Breitbart is bleeding readers

Readership on right-wing website Breitbart News has dropped dramatically since President Trump won the election. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that visitor traffic on the site "has fallen 53 percent since November, from 22.96 million unique individuals to 10.76 million last month."

While Breitbart isn't the only news site to suffer a traffic drop-off since the election — The New York Times, for instance, has seen a 26 percent drop in traffic since November — Breitbart's dive is noticeably steeper. In a statement to the Post, Breitbart framed claims about its dwindling traffic as "liberal hysteria," noting its traffic "has increased 59 percent on a year-to-year basis and that it ranks No. 60 among U.S.-based websites."

But traffic isn't the only thing slipping at Breitbart. The number of advertisers on the site has also sunk, dropping from 242 companies with ads on the site in March to just 26 companies last month. The company has also pushed back plans to expand to France and Germany. Most recently, Breitbart fired reporter Katie McHugh for suggesting "there would be no deadly terror attacks in the U.K. if Muslims didn't live there."

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All of that combined has raised the question of whether Breitbart will be forced to change, as the right starts to turn on the site. "Breitbart has never been under more pressure than it is now, trying to establish itself as the premiere right-wing outlet even as liberal boycott threats have cost it hundreds of advertisers," said Will Sommer, who writes a newsletter on conservative media. "So now, any staffer who hurts Breitbart's request for respectability (and advertisers) can expect to be fired."