The Emperor’s New Clothes: Axios’s Jim VandeHei and the Media’s Naked Emperor

Once upon a time in the land of media, where everyone was supposed to be a paragon of truth and integrity, stood Jim VandeHei, co-founder of Axios. Oh, how he pranced around, throwing tantrums about Elon Musk, as if his own house wasn’t made of glass and crumbling before his very eyes.

MRC Newsbusters: Column: Journalist Tantrums About Elon Musk Don’t Fix Public Distrust

There’s something about Donald Trump winning an election that drives journalists crazy. The National Press Club in the nation’s capital is an epicenter of media arrogance, as anyone could see from its November 21 “Fourth Estate Awards Gala,” in which they proclaimed they were honoring the “fearless pursuit of truth.”

But as always, the “truth” is expected to lead to “justice,” which in their view is the opposite of Trump winning the presidency again. Trump’s victory demoralized journalists. They felt like 76.8 million Americans completely ignored their years and years or besmirching Trump as a fascist threat to democracy.

Axios.com co-founder Jim VandeHei uncorked a temper tantrum at the awards ceremony, as he boasted about being in a “war for truth, for freedom.” Translation: For the Democrats. He can’t stand anyone attacking them for making “fake news,” or for ahem, engaging in non-stop Democrat Party talking points. Joy! Vibes! Brat! And all that.

“I’m not gonna sugar-coat it, like everything we do is under fire,” VandeHei complained. “Elon Musk sits on Twitter every day, or X today, saying like, ‘We are the media, you are the media.’ My message to Elon Musk is: Bulls**t. You’re not the media. You having – [applause] you having a blue check mark, a Twitter handle, and 300 words of cleverness doesn’t make you a reporter!”

Let’s start with the comedy of errors that is VandeHei’s defense of traditional media. America’s opinion of traditional media is at its lowest in decades? Shocking! Not really, because when your industry is led by folks like VandeHei, who once admitted that the media was “clueless,” you’re not exactly on the high road of credibility.

In a world where millions turn to X/Twitter for instant, real-time news from a plethora of perspectives, VandeHei’s defense of his industry sounds like a desperate man yelling at the rain. He’s upset that Elon Musk has declared, quite accurately, that the people on X are now the media. How dare they! How dare the public bypass the gatekeepers of information who have routinely failed to report with fairness or accuracy?

VandeHei’s rant against Musk is not just a tantrum; it’s a public display of the media’s refusal to acknowledge its own irrelevance. Here’s a man who, in 2020, scolded his own industry for being out of touch, yet now he’s throwing a fit because someone else is pointing out the same glaring truth. The irony is as thick as the dust collecting on unread newspapers.

Axios: Blunt 2020 lessons for media, America

All of us — and the media, in particular — need some clear-eyed, humble self-reflection as the dust settles on the 2020 election results.

Here are a few preliminary Axios learnings.

The media remains fairly clueless about the America that exists outside of the big cities, where most political writers and editors live. The coverage missed badly the surge in Trump voters in places obvious (rural America) and less obvious (Hispanic-heavy border towns in Texas).

The media (and many Democrats) are fairly clueless about the needs, wants and trends of Hispanic voters. Top Latinos warned about overlooking and misreading the fastest-growing population in America — but most didn’t listen.

The media filter bubble is getting worse, not better. Look at what’s unfolding in real-time: Trump supporters feel like Fox isn’t pro-Trump enough, while reporters and columnists bolted The New York Times, Vox Media and others because they were not “woke” enough.

This is an urgent sign that we are collectively losing the battle for truth and open debate.

But let’s not forget, dear readers, the punchline of this sad comedy. Just three months ago, Axios, under the leadership of the ever-so-enlightened VandeHei, had to slash 50 positions. Why? Because of “changes in the media landscape.” Changes? More like a desperate pivot because they’re hemorrhaging eyeballs faster than a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat. Traditional media isn’t just losing ground; they’re in free fall, and VandeHei’s tantrum isn’t going to change that fact.

Florida Politics: Axios layoffs might have been inevitable, or maybe they could have been avoided

When New York Times reporter Katie Robertson tweeted Tuesday morning that Axios is laying off 50 employees across the company, noting that CEO Jim VandeHei told workers is due to “changes in the media business,” my first reaction was something along the lines of, “Man, it’s hard to be a media company right now.”

That wasn’t just knee-jerk. It’s true. Revenue is dwindling and it’s taking more and more outlets with it, whether by shuttering completely or through massive mergers most see as a degradation to overall reporting, particularly long-form, enterprising reporting.

Selene San Felice, one of the Axios Tampa Bay original reporters and one of three at the helm of the local product, tweeted Tuesday that she was among the layoffs. She did so in the most Axios way possible.

“1 big thing: Axios laid me off,” she wrote in a nod to the common top header on Axios Tampa Bay’s morning newsletter.

For those of us in the industry the writing was, or at least should have been on the wall.

First of all, most of the reporting in the company’s token “bite size” format is aggregation. That means it’s information people can get elsewhere, and a lot of media outlets these days have implemented their own version of digestible key points from a news story.

None of this is to say that Axios doesn’t provide quality reporting. Its journalists are professionals with years of experience in the field, and they do know how to sniff out a story. But even when there’s an original story, it’s not necessarily a scoop, which brings us back to the idea that Axios hasn’t offered anything that readers can’t get elsewhere.

So here we are, watching Axios and its co-founder flail in the winds of change they once criticized but now can’t control. VandeHei’s critique of Musk isn’t about defending journalism; it’s about defending a sinking ship that he’s clearly not ready to abandon.

In the end, maybe VandeHei should look in the mirror when he talks about media being out of touch. Because if he thinks throwing a tantrum over someone stating the obvious—that traditional media is becoming less relevant by the day—is going to reverse public opinion, he’s not just clueless; he’s in denial.

And while traditional media like Axios and its tantrum-throwing leaders continue to grapple with their diminishing relevance, the numbers tell a different story for X/Twitter. In just four months, from April to August 2024, X’s traffic exploded from 0.5 billion visits to a staggering 4.3 billion. Moreover, recent data projects that X/Twitter’s user growth isn’t just a temporary surge but is set to continue unabated until at least 2028. Maybe it’s time for the likes of VandeHei to stop blaming others and start adapting, or risk becoming footnotes in the annals of media history.

Postscript: Those “changes in the media landscape” that forced Axios to cut 50 positions just three months ago? Perhaps that’s just the industry finally feeling the pinch of their own irrelevance … just asking.