Amid Journalism’s Decline, Two Media Mavericks Built Axios from the Ground Up

In a brutally honest conversation, Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen reveal how they diagnosed journalism's trust crisis and built their media empire while legacy outlets crumbled.

Key Takeaways

• Trust in American media has plummeted from 67% in 1970 to just 31% today, creating massive opportunities for new independent outlets like Axios and The Free Press
• Three specific moments shattered media credibility: Twitter revealing reporter bias, COVID/defund police coverage that felt disconnected from reality, and the systematic failure to cover Biden's mental decline
• Axios reaches 4 million newsletter subscribers daily across 34 cities by focusing on "clinical" reporting that treats news "like doctors" rather than activists or partisan cheerleaders
• The 2016 Trump election exposed how completely political media had failed at their core job of understanding and explaining America to audiences
• Legacy media's groupthink problem stems from newsroom monoculture where reporters from similar backgrounds couldn't see outside their bubble, missing massive stories right in front of them
• Alex Thompson's groundbreaking Biden decline reporting succeeded because he practiced "360-degree attention" to his beat, noticing details like sneakers replacing dress shoes and baby stairs on Air Force One
• The media landscape has permanently "shattered into shards of glass" - there's no going back to Walter Cronkite's shared reality, but sophisticated consumers now have access to more truth than ever before
• Successful modern journalists need "fierce independence" and must be comfortable being disliked by sources and peers rather than seeking approval from the herd
• Trump's second administration represents three simultaneous tectonic shifts: massive political change, AI advancement toward general intelligence, and fundamental transformation in how people consume information

The Three-Phase Collapse of Media Trust

Here's what's fascinating about the timing - when VandeHei and Allen started Politico back in 2006, they weren't necessarily trying to fix a trust crisis. They were just frustrated that legacy media was "still acting as if it were the 1980s," oriented toward evening newscasts and morning papers while the world had moved on. But by 2017 when they launched Axios, something much more serious was happening.

VandeHei breaks down the trust collapse into three distinct phases that feel painfully familiar if you lived through them. First came Twitter, which he calls the moment when "reporters who I had trusted, who I had admired" started making their political views "crystal clear" for the first time. Before social media, any bias reporters had "they hid from the public." Suddenly it was all out there - who they followed, who followed them, what they tweeted about.

• The COVID and "defund the police" era created a disconnect where Americans felt like the coverage "doesn't sit right with me" compared to what they were seeing in their own communities
• The systematic failure to cover Biden's obvious mental decline became the final straw, with Americans saying "I can see with my own two eyes that the guy seems pretty old" while getting little coverage of it
• This created what VandeHei calls "a crisis beyond a crisis of confidence in legacy media," opening massive market opportunities for independent outlets
• Even reporters who tried to tell the truth, like Axios's Alex Thompson, got "bullied by other reporters" for writing about Biden's decline

The really damning part is how institutional the problem became. VandeHei admits he would have defended legacy media against bias charges when they started Politico. He grew up in small-town Wisconsin, owns guns, drives an F-150 - he understood he came from a different world than most reporters, but he "didn't see a ton of bias" back then. What changed was the combination of social media revealing the groupthink and then a series of stories where that groupthink led to systematic misreporting of reality.

When Political Media Failed Its Core Mission

The 2016 Trump election stands as maybe the most devastating indictment of American political journalism in decades. As Allen puts it with brutal clarity: "the political media had one job which was to understand America and explain it to our audience. And the media utterly failed at that."

Think about how surreal that moment was. Barry Weiss describes showing up to the New York Times newsroom "inappropriately dressed in leggings and a t-shirt because I didn't have the heart" to get properly dressed, "sobbing in the newsroom" because she was so shocked by Trump's victory. But here's the thing - if you're a political reporter, being shocked by the outcome means you fundamentally misunderstood the story you were supposed to be covering.

• The surprise of Trump's victory revealed that media outlets weren't "seeing much of the country" or helping audiences understand "tectonic shifts happening in America"
• This led to awkward efforts to "fly someone from Brooklyn to a diner" or "airdrop someone into a VFW hall" to try to catch up on what they'd missed
• The business model crisis intersected with the trust crisis as people started "giving their time and attention to other outlets" that could actually explain what was happening
• Axios positioned itself in what Allen calls "the reality space," which he notes "is not a crowded space right now"

What makes this even more damaging is how the response to Trump's election pushed many outlets further away from objective reporting. Weiss describes watching "the whole edifice really of the New York Times and other places began to shift what they openly talked about their goal being" from holding up "a mirror to the world as it actually is" to "open resistance to Donald Trump."

The Washington Post adopted "democracy dies in darkness" as their motto, and while adversarial journalism has its place, too many outlets seemed to slip "into activism" with people talking about "moral clarity" rather than just reporting what was happening. This created a vicious cycle where the more media positioned itself as resistance, the more it confirmed suspicions about bias, which further eroded trust.

The Biden Story That Exposed Everything

If you want to understand how completely the legacy media lost its way, the coverage of Biden's mental decline tells you everything you need to know. Here was a story that was obviously true to anyone with eyes, involving the mental fitness of the President of the United States, and most major outlets essentially ignored it for years.

Alex Thompson at Axios became the standout reporter on this beat, and his approach shows exactly what real journalism looks like versus whatever was happening elsewhere. Allen describes Thompson's method as "360 attention to his beat" - he wasn't just listening to what officials said, but paying attention to everything: "Oh, like now he's wearing sneakers instead of big boy shoes. Now they're using the baby stairs on Air Force One. Oh, now he has walkers that like help him get from the Oval Office to Marine One."

