People won’t “like” you

We’re heading into Trump: The Sequel and we know how some of this show goes. It will be the same — but different. We know people aren’t reading; social media is full of algorithmic distractions; silly videos are addicting; and brain rot is real. We know we’ll be contending with news fatigue and many of our audiences will check out.

In 2016, many media companies saw a Trump bump after the former president’s win. Many now are seeing a Trump slump.

The vernacular online can be very simple and simply put: If you’re producing news, people aren’t going to like you. Like, literally. They’re not going to like stories about corruption and greed — especially if it involves people in power. They’re not going to like posts about officials and their sexual assault allegations. They’re not going to like news of pregnant people dying because they’re not getting the care they need. And they’re not going to like reports of various rights being stripped from folks on the margins.

“Likes” are one of the very few ways audiences send us signals across platforms, and I don’t think we can count on those s in 2025.

In a new world — where our old ideas about how journalism can change the world is out of sync with media’s fragmented ecosystem and people’s short attention spans — how will we engage our audiences around the stories and information we think is important enough to report out and publish?

Unfortunately, the answer isn’t to pivot to fluff or dog photos (though I miss the days of guaranteed dopamine hits via cuteoverload.com).

At The 19th, we’ve been placing a lot of value in our 1:1 relationships with our audience members. Our newsletter subscribers are among our most highly engaged readers, and that constant contact leads to loyalty and membership. We are looking to these groups, and the products they interact with, as guides — bastions of data to inform experiments to come as we navigate covering the new administration.

We’re also really good at explaining things. Service journalism, or news-you-can-use, is easy to understand — a straightforward value proposition. In 2024, a major year for those of us covering politics, The 19th set new records in traffic driven by search because we anticipated what audiences were looking for before, during, and after the election. Some of our most-read journalism in November included stories that dug into Trump’s policies, what’s next for trans people, and what will happen with the child tax credit. And audiences weren’t just finding a story and moving on. Many signed up for our newsletters; conversions were more than three times above our monthly average during election week.

So what about news people might actually like? For us, it’s an opportunity to report on joy, to uplift our audiences with the news, to have a newsmaker inspire them. It’s also a priority to report on progress — not just setbacks. And it’s a chance to fortify our closed systems, like newsletters, to foster safe spaces for people to engage with these stories.

Our audiences also continue to be interested in history-making moments and learning about “firsts” (as wild as some of them may be), so we’re going to keep telling these stories. And our unique lens on gender, politics, and policy means we’re going to continue to do what we do best: adding much-needed context to the national narrative. Please like and share.