POPULISM ISN'T POPULAR:

Faced with an advertiser boycott and plummeting readership, Breitbart News has lately been trimming back some of its more extreme elements in what may be a bid for more mainstream respectability.

Gone: Prominently displayed stories appealing to overt racial prejudice, such as reports and essays about crimes committed by African-Americans. Articles such as "Five Devastating Facts about Black-on-Black Crime" and "Black-on-Black Crime: Blame it on the System and Ignore the Evidence" have all but disappeared from the site.

Gone: Reporter Katie McHugh, who was fired by Breitbart this month for tweeting after the latest terrorist attack in London, "There would be no terror attacks in the U.K. if Muslims didn't live there." McHugh doubled down on the vitriol when an Iranian-American, actor Pej Vahdat, called her "a real moron." In reply, she tweeted, "You're an Indian," then deleted it.

Long gone: Milo Yiannopoulos, once Breitbart's biggest star and a magnet for accusations that the site promoted misogyny, white ethno-nationalism and demonization of immigrants. Yiannopoulos was forced out in February amid exposure of videos in which he spoke favorably about pedophilia.

Delayed: Breitbart's long-touted plans to expand to France and Germany. The company disclosed Euro-expansion plans last year, but has little to show for it so far.

Breitbart hitched itself to Donald Trump's presidential campaign last year and reaped an enormous spike in reader traffic and media attention. Its former chairman, Stephen K. Bannon -- who once declared Breitbart "the platform of the alt-right" -- became Trump's campaign chairman and later his chief White House strategist.

But the post-election period hasn't been very kind to Breitbart.

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