• Thompson was hearing from people inside the Biden administration that "you had to catch the president between 10 and 4" and that "window shrunk as the months go by"
• The White House was run "like an oligarchy" with "five or six people around Joe Biden who'd been around him for 30, 40 years" who controlled access
• Even people close to Biden "were being shielded from the president" in ways that weren't normal for typical boss-subordinate relationships
• Other reporters avoided the story because they "didn't want to have the ferocious push back" from powerful people and "didn't want to be separated from their colleagues"

What's infuriating is how Thompson got attacked by other journalists for doing actual journalism. VandeHei notes that some of the same reporters who "will applaud him when he wins the award" were "dunking on him" on Twitter and saying his reporting wasn't true. Meanwhile, Axios was getting calls from the White House saying "you guys are out on a limb, you're wrong, you're crazy."

This speaks to a deeper problem about what Allen calls "reporter brain" - the herd mentality where journalists are more worried about getting separated from their colleagues than getting to the truth. There's "an insecurity, a herd mentality" where "you don't want to be separate" and the "typical reporter instinct" is to go along with the group.

The whole episode reveals how much of legacy media had stopped functioning as journalism and started operating more like a public relations operation for the Democratic establishment. When Americans could see obvious decline with their own eyes but weren't seeing it reflected in news outlets they used to trust, it completed the collapse of institutional credibility.

Building Media for the Shattered Reality

One of the most insightful concepts Allen uses is the idea that the media ecosystem "has now shattered" from everyone "looking through one window" to being in "different pieces with very little overlap." There's no going back to Walter Cronkite - that world is gone forever.

But here's what's interesting about the Axios approach: instead of trying to recreate some imaginary golden age of journalism, they've built something designed for the new reality. Their core principle is what they call being "clinical like doctors" - you don't get "a Republican diagnosis or a Democratic diagnosis," just the diagnosis.

• They deliberately have no opinion page and tell reporters "you're done expressing your opinion in public settings"
• Their focus is on being "essential" to sophisticated readers rather than chasing mass traffic
• They reach 4 million newsletter subscribers daily across 34 cities with hyper-targeted content for "political leaders, business leaders, tech leaders, media leaders"
• Their business model focuses on reaching "elite audiences" rather than trying to be everything to everyone

The "smart brevity" format isn't just about being concise - it's about respecting readers' intelligence and time. As Allen puts it, "we don't waste your time and we don't insult your intelligence." In a world where people are drowning in information, being able to quickly get to what actually matters becomes incredibly valuable.

VandeHei emphasizes that successful outlets need to be "vital" and "essential" to their audiences because "there's no market for mediocrity" and "there's no market for just noise for noise sake." This applies whether you're trying to build something like Axios or The Free Press - you have to solve a real problem for real people.

• The fragmented landscape actually creates more opportunities for quality journalism because "sophisticated, demanding information consumers" need help navigating different realities
• Success comes from finding reporters with "fierce independence" who can be "curious, not judgmental" and "skeptical, not cynical"
• Building institutional trust requires being "competent," "authentic," and willing to admit mistakes rather than trying to hide them
• The goal should be helping people "make better decisions" rather than pushing them toward predetermined conclusions

What's encouraging is that both VandeHei and Allen remain optimistic about journalism's future, even as they're brutally honest about its current problems. As VandeHei puts it, "there's more good information available to every single person on this planet with an internet connection on more topics with more depth based on more expertise than at any point in humanity." The challenge isn't lack of good information - it's helping people find it amid all the noise.

Lessons for the Next Generation of Media

The conversation reveals some fascinating insights about what it takes to build successful media companies today. Both founders emphasize that they've "never felt the sense of mission and purpose more viscerally" than right now, even after 18 years as entrepreneurs.

Allen's approach to reporting is particularly instructive - instead of the confrontational style people imagine from movies, he practices "pure curiosity" about how people think and operate. He treats everyone with equal respect, from "the person on the plane carrying the bag" to "the White House chief of staff," understanding that today's junior staffer might be tomorrow's decision-maker.

• Building institutional loyalty requires making "the mission bigger than you" and treating people well rather than centering everything on individual personalities
• The most successful reporters combine domain expertise with fearlessness - they "need people to fear you" not because you're reckless but because "you know" and "you have the stones to write it"
• Sustainable media businesses focus on being essential to specific audiences rather than trying to please everyone
• The key is finding that sweet spot where you're "driven by fierce independence and not conformity" while remaining trustworthy to all sides

Looking ahead, both founders see this as potentially "the most intellectually invigorating period we'll ever live through" because of three simultaneous shifts: massive changes in American politics, AI advancement toward general intelligence, and fundamental transformation in how people consume information.

The lesson isn't that journalism is dead - it's that the old institutional forms are dead, and the future belongs to people who can adapt to the new reality while maintaining core principles about seeking truth and serving audiences. As VandeHei puts it, "if you're a discerning consumer, you don't think that you could get a hell of a lot smarter today than you could have 25 years ago? Give me a break. Not close."

The American media landscape has fundamentally changed, but that creates opportunities for people willing to build something new rather than trying to resurrect what's already gone. What matters is having the right principles and the courage to act on them, even when it means being unpopular with your peers.