ANALYSIS: Have government shutdowns become routine?
- Agora
- Oct 21
- 3 min read
The Washington Post's front pages tell a story about the normalization of government dysfunction
As week four of the partial government shutdown begins without any clear sign of a resolution, the consequences - from air travel delays to neglected national parks - continue to accrue.
But despite the disturbing reality that major parts of the government of the world's biggest economy are not functioning, the 2025 shutdown isn't dominating the news like past funding stoppages. In fact, on many days it's not even a major story.
This stands in stark contrast to past shutdowns, including the first major shutdown of the modern era, in 1995. That battle between the Clinton White House and the Newt Gingrich-led Congress dominated headlines in a way that the current impasse simply doesn't. And while the media landscape has undoubtedly changed over recent decades, the lack of coverage has worrisome implications for the ability of the federal government to do its job.
To explore the difference in how shutdowns are covered, Agora looked back at the front pages of the Washington Post for the first five days of both the 1995 shutdown and the current closure.
The morning after the 1995 shutdown commenced, the Post devoted more than half of the front page to the crisis, with a banner headline, four stories and two photos. By contrast, the 2025 shutdown elicited a single, two-column lead story on its front page.
As the 1995 shutdown continued, the Post devoted prime real estate on its front page - not just to the negotiations themselves, but to the shutdown's effects on federal agencies and programs. This year, the shutdown earned just one front-page story per day, and by day three the closure had been bumped from the traditional broadsheet lead story spot in the upper right corner.
By day four, the 1995 shutdown still earned two stories at the top. By contrast, on day five of this year's shutdown, there was not a single article about it on the Post's front page.
In fairness, there are some key differences between the 1995 and 2025 shutdowns that influence coverage. For one thing, the 1995 shutdown also involved a debt ceiling crisis that could have led to a government default. Second, there appeared to be less competition for news attention in 1995; this year's shutdown is happening amidst the Gaza cease fire, ICE raids and military action in the Caribbean.
This helps explain another reason the current shutdown may be eliciting less attention: while President Clinton and congressional Republicans spent the 1995 shutdown actively jockeying for a compromise, the Trump White House is busy doing other things - and the House is not even in session. A lack of progress on the 2025 shutdown means less news to report. (In fact, that 1995 shutdown ended a few days later, although another shutdown in early 1996 loomed.)
It's also true that the media landscape has changed in the last thirty years, as has the ownership of the Post. But comparing the front pages from 1995 and today provides a reasonable one-to-one comparison of how the capital city's leading media outlet covered a quintessentially DC story.
Of course, a good reason for why the 1995 shutdown received massive coverage was that it was new: other than a few short shutdowns in the 1980s, the idea of the federal government closing its doors was novel. It was a big deal. Today, following years of shutdowns and fiscal cliffs and last-minute reprieves, it's not as shocking.
And that is a problem: the nation's government being forced to close its doors because its leaders cannot agree to keep them open should be a bigger story. It should not be normal. And the fact that the country may be starting to accept shutdowns as business-as-usual does not bode well for the future.
What does a shutdown mean for government contractors, employees, grantees and the general public? Click here for more information.
Questions? Comments? Email Agora.
Comments