I've read that many journalists want to write substantive stories, but editors want a "Trump angle"

[TSheehan]

Regardless of whether Trump is actually involved in any important sense.

Furthermore, they make sure that Trump is in the headline of an article as often as possible.

Hmm, I can’t see how this helps Trump control the media narrative.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Who is this "they" of which you speak? Which editors and publications?

[TSheehan]

2. Here's a story from the Columbia Journalism Review that came to mind.

Freelancing abroad in a worldobsessed with Trump

”I can’t make a living reporting from the Middle East anymore,” said Sulome (Anderson) in mid-December. “I just can’t justify doing this to myself.” The day we spoke, she heard that Foreign Policy, one of the most reliable destinations for freelancers writing on-the-ground, deeply reported international pieces, would be closing its foreign bureaus. (CJR independently confirmed this, though it has not been publicly announced.) “They are one of the only publications that publish these kinds of stories,” she said, letting out a defeated sigh. (Disclosure: Sulome was a classmate of mine at Columbia Journalism School from 2010 to 2011.)

In 2015, Sulome published 16 major feature stories, while also writing her book. In 2016, she published 12, though she was busy doing publicity for her book. In 2017, the total dropped to nine stories, though she was reporting and pitching full time. She now plans to spend her time focusing on her next book, which is about radicalism in America.

Sulome blames a news cycle dominated by Donald Trump. Newspapers, magazines, and TV news programs simply have less space for freelance international stories than before—unless, of course, they directly involve Trump.

“We heard from one freelance reporter who was reporting on a conflict and was told that unless the story directly related to Trump, there would be no room for it,” (Nathalie) Applewhite tells me. “Our reporting is purposely not breaking news. So when you have such a busy breaking news cycle, it’s going to be difficult to place those stories that are more evergreen.”

https://www.cjr.org/covering_trump/trump-impact-foreign-reporting.php

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Interesting. I hope that will change:

Our success or failure will affect our stature at a time of rickety public trust in us. It will raise or lower the temperature of civic discourse, which is perilously hot. Above all, it will have an impact on who takes the oath of office in January 2021. Democracies don’t just get the leaders they deserve. They get the leaders who make it through whatever obstacle course — and thrive in whatever atmosphere — their media has created.

“The shadow of what we did last time looms over this next time,” the former CBS newsman Dan Rather, who has covered more than half a century of presidential elections, told me. And what we did last time was emphasize the sound and the fury, because Trump provided both in lavish measure.

“When you cover this as spectacle,” Rather said, “what’s lost is context, perspective and depth. And when you cover this as spectacle, he is the star.” Spectacle is his métier. He’s indisputably spectacular. And even if it’s a ghastly spectacle and presented that way, it still lets him control the narrative. As the writer Steve Almond observed in a recently published essay, “He appears powerful to his followers, which is central to his strongman mystique.”

Trump was and is a perverse gift to the mainstream, establishment media, a magnet for eyeballs at a juncture when we were struggling economically and desperately needed one. Just present him as the high-wire act and car crash that he is; the audience gorges on it. But readers’ news appetite isn’t infinite, so they’re starved of information about the fraudulence of his supposed populism and the toll of his incompetence. And he wins. He doesn’t hate the media, not at all. He uses us.

The rest here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/opinion/trump-2020-media.html