Gavin Newsom Is Right for Once
Democrats should engage with conservative media–they’re not the only ones.
I spoke to a corporate leader about Matt Walsh a few months ago. They presumed I meant the comedian, but I meant the important Matt Walsh, the popular Daily Wire host. The exec brushed me off. “You’ll find out about Matt the hard way,” I replied.
This year, many companies–from Target to Disney–have learned about Walsh the hard way because so many left-leaning corporate and political leaders brush off conservative media. They watch MSNBC, listen to Crooked Media, and read the New York Times, so they presume that’s all that matters. They’re wrong. The top cable channel is Fox News. Megyn Kelly’s Sirius show often tops Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC podcast on the Apple charts. We live in a center-right country, and it’s wild for corporations and politicians to ignore these media platforms, let alone disrespect their hard-working, fair hosts, bookers, producers, and reporters. There’s also a business and political reason to play ball with these outlets: Liberal media may have cancelled celebrities, but only the right wing has successfully tanked stock prices. Do you really want to be on the wrong side of this sword?
California Governor Gavin Newsom understands this. I’m no fan of Newsom. Living in California was some of the worst years of my life thanks to the regulations, burdensome taxes, insane far-left culture, and hypocrisy–and all that starts at the top of the state’s broken politics. But in a recent Semafor interview, he wisely explained why he appears on right-leaning media and reads and watches the outlets obsessively. He unfairly critiques these outlets so he can thread a needle and not alienate his constituents who think anything right of the Wall Street Journal is hate speech, but he’s right to engage with right-leaning platforms.
You can already see the impact of Newsom’s new strategy in his political reinvention. Over the past few months, he’s vetoed a bill that would have allowed striking workers to gain unemployment and another law that would have dragged the trans children debate into custody wars. (It’s too complicated for this blog post, but the Times has a solid write-up on the debate.) Newsom’s moderating himself because he’s looked outside his media purview and realized much of the news media isn’t made in Los Angeles, New York, or DC.
More politicians and corporations should follow Newson’s lead. For one, when you engage with people, they see you like people. Want fair coverage? Engage. More vitally, it’s essential to understand potential audiences, voters, and consumers. If BudLight’s marketing execs spent five minutes watching the Daily Wire and five fewer minutes devouring Glossier ads or whatever they were watching on Reels, they could have avoided this year’s stock market fiasco.
How can individuals and organizations engage? First, expand your network. Hire a flack or communications professional who knows right-wingers. Next, have them set up off-the-record meetings. (It’s important to be in people’s faces.) Finally, determine a unique strategy for yourself or your group that works for the brand. Everyone is different, so act differently.
But don’t hide from conservative media. Right-wing media is more and more of the media, so if you want to be in the press, you’ve got to engage. Otherwise, you’re just speaking in a vacuum.