The NY Times has over 9 million digital subscribers. Even "small" papers, like the Denver Post, claim to reach 6 million unique monthly visitors. In 2020 NPR claimed that nearly 35 million unique visitors went on NPR.org.
1,142 people follow me on Mastodon. What I say on social media is irrelevant.
Michael Mann is, I would assume, the most well known climate scientist. Around 12,000 people follow him here on Mastodon with almost 65,000 followers on X.
It's a drop in the bucket to the reach of news organizations. If it's not being covered, relentlessly, by "mainstream" news sources, no one will know.
Scientists don't control the narrative. Even large organizations like the USDA or CDC put out a press release that gets one mention in media sources, for one morning's news cycle, and then gets lost.
