The election is over. What happens to the political press?

If politicians really cared about the media’s role in our democracy, they’d mandate a never-ending election season. This year has been very kind to the media. Record Internet traffic! Record TV ratings! Record magazine sales at the newsstand! Hillary Clinton’s, Barack Obama’s, John McCain’s, and Sarah Palin’s mere existences have essentially bailed out the electronic-media industry.

On Nov. 5, that handout expires. The media’s election bubble is about to pop.

For about a year—if not more—media organizations have been milking the election for all its benefits. Page views for the Web sites of the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Slate (among others) all hit record highs. The Huffington Post and Politico have grown from fledgling dot-coms to established, integral pieces of the political Web. An Obama appearance on The Daily Show yielded the show’s best ratings ever; Saturday Night Live is in the middle of its best ratings year in ages, thanks to Sarah Palin. Covers featuring political figures send magazine sales way up; controversial magazine covers sell out at the newsstand. The tie-ins come to a fittingly excessive conclusion when McCain and Obama appear on tonight’s Monday Night Football for a hard-hitting interview about … football. Promising exclusive access to Obama or McCain has become the ultimate form of stunt casting. (Even bigger than putting Oprah on 30 Rock.)

But a post-election landscape will look very different. The election has captured public fascination mainly because it’s treated as a horse race. Once somebody wins the doldrums of reporting on actual governance begin. It’s like being forced to watch black-and-white talkies after basking in Technicolor for months.

Television will be hit especially hard. Both candidates have been propping up a faltering advertising industry with hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising. During the week of Sept. 28 through Oct. 4 alone, the two candidates spent $28 million on TV ad buys. That money goes to local TV stations, some of which are owned by the networks. Absent the candidates’ funds, the local networks will have to turn to the local businesses that used to purchase the inventory. But those small businesses are the same ones being choked by a credit crisis and uncertainty about a potential Obama administration’s small-business tax code.

Cable news, too, is about to see its ratings drop. Across all three networks—MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN—daily October ratings are about twice what they were in October 2007, according to data provided to The Big Money by Nielsen. Prime-time ratings are even more impressive, two-and-a-half to three times better than those of October 2007.

Warning signs can be found in ratings data from 2004. December 2004 ratings were down about 25 percent from October highs. This year, the drop may be even more severe since the networks have attracted so many new viewers specifically for the elections. (Much of this will depend on the severity the economy’s volatility.)

Obviously, these cycles are baked into the ebb and flow of media profits. Elections have occurred for quite some time, and they always bring an inevitable audience decline. But this year, the media industry isn’t easing back into its old, comfortable lifestyle. This year it’s falling back into a pit of despair.

Print-advertising revenue is continuing its impressive drop. The Washington Post reported a 14 percent decline in print-ad revenue (part of an 85 percent profit decline in the third quarter for the Washington Post Co., The Big Money’s parent). The New York Times reported an 18.3 percent drop in print-ad revenue (part of a 51 percent profit decline in the third quarter for the New York Times Co.). A piece in the New York Times about its declining profits said we’re in “the worst period for the industry since the Depression.”

Unsurprisingly, it’s not any better for the magazines. Time Inc. laid off 600. Condé Nast is cutting 5 percent of its work force and scaling back two of its marquee titles. A host of other titles have shriveled. After drastically restructuring the organization, Time Inc.’s CEO told a conference: “By this October it was looking like 1931. [Time Inc.] has never had so many advertising clients in trouble at the same time. The declines are stunning.”

Even online havens are at risk. Online-ad revenue has slowed considerably for mainstream newspaper sites. Industrywide, newspapers reported a 2.4 percent decline in second-quarter online revenues. Considering online-ad revenue is supposed to be the future of the industry, this is not good. It’s like planning to flee to Mars after climate change makes Earth inhospitable, only to find out that you can’t breathe on Mars, either.

So, what comes next? It depends on the industry. The Big Money asked New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller whether we could expect to see layoffs or other dramatic changes once the Times loses its breadwinning beat. No layoffs, he said; just reassignments, with many reporters staying on to cover the new administration. He also wrote that “[t]here will be some significant cost savings, mainly thanks to the fact that we are not traveling with a whole constellation of candidates, often sharing the pooled cost of pricey private campaign aircraft.” So even if revenue goes down, costs will, too. It’s unclear whether the drops will be proportional, but amid a blanket of threatening clouds, there at least seems to be a silver lining.

TV, meanwhile, will simply cool down after running hot for a while. The election season has coined some new stars—Rachel Maddow, in particular—and the ongoing economic crisis will offer grist for the daytime mill. If ratings recede as modestly as they did in 2004, the networks will still be well ahead of last year’s ratings—which will help in a less-friendly advertising environment.

The most intriguing future rests with the new Internet upstarts. Many new sites have emerged from this election, but the Huffington Post and Politico have particularly secured their positions among the digi-elite. According to Compete.com, a Web-visit-tracking site, Huffington is topping 5 million unique visitors a month, and Politico is topping 3 million. But almost all of that traffic is still a result of the horse race, and that bubble will soon pop. After the 2004 race, then-emerging political force Wonkette reportedly lost 40 percent of its audience.

Both sites have a plan to stay relevant, and, surprisingly, both of them are going to get bigger. The Huffington Post has already started to branch its content into other topic areas—business, green, a local Chicago version—in the hopes it can become a Web portal for all seasons. Obviously, the slowdown in online advertising affects the Huffington Post just as it does everybody else, and it’s very unclear what will happen to a liberal Web aggregator if a liberal gets into the White House. Color us skeptical, but it’s still too early to call.

While Huffington Post grows through diversification, Politico is going to delve even deeper than it already does. It’s going to increase its staff by more than 15 percent and start behaving like a Washington bureau for local papers and create an ad network for local newspaper sites. Politico says that even if its online audience drops, its business model won’t suffer because its advertising comes from special-interest groups trying to lobby the politicos. (It also has a paper edition from which it derives the majority of its revenue.)

If the new, pro-growth Internet models work, then for some members of the media, the election will have had a lasting economic impact. What was essentially a government bailout for the media industry will have made at least one medium stronger. Proof that sometimes government intervention can help rebuild after a bubble pops. Emphasis on sometimes.

(Cover photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images, Article Photo by Raedie/Getty Images)