Candidates abandon traditional media | News, Sports, Vacancies

NEW YORK (AP) — Legacy news outlets that failed to interview Kamala Harris and Donald Trump during the general election campaign included NPR, The New York Times, PBS and The Washington Post.

However, Harris decided to sit down with Alex Cooper for her Call Her Daddy podcast and talk a little about Bay Area basketball with the guys from All the Smoke. Trump turned down “60 Minutes” but hung out with his brothers from “The Thing With the Boys” and “Blatant.”

In this scaled-down campaign, some traditional giants of journalism are being pushed aside. The growing popularity of podcasts and their ability to help candidates in tight races target a specific portion of the electorate is a major reason why.

Of course, there are exceptions. Harris spoke with NBC News’ Holly Jackson on Tuesday and hosted a CNN conference call on Wednesday. But political commentator John Heilemann of Puck spotted what he called “an ancient, dying beast protesting its diminished status and position in the new world.”

“The campaigns are structured and their media plans are very carefully thought out, even if we don’t agree with them,” said Sarah Just, senior executive producer of PBS’s “NewsHour.” “Obviously we’re hoping they’ll do long, probing interviews with PBS.”

Journalists consider this an important service. Eric Marrapodi, vice president of news programming at NPR, said, “I think Americans deserve to hear their ideas challenged.”

Interviews with major media outlets used to be a staple for candidates

It sounds like a campaign staff’s worst nightmare: endless opportunities for their candidates to get it wrong, and an unplanned story dominating the news cycle. And for what purpose? Most legacy news organizations don’t have the reach they once had, and their audiences are skewed.

For half a century, the 60 Minutes interview on the eve of an election was considered a key moment for presidential candidates. But Trump has avoided the most influential news show on television this year and criticized the way his interview with Harris was edited.

The former president has largely stuck to what he considers a friendly venue with direct access to his core audience, and regularly gives interviews to Fox News Channel, despite grumblings that he doesn’t find the channel friendly enough. Indeed, Fox has also proven important to the Democratic Party, which believes that appearing on its show demonstrates a willingness to deal with a hostile environment.

Harris’ interview with Bret Baier was so controversial that it became fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit. After her running mate Tim Walz was interviewed by Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday” earlier this month, the campaign sought and received a return appearance the following week.

“I was a little surprised,” Brim admitted to Waltz. “What is this about?”

Many news outlets don’t reach as many people as they used to

In general, television networks no longer have the audience they once had. CNN, for example, reached 1.24 million viewers per evening in the third quarter of 2016, when Trump first ran, and 924,000 this year, according to the Nielsen company. Broadcast networks are so named because of their ability to reach a wide audience; Sometimes candidates need it, often they don’t.

The picture is even bleaker for newspapers, whose total Sunday circulation was 37.8 million in 2016, falling to 20.9 million by 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.

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