The Economist - USA (2019-12-21)

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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