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John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight Trump segment spurs donation increase

By Hector Cruz

NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 09: Comedian John Oliver performs onstage during the Natural Resources Defense Council's 'NRDC's Night of Comedy' Benefit with Seth Meyers, John Oliver, George Lopez, Mike Birbiglia and Hasan Minhaj on November 9, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for The Natural Resources Defense Council)
NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 09: Comedian John Oliver performs onstage during the Natural Resources Defense Council's 'NRDC's Night of Comedy' Benefit with Seth Meyers, John Oliver, George Lopez, Mike Birbiglia and Hasan Minhaj on November 9, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for The Natural Resources Defense Council) /
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News organizations are seeing a donation and subscriber bump in the wake of the election and John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight segment about Donald Trump’s win.

John Oliver dedicated Last Week Tonight‘s final episode of the year to give his reaction to the election of Donald Trump as president, during which he called on viewers to “support actual journalism.” One of the news organizations that have benefited from his appeal is ProPublica, which has seen a surge in donations since the episode aired.

“You need to support actual journalism by buying a subscription to outlets like The (New York) Times, The (Washington) Post, your local newspaper, or donate to groups like ProPublica, a nonprofit group which does great investigative journalism,” Oliver urged his audience.

Richard Tofel, ProPublica’s president and founding general manager, told Poynter on Monday that they have seen a significant rise in donations since Oliver’s call to action. “We are now 12 hours after the broadcast, and still running at multiple donations per minute,” he said, explaining that they usually only get a couple of donations a day, resulting in $500,000 in donations last year. They’re currently on track to “exceed that very significantly” thanks to Oliver and the election.

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“With the possible exception of New Year’s Eve, we have never seen anything like what we’ve seen in the last 13 hours,” Tofel continued, adding that they have close ties to the HBO show given that two Last Week Tonight researchers used to work for the publication, and that they were given a heads up in advance of the episode so they could prepare for an uptick in donations.

ProPublica isn’t the only media outlet to benefit from the election results. Both The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have seen a surge in new digital subscriptions since Election Day. The Times claims to have added  “six times the normal number” of subscribers since last Tuesday in response to a Twitter rant from the president-elect, who wrote that the newspaper is “losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the ‘Trump phenomena.'” Other news organizations that have experienced a rise in donations or subscriptions include The Atlantic, Mother Jones and The Guardian.

Oliver also encouraged viewers to donate to organizations involving groups that may be the most impacted by a Trump presidency, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, The Trevor Project for LGBTQ youth, and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund. He added:

"If you can afford the time or money, support organizations that are going to need help under a Trump administration. For instance, if you’re concerned about women’s health, donate to Planned Parenthood, or the Center for Reproductive Rights. If you don’t believe man-made global warming is a silly issue, donate to the Natural Resources Defense Council. If you don’t think refugees are a terrorist army in disguise, donate to the International Refugee Assistance Project."

Oliver even encouraged fans to give donations as a holiday gift in the names of their Trump-voting relatives. In a similar vein, 20,000 people have reportedly donated to Planned Parenthood in Mike Pence’s name since the election. The Vice President-elect caused controversy when he signed into law a bill that requires the remains of aborted or miscarried fetuses to be interred or cremated as governor of Indiana, while his running mate suggested that he may move to repeal Roe v. Wade as president by returning the issue of abortion back to the states, offering in an interview with 60 Minutes that women can simply go to another state if they want an abortion if it becomes outlawed where they live.

Watch the most recent Last Week Tonight episode in its entirety below:

Next: John Oliver Tackles School Segregation on Last Week Tonight

This isn’t the first time Oliver’s words have made an impact. In 2014, Last Week Tonight viewers crashed the FCC website after the British comedian spoke out against their stance on net neutrality, which was credited with getting the agency to later change its mind on the issue. He also helped the Society of Women Engineers rack up $25,000 in donations in two days following an exposé on the Miss America Organization’s misleading claims of giving out $45 million in scholarship money each year, and even got a 20-year-old book titled The Kid Who Ran for President to shoot up the Amazon sales chart, proving that the “John Oliver bump” has become a real thing.

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