Turning Point USA: The Ideological Front Lines

 

Turning Point USA was founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk and Bill Montgomery, and it functions as a 501c3 charitable organization that focuses on conservative campus activism at the high school and collegiate levels of education. In recent years Turning Point has focused on spreading conservative ideals and thought patterns at colleges across the country through tabling events and by hosting speakers in conjunction with other conservative organizations such as Young Americans for Freedom.

The leading voice for Turning Point USA is undoubtedly its co-founder Charlie Kirk. Kirk entered the conservative new media ecosystem as a teenager and has risen to be a leading voice in the space. Kirk routinely does media appearances on legacy and new media outlets in addition to personally speaking with college students at Turning Point events on campus often in a debate format. In addition to hosting events Turning Point acts as a media outlet reporting on current events in the form of news articles, YouTube videos, and livestreams. Furthermore, Turning Point also serves as a network for conservative activist groups across the country with a focus on college groups.

 In the most recent 2024 Presidential election Turning Point played a massive role in mobilizing young voters on college campuses. This was accomplished through on campus events and registration of voters at these events, this is significant because this type of political ground game was almost exclusively done by left of center activist groups on campuses before the 2024 election cycle. As Kirk has personally stated one of the primary goals of Turning Point is to bring balance back to college campuses and to allow an outlet for students to express conservative viewpoints in areas where they have historically been oppressed. Turning Point is the model start up conservative new media outlet and organization and due to recent success in the 2024 election cycle their popularity is likely to continue increasing.

The Young Turks: Consistency and Independence

 The Young Turks is a left leaning progressive political show that airs weekdays at 6 pm online and episodes are posted as podcasts and videos on podcasting apps and YouTube respectively after each episode airs. TYT was founded by Cenk Uygur in 2002 and started as a daily show before becoming a full-fledged network that hosts other forms of content and daily shows.

The main focus of TYT is to cover issues in a progressive and anti-establishment way with a focus on liberal and socialist points. The pilot daily show for TYT network is Cenk Uygur and Anna Kasparian and they cover daily news topics focusing on the United States and international news. One of the main goals of TYT network is to be funded entirely by donations so they are not influenced by corporate dollars. Currently TYT is funded by memberships to their premium content and donations from their readers, Uygur claims this funding allows TYT to cover issues independently.

Currently TYT network has a broad range of political, entertainment, and sports shows that center on covering these avenues of content through a progressive United States liberal lens. Some see TYT as a direct competitor to Daily Wire and while the two networks do essentially the same thing on opposite sides of the isle The Daily Wire is multiples larger and more influential than TYT.  TYT has a lot of room to grow and because of their independent funding they likely will continue to grow since Americans are leaning towards non legacy controlled media sources.

Alternate Alternative Media: The Joe Rogan Experience

 

Perhaps the newest media avenue is podcasts, and none are larger than The Joe Rogan Experience. Joe Rogan has not typically focused his podcast content on political news topics, however, recently Rogan has brought on political guests around the 2024 presidential election including now President Trump. Joe Rogan started podcasting in 2009 and was one of the first regular shows in podcasting, this early and consistent start is the main reason The Joe Rogan Experience is as large as it is today.  

Joe Rogan started with having his friends as guests on his podcast and the conversation centered on topics such as MMA and entertainment. The average episode of The Joe Rogan Experience runs for two and a half hours with episodes regularly eclipsing three hours in length. Joe Rogan is not averse to having political guests on his show and before 2024 he regularly had on figures such as Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, and Edward Snowden among others. In and around the 2024 election Rogan became increasingly focused on having Trump and Harris on his podcast in addition to other political guests. Rogan’s reasoning for wanting both candidates on his show was people deserved to listen to presidential nominees defend their stances in a long form show where they could explain their positions thoroughly. Ultimately Trump accepted the offer and Harris declined, according to many people close to Harris this is now seen as a blunder since Trump saw such a massive boost from the appearance.

Despite the unconventional nature of his podcast and the content that is usually discussed there is no doubt Rogan had a massive impact on the 2024 presidential election especially among young male voters. In the future political candidates will likely have to sit for long form interviews since it worked so well for Trump in 2024.

New Media Giant: The Daily Wire

 One of the largest new media institutions on the conservative side of the isle is The Daily Wire, founded in 2015 by Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boring, The Daily Wire focuses on conservative news coverage and content creation. In its early days Daily Wire was an online newspaper that posted curated opinion and news articles for readers to share. What set The Daily Wire apart was in part the timing of when the company was founded and its early adoption and optimization of social media in spreading their reporting and personalities. This early adoption of social media and later a focus on daily podcasts allowed The Daily Wire to capture a large share of the conservative new media marketplace.

Currently the largest part of The Daily Wires model, outside of news reporting online, is podcasts with their most popular being Ben Shapiro’s daily show The Ben Shapiro Show. Before founding The Daily Wire, Shapiro attended and graduated from UCLA for his undergraduate studies and attended and graduated from Harvard Law School. Shapiro's Daily Show focuses on a number of issues, first and foremost the news of the day then at the end of the show, there is usually a focus on culture war issues or conservative culture issues. A large part of Shapiro's popularity centers around his analytical style of thinking and explaining issues as well as his ability to make issues easily understandable to people who can only consume an hour of news a day. Compared to other political daily shows, Shapiro’s show can be described as in depth and information heavy. Other personalities at The Daily Wire include Jordan Peterson, Michael Knowles, and Matt Walsh among others.

The reason The Daily Wire has continued to grow and expand is its increasing diversification in content that it offers on its paid subscription program. Whereas other media outlets stick to just focusing on news, The Daily Wire offers free and behind paywall news stories, extra length daily shows, documentaries, feature length films, and even kids content all centered around a conservative world view. This diversification and increase in content production has allowed The Daily Wire to have over 1,000,000 paid subscribers as of 2022. Daily Wire hosts have also increased publicity for the company by testifying on Capitol Hill to Congress on a number of issues, including culture war issues, censorship, and government bias. Recently, founder Ben Shapiro testified before Congress on biased advertising standards present in the agency GARM, this led to the agency eventually being disbanded.

With their recent successes, The Daily Wire is showing no signs of slowing down and has actually been increasing their content to produce more movies and documentaries, which have been increasingly gaining traction. Furthermore, political campaigning from Ben Shapiro and other Daily Wire hosts helped a number of Republicans in the House and Senate win their races this electoral season. With the Conservative administration in the White House, Daily Wire press coverage will only continue to increase and gain more popularity and notoriety, in my opinion.