Plan B Forum

voters trust the media more than Trump 57 - 31 percent to tell the truth about important issues.

Trump's attacks on CNN aren't hurting it one bit

President Trump keeps calling CNN fake news, but his administration’s positive effect on the cable news network’s business is real.

CNN President Jeff Zucker said Thursday that the recent ratings lift fueled by viewer fascination with the early days of the Trump presidency is putting the Turner Broadcasting unit on track for another record year of profitability.

“There is a tremendous amount of interest,” Zucker said during a press lunch held Thursday.

In the first seven weeks of 2017, CNN’s ratings are up 36% over the same period last year and 51% in the 25- to 54-year-old age group that advertisers seek most when they buy news programming.

Thanks to Trump, the New York Times added more subscribers in three months than in all of 2015

Donald Trump’s war against the media has been good for business at the “failing” New York Times.

The publication, which the US president has mocked on Twitter, as “dishonest” and “fake news,” just posted record subscriber growth on its digital-news platform.

During the last three months of 2016, the Times added 276,000 net digital-only subscribers for its news product, which includes access to NYTimes.com and all NYTimes apps, the company announced (pdf) today. That’s more than the 184,000 net subscribers who signed up for the news organization’s digital editions in the whole of 2015

https://qz.com/901684/thanks-to-trump-t ... l-of-2015/

Trump says NYT 'failing' -- but stock up 30% since election

On Wednesday, Trump attacked one of his favorite targets, the New York Times, tweeting from his @realdonaldtrump account.

"Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong. Now worse!"

Trump loves to claim that the publisher is "failing," but that idea needs to be fact checked, because shares of New York Times Co (NYT). are up 30% since he was elected president. If that's a failure, what's his definition of success?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/29/media/d ... mes-stock/

Big Newspapers Are Booming: 'Washington Post' To Add 60 Newsroom Jobs

The Washington Post expects to hire more than 60 journalists in the coming months — a sign of remarkable growth for a newspaper in the digital age.

After a year of record traffic and digital advertising revenue, the Post newsroom will grow by more than 8 percent, to more than 750 people. The extent of the newsroom expansion was first reported by Politico. The Post will add a "rapid-response" investigative team, expand its video journalism and breaking news staff, and make additional investments in podcasts and photography.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos bought the Post in October 2013 and reportedly invested $50 million in the company last year. That investment is paying off, according to a memo from publisher Fred Ryan that said the Post is now "a profitable and growing company." Ryan said the Post's online traffic had increased by nearly 50 percent in the past year, and new subscriptions have grown by 75 percent, more than doubling digital subscription revenue.

Meanwhile, subscriptions at The New York Times have also surged. Times CEO Mark Thompson said on CNBC that the paper added 132,000 new subscribers in the 18 days after the election, a tenfold increase over the same period a year ago. The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal also reported record growth in subscriptions.

In June, Donald Trump revoked the Post's press credentials at his campaign events, before lifting the ban on the Post and other news organizations two months later.

With this many new news junkies, Donald Trump can be as rude to the media as he likes

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
1:48 PM - 17 Feb 2017

On Feb. 16, a day before posting that, the US president held his first solo press conference—dubbed the “stress conference” by late-night host Stephen Colbert—in which Donald Trump railed against critical coverage of his administration by news outlets like CNN and the New York Times.

Trump has been a vocal critic of the mainstream media for years. And, as president, he’s used his pulpit, among other things, to slam liberal-leaning publications and discredit news reports he claims are false with cries of “fake news.” But there’s one byproduct of Trump’s war with the media that he likely didn’t count on.

The attention he’s paid the press has drawn droves of readers and viewers to the very media outlets he’s bashed.

Cable-TV news networks CNN and MSNBC posted 77% and 87% year-over-year growth, respectively, in total viewers for 2016—marking CNN’s most-watched year ever. January was also strong for those networks. And CNN CEO Jeff Zucker said that Trump’s remarks had not damaged the network’s brand, citing research commissioned by the company (paywall).

Online readership is up at news sites including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, according to data from industry tracker ComScore. (All those sites have a paywall.)

During the last quarter of 2016, the New York Times added 276,000 net digital-only subscribers—more than all the subscribers who signed up for the service the entire previous year. Conde Nast’s Vanity Fair set a single-day company-wide record after Trump tweeted that the publication’s circulation was “way down, big trouble, dead!” in December.

By pointing out that these outlets businesses are “failing,” which they are not, Trump also seems to have awakened in mainstream audiences a realization that they need to pay to support a free and independent press.

Were there so many diehard Nixonites who refused to believe him to be a crook even in the face of all the evidence?