The past two decades of media contraction have allowed government officials in every town to talk less to traditional news outlets. Instead they talk directly with voters and constituents on their own platforms.

That allows them to dodge tough questions and independent media coverage where they’re “not controlling the narrative,” said Menlo College political science professor Melissa Michelson. Politicians have sought this for decades, Michelson said, but only in recent years — when over half of U.S. adults get news through social media — have they seen it as more important than traditional media.

Newsom has exploited the trend with unique energy, and is now preparing to leave office after eight years as governor as one of the Democratic Party’s most prolific communicators.

The potential 2028 presidential contender has been a Twitch stream guest, a Substacker and a podcast bro. He never stops posting. He picks fights, on X especially, with right-wing media, an industry he is both critical of and fascinated with.

Some of his communications are done on campaign accounts, but much of the jousting comes from his taxpayer-funded governor’s office communications staff, who have played a major role in casting Newsom as the leading Democrat pushing back against the Trump administration in areas well beyond the boundaries of state policy.

During his second term, the post-pandemic, post-recall election Newsom has grown his press and communications team into an around-the-clock, content-creating media operation, even as he rarely takes questions from the media in Sacramento and his agencies shun interview requests. He nearly doubled his communications staff since the pandemic, even adding a full-time photographer, making $212,000 a year, whose LinkedIn profile describes his job as focusing on the office’s “visual messaging, public perception and narrative development.”