CHICAGO – A Venn diagram of people who are deeply involved in politics and deeply engaged with news media usually creates a pretty big middle circle. The Democratic National Convention , unfolding this week in Chicago, has made news this time around with its warm embrace of social media creators and influencers. But a lightning-round sample of randomly selected delegates from five states – Arizona, California, Louisiana, New York and Ohio – found that The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and other mainstream news outlets are still more than holding their own with voracious consumers of political news and analysis.
“I’m a CNN junkie. No matter what I’m doing, I can always get CNN,” Dee Bailey, a delegate from New York, told Variety from the convention floor on Wednesday evening. Carmen Martinez, another New York delegate, said her go-to is New York 1, the all-news cable outlet owned by Charter Communications.
“We’re community activists. We stay on top of everything that’s happening,” she said. More surprising, delegates who spoke to Variety during our 30-minute window to roam the floor of the United Center said they had no major beefs with the quality of the media coverage they consume.
That flies in the face of surveys indicating that public trust in mainstream news media sources has reached record lows amid partisanship, fragmentation and segmentation of viewpoints that is encouraged by social media and online media. Raven Lyons, a young woman from .