of publications that have built followings and businesses on TikTok they were not related about the threat of banning TikTok.

Not much seems to have changed since then, even after the federal appeals court confirmed the decision ban TikTok by January 19 last month.

Three publishing executives told Digiday in December that they were not worried about what the ban would mean for their short video strategy.

“Since the ban, we’ve never changed our TikTok strategy,” said Wes Bonner, head of marketing and audience development and head of social affairs at BDG. “Our audience is still thriving there… and advertisers are still asking for TikTok.”

Chris Anthony, CRO at Gallery Media Group, said in an email: “If the TikTok ban comes to us, we’ll be watching where consumers’ attention goes. The reality is that there will be many changes in this political climate and as always we will be watching and adapting quickly to our audience.”