Hometown newspapers are coming for Trump’s enablers

There was once a time when lawmakers and politicians had reason to fear a scathing editorial in a national newspaper. That’s clearly no longer the case.

A long and fruitful campaign of demonisation of the establishment press, as well as the dissipation of media power and attention, has all-but rendered them toothless. In the Trump era, it’s not uncommon for his acolytes to boast of such attacks, the better to prove to their base that they are effective warriors against the liberal elite.

The same trick simply doesn’t work on hometown newspapers. It’s one thing to rail against the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, quite another to go to war with the newspaper your mother picks up every day to check the local listings.