“The vibe now is very much that the general election starts today,” one political reporter told me Wednesday morning. Of course that’s not what Nikki Haley, fresh off losing to Donald Trump in the New Hampshire primary, was telling supporters the night before. “This race is far from over,” she said, vowing to fight on to South Carolina, her home state and the site of a February 24 contest. “It’s over for Haley, although we’ll keep covering her,” said the reporter. “It feels like we’re treating it as a much more competitive election than it is because we’re staffed to cover a competitive primary.”
News organizations are accustomed to covering at least one heated primary race every four years, if not two when there isn’t an incumbent running for reelection. But this time around, Iowa was all but over before it started, and New Hampshire was called as soon as the polls closed. I caught up this week with several political journalists and news executives as they consider the next phase of an unorthodox election season in which much of the public appears to be tuning out politics, Super Tuesday in March is unlikely to be a factor, and the presumptive Republican and Democratic nominees may never hit the debate stage.
“We have time to play this out before committing the next set of resources, be it South Carolina or Super Tuesday,” one longtime network executive told me. “But I do think that everybody is starting to look toward the general, and you throw in the financial pressures that every corporate-owned media outlet has, and there’s almost going to be relief from the bean counters that Trump is doing so well—to be totally cynical about this.”
Despite Haley’s upbeat tone on Tuesday night, she could always quickly go the way of Ron DeSantis. “We got our ticket punched out of Iowa,” DeSantis declared after finishing a distant second in the caucuses, only to drop out six days later and endorse Trump. “Logic tells you it’s probably over, but as a reporter, you don’t predetermine the outcome,” a second political reporter told me on their way home from the Granite State. “She came within 10 points. She’s going to her home state. It’s a good story,” they said, acknowledging that while it “still seems like a fait accompli that it’s gonna be Trump,” the “story will be: Can [Haley] consolidate all the anti-Trump elements? If she can, is it enough to make it actually competitive? I don’t think we can determinatively say one way or another yet.”
A third political reporter said they “honestly thought [Trump] would win by more” in New Hampshire, and that while it seems like he’ll be the nominee, reporters know better than to make the same mistakes they did in 2016. “You can be realistic and see what’s happening in front of you while also being open to the assurances that there will be two or three major surprises along the way,” they said. There’s also “capacity for surprises that aren’t even connected to voting,” a second longtime network executive noted, “especially when you have two old candidates” as well as multiple major legal cases against the former president.
“We have devoted a lot of resources to the legal front and we’re going to continue to do so,” the first network executive said. “The trials may replace the primaries: We may not have Super Tuesday, but we do have Jack Smith.”
Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks to journalists at Mary Anne’s Diner in Amherst, New Hampshire on Friday January 19, 2024.By Melina Mara/The Washington Post/Getty Images.
Even while not prematurely declaring Trump the winner, news organizations clearly have an eye toward November. “The general election has begun,” read one Washington Post headline on Wednesday. “After Trump’s NH win, Biden gets the opponent he wants,” Politico declared. It’s not as if the media hasn’t been pointing to a likely Trump-Biden rematch for months. Trump remained the dominant front-runner as he sat out a series of seemingly pointless debates that, without him, felt like covering “the junior varsity,” as one political reporter put it to me back in August. Yet Haley’s performance prompted donations and momentum, giving reporters something to chew on, until Iowa where she came in third, and then to speculate about in New Hampshire, where she again fell short.
“Nikki Haley’s chances are diminishing and that’s a reality. And so we will adjust accordingly, but we’re not giving up on the story,” a third network executive told me. “In fact, we’re trying to find new ways to tell the story of Nikki Haley, while still looking forward to Donald Trump as a general election candidate, and Joe Biden, and what that looks like together. We’re pushing on multiple tracks because you have to.” Their network, they noted, is “adding more resources internally to telling various parts of the 2024 story now that it’s shifting into the general election.”
This unconventional primary season comes as many outlets are cutting back or reassessing their strategy or both. NBC News laid off dozens of staffers earlier this month. New CNN CEO Mark Thompson just outlined his plan for bringing the network into the 21st century. The Washington Post recently bought out 240 employees across departments amid financial struggles. Earlier this week, The Los Angeles Times laid off at least 115 journalists—more than 20% of its newsroom—and “decimated” the paper’s Washington bureau in the process.
Some news outlets began planning for a short race months ago: This fall, Politico turned down multiple opportunities to partner with networks on various debates scheduled for early 2024, according to a source familiar with the matter. And as Semafor’s Max Tani reported, “CBS News planned to host a debate in February in Las Vegas, but decided in the fall to pull the plug before they had to commit to expensive logistics, fearing—accurately—the current reality on the ground.” Earlier this month, ABC News and CNN were both forced to cancel debates in New Hampshire after Haley said she wouldn’t participate without Trump. ABC reportedly lost millions of dollars as a result, while CNN opted instead to hold a town hall—a comparatively easier format—with Haley at the exact date and time the ABC debate was supposed to take place.