Bryan Goldberg, the founder and CEO of US-based publisher of Bustle BDG, is a good person to ask about declining audiences for online news sites. Back in February he was forced to close Gawker, the snarky online gossip brand that pioneered the intermingling of news and opinion via “hot takes” — and the viral traffic that went with it — from the early 2000s to 2016.

I put it to him that maybe the problem was the underlying current-events cycle: The Trump Administration coupled with the Covid pandemic was a giant wave that came to an end with the arrival of the more boring Biden Administration and its equally dull UK counterpart.

Following that tornado of traffic, I suggest that perhaps now we are seeing a reversion to the mean.