On Sunday, March 5, I tried to see how many times media outlets of varying political orientations mentioned "Trump" on their front pages.

NYTimes: 21. Breitbart: 25. Washington Post: 32. CNN: 17. Fox News: 21. Huffington Post: 25.

I find it even more alarming that this number is only in headlines and sub-headlines of articles: if we clicked on all these articles, we could find that Trump could be mentioned hundreds, maybe even thousands of times on each of these outlets. The fact that Trump is mentioned so many times on news outlets that do not think remotely alike is most likely just attributed to the fact that he's the President, the most powerful person in the free world. It can be attributed to the fact that he often says and does such bold and questionable things, and people react passionately (reasonably so, no matter which side you're on). Before the inauguration, we were just reacting to words. But now, he has the power to back them up, which is exciting to some, and frightening to many.

So what about everything else going on? I just realized: I have no idea what's going on in the rest of the world, let alone the country, if it's not in some way related to Trump. The other day, I read an article on the extremely rare declaration of "famine" in South Sudan. Due to my myopic obsession with Donald Trump for the past year, I have been blind to so many other things going on, as have so many others.

I have to be honest: I did not read the news that much before Trump. I had my views, but considered myself apolitical. Before he announced his candidacy, reading the news was much more of a chore than an obligation. This is not in the sense of "well, not much of this affects me," but rather that even news that did affect me was boring and often esoteric. 17-year old me somehow had more important things to do.

Fast forward three years later, and now I'm suddenly an "expert" who arrogantly writes and talks like he knows everything politics. Since joining the Odyssey nearly a year and a half ago, I've had a deadline and benchmark to write 500 words about Trump every single week. I cannot tell you how many times Trump's breaking of political etiquette and convention has bailed me out when I had absolutely nothing else to write about. In addition, Trump news has made me read the news in general a lot more.

For my flirtation with freelancing "journalism", and likely on the behalf of the convenience of many reporters and columnists, I have to make a confession: Donald Trump has been a savior.

But also alarming about this obsession with Trump is the growing polarization of the media. Every news organization has seemed to respond to Trump's firebrand populism with their own sensationalized hyper-partisanship. Unfortunately, this does not always breed accuracy and quality, and instead many newspapers decide to sacrifice objectivity to exacerbate divisions.

For any decision Trump makes, I know what perspectives The Huffington Post and Breitbart will take. But it's upsetting to see outlets I once highly respected, like the New York Times and Washington Post fall into the same editorialized sensationalism. No longer do they focus on the nuances behind Trump's support, but rather the same soundbite about how everything associated with Trump is bad. They have shattered a naive idealism: news organizations are more organizations than news. Frankly, I don't know who I can believe or trust anymore.

Working as a writer, and then editor-in-chief the Odyssey, I've seen what makes money for writers and the organization: clicks and views. Time and time again, I have been incredibly frustrated with some of the writers I manage receiving relatively no attention and no reward for incredibly well-written pieces they devoted hours to, only to see articles like "11 Reasons Why I Love My Dog" generate significantly more attention and reward. As college students, my fellow writers and I are aware that it's not about page views but rather developing as writers. However, that means resisting an organization's business model that pushes writers towards clickbait.

Even for "failing fake news" sites like the New York Times, the election and Trump have brought an incredible surge in subscriptions. In the three weeks after the Presidential election, the New York Times gained 132,000 subscriptions. According the the Times's executive editor, Dean Bouquet, "Trump is the best thing to happen to the Times’ subscription strategy. Every time he tweets it drives subscriptions wildly.” Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal have seen huge spikes in subscriptions as well.

But, of course, the media outlet that has benefited the most is the one that had Trump's back from the beginning: Breitbart News. Steve Bannon, its executive editor, is now an assistant strategist to Donald Trump. Before he announced his campaign, Breitbart only received traffic from 3.5% of the general news market audience. In July 2016, it received 9% of the general audience, an almost three-fold increase.

Everyone knows how much Trump enjoys attention, good or bad, and that's precisely what every news outlet has given him since he announced his campaign in June 2015. But it's not a one-way street: Trump has been incredibly beneficial to newspapers that both love and despise him.

It makes you wonder the next time he calls out the "failing" NYTimes, silences news outlets at press conferences, or misuses the term "fake news". Who knows; they might be in cahoots. In this symbiotic relationship, Donald Trump is the media's savior.