Outerspace
Sources:Chartbeat;TheEconomist
France HongKong Chile Lebanon
UEFAChampions
Leaguesemi-final Final
Rugbysemi-final
HurricaneDorian
CycloneIdai
Californiafires
Australia
fires
GretaThunberg
speaksatUN
Amazonfires
LondonBridgeattack
NewZealandvolcano
Brazilian
damdisaster
Ethiopian
crash Ebola
SriLankabombings
ElPaso,shooting
NZmosqueshooting
NotreDamefire
1mhours
6 11,000hours
Indianelection
G7summit
Trump–Kim
summit
FirstIsraelielection SecondIsraelielection
G20summit
NATO’s70thanniversary
India’sMoonmission
IranshootsdownUSdrone
PersianGulfcrisis
Turkishoffensive
intoSyria
PrinceAndrewinterview
Democratsannounce
impeachmentinquiry
TrumpvisitsBritain
Firstimageofa blackhole Epsteincommitssuicide
FirstDemocraticpresidentialdebate
BorisJohnson
becomesPM
UKelection
European
Parliament
elections
Presidentialcrisis “OperationFreedom”
Kashmir’sspecial
statusrevoked
India–Pakistan
airstrikes
VladimirPutin,Russia
Rugbyunion(men’s)
Cricket(men’s)
WorldCups:
Football(women’s)
LiverpoolFC
Climate
Wildfires
Storms
Te r r o r i s m
Planecrashes
Tragedies
Disease
BinyaminNetanyahu,Israel
XiJinping,China
EmmanuelMacron,France
KimJongUn,NorthKorea
NarendraModi,India
Afghanistan
Iraq
Iran
Syria
Kashmir
Protests
Venezuela
JeffreyEpstein
Brexit
NATO
US-Chinatradewar
BernieSanders
ElizabethWarren
JoeBiden
Impeachment
DonaldTrump
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Readership per day across relevant news articles, 2019, hours
USpolitics
Worldevents
Conflicts
Leaders
Disastersandattacks
Sport
The EconomistDecember 21st 2019 125
I
f there isno such thing as bad publicity,
then 2019 was a roaring success for Do-
nald Trump. America’s president has faced
withering criticism, from Republicans en-
raged by his withdrawal of troops from Syr-
ia as well as Democrats seeking to impeach
him. But even if much of the attention he
receives is negative, Mr Trump has a vice-
like grip on news consumers. According to
Chartbeat, a company that measures audi-
ences for online journalism, readers of the
sites in its database spent 112m hours in
2019 devouring stories that mentioned Mr
Trump—the most of any keyword.
Chartbeat monitors a wide swathe of
coverage. In an annual summary of reader-
ship calculated for The Economist, it com-
piled data on 4m articles from 5,000 sites
across 34 topics. Half of the publishers it
tracks are in English-speaking countries,
and a quarter in continental Europe.
Although no subject rivals Mr Trump for
sustained interest, readership about him
on specific days often lagged behind break-
ing news. The event that most riveted audi-
ences was the fire that gutted Notre Dame
cathedral in Paris on April 15th, with 1m
reading hours in its immediate aftermath.
The journalistic cliché that “if it bleeds, it
leads” held up well in 2019, as the top ten
events also included mass murders in New
Zealand on March 15th and America on Au-
gust 3rd. But the mostly Western readers
tracked by Chartbeat paid less attention to
long-running violence in poor parts of the
world. Afghanistan got 2m hours in 2019, as
much as Mr Trump generates in a week.
Readers did devote time to less grim
topics as well. Of the sporting events in our
selection, England’s victory over New Zea-
land in the semi-final of the men’s Rugby
World Cup generated the most interest. In
football Liverpool’s miraculous comeback
against Barcelona in the Champions
League semi-final also glued the public to
their screens. The dull finals for both
events drew less attention, however, show-
ing that the importance of a match matters
less than how surprising its result is.
Another kind of underdog helped drum
up attention to climate change. In Septem-
ber Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish
activist, gave an impassioned speech to the
unthat drew 400,000 hours of reading
time. Meanwhile, climate-related wildfires
in Australia, Brazil and California received
10m hours—a respectable haul, but no
match for Mr Trump’s fire and fury. 7
America’s president dominated
readers’ attention again in 2019
The Trump bump
Graphic detailCharting the news