What makes a “creator journalist”?
The term is everywhere these days, but the idea has existed since the earliest days of journalism.
It was early in 2022, and I was part of a virtual panel on the crisis in local news hosted by WBUR in Boston along with an extraordinary entrepreneur and force of nature named Crystal Good, who was dialing in from West Virginia. It was on that panel that I heard the term “creator journalist” for the first time.
Good was explaining her role as an independent “publisher,” that is the title she preferred, as the founder of a multimedia organization called “Black by God: The West Virginian” that serves the Black community in a handful of rural counties in Central Appalachia. Given the wattage that comes off of just about everything Crystal Good says and does, I should have paid much more attention to this idea of “creator journalism.” For me, she is the embodiment of that movement.
Now at journalism conferences, from the Online News Association’s gathering last month in Chicago to this month’s International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, the buzz is all about “creator journalism.”
There are seemingly endless panel discussions and keynote speeches by and about “creator journalism,” as the phrase finds itself thrust into the very center of the debate on the future of news and how journalists will build back trust with audiences after years of seeing it erode.
The questions that loom over this idea are mostly around how it will be funded and whether a galaxy of independent, individual approaches serving smaller niche audiences is sustainable as a way to fill information gaps in news across the country, and around the world. Project C and its founder Liz Kelly Nelson offer a critical source of research on the emerging market in America, and surveys of top creator journalists in the U.S. reveal that the movement took shape in 2020 and is in some ways born of the pandemic. But it has grown exponentially, particularly over the last year, and a Muck Rack study last year found that fully one-third of all journalists fit the definition of “creator journalist.” It is now an important force that is essential to understand.
The individuals who make up this sector depend largely on direct audience support through platforms, like Substack and of course YouTube and TikTok, that are making this easier, according to Project C. Other important platforms for monetization are happening on beehiiv, Twitch and Ghost.
Bringing some order to the ferment of this universe is The Tiny News Collective, a collaborative founded by a team of local news entrepreneurs that supports new and early-stage local news founders. It lists this mission statement on its website: “We make journalism entrepreneurship a more accessible, equitable and inclusive opportunity for people who care about their community.”
Okay, so … while aware of the risk of sounding like a traditional journalist, which I am, and a boomer, which I also am, I have to say that the notion of “creator journalism” has been perplexing to me, and even, well, maybe a bit annoying. Why? Because of its imprecision. After all, independent journalists have been creating new formulas for journalism and sharing them in different ways dating back as far as the pamphlet in the American Revolution. So was Thomas Paine a “creator journalist” when he wrote Common Sense in 1776 in just 45 short pages that helped frame the issues that ignited a revolution?
That journalistic search for an independent path carried right through to the power of freelance journalism in the Vietnam War era, at what might be considered the apex of mainstream journalism. Were independent journalists like Seymour Hersh “creator journalists” when he was out there cobbling together funding to investigate the big stories like the My Lai Massacre that exposed the war in ways that traditional journalism, like the New York Times and CBS News, was too often failing to do? And, of course, the idea of independent journalists creating a space to develop their own voice carried right into more recent decades with blogs that have become journalistic institutions, the Huffington Post serving as the most obvious example. So how do we understand “creator journalism” in the contemporary interpretation of the word?
So let’s go back to that day in January of 2022 when I was in my basement on Zoom as we were still in the loosening grip of COVID and I met Crystal Good. Right away it was very clear she was an early adopter and a social entrepreneur who was out to serve her community of approximately 65,000 Black Appalachians in a handful of rural counties in West Virginia where she came of age.
A sixth generation West Virginian Black writer, poet, entrepreneur and newspaper publisher, Good’s resonance is obvious the moment you meet her and her mission to center a narrative about the existence and influence of Black Appalachians. If you ask Good about the name of her organization, she will tell you, “Well, the news is kind of my ministry. “ But specifically, she will also explain, it is an idiomatic expression that refers to West Virginians who often say they are from “West by God Virginia” to distinguish themselves from those of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
She has journalism deep in her veins. Her father worked his way up from janitor to executive director for news at a local, Fox television station. She says, “That background gave me confidence that I could do this.” And she certainly has done it, starting with early support from the Tiny News Collective, and developing a business model that is built around advertising, sponsored content and a non-profit with a fiscal agent, Black by God is definitely what we would call a “hybrid” model for sustainability.
This newsletter, GroundTruth on Substack, has been writing about the concept since last year when my former colleague, Rahim Jessani, who served as our digital strategy lead before plunging full time into his role as a creator journalist, wrote a guest post that explored the best way to define the term with greater precision. He relied on the words of Project C’s Liz Kelly Nelson in defining the term as an organization that supports and studies creator journalists. Drawing a clear line between “content creators” and “creator journalists,” Nelson explained it this way:
A creator journalist is “an individual who combines elements of journalism with content creation techniques to produce news, stories, or informational content for digital platforms. Unlike traditional journalists who typically work for established news organizations, creator journalists operate independently or as part of alternative media outlets, utilizing platforms like social media, YouTube, podcasts, newsletters, and blogs to disseminate their work.”
Honestly, that definition didn’t help me to discern the importance of the movement much a year ago. But what is clear now is that “creator journalism” has found its place in the ecosystem for news in a significant way. It is gaining traction and there is a mountain of data and market trends that indicate that this is not just a fad, but a genuine industry shift driven by a growing desire for editorial independence fueled by the direct-to-audience capabilities of social platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Substack and it is supported on these platforms by an audience that prefers individuals over brands.
That support is significant, but often not enough to guarantee a stable income or replace a traditional paycheck. Muck Rack’s The State Of Creator Journalism study found that 63% of creator journalists make a portion of their income from their solo work. Nearly 40 percent say they make no income from their self-publishing, and more than 60% make some money from their endeavors. Creator journalism is a piece of the puzzle of sustainability, but isn’t the be all and end all that will solve the crisis we find ourselves in.
A way to understand the approach of “creator journalism” is not so much as a trend or a new wave, but a reflection of a deep need for journalists to find a way to restore trust with their audiences. To do that, they are rejecting the trappings of traditional journalism and its formulas, and they are trying new approaches and new platforms to reach audiences and try to win their trust. The Local Media Association got at this last month at their Local News Summit with a broad framing around the idea that “Creator journalism isn’t a format — it’s a trust model.”
So in cobbling together these impressions for this newsletter, and in revisiting the notes from my chance meeting with Crystal Good way back in 2022, which feels now like a different era of journalism, it is worth noting that this writer is indeed what might be called a “creator journalist.” It was in 2006 that I broke away from traditional journalism as the founder of GlobalPost and then continued to create through The GroundTruth Project in launching Report for America. And now in this new iteration of GroundTruth Media Partners, I have proudly broken away even further to try to develop a voice on Substack. So, on reflection, I would have to say I am proud to be in that communion of the saints that have “come marching in” to “creator journalism” from Thomas Paine to Sy Hersh to Ariana Huffington and, yeah, all the way right up to Crystal Good. As the hymn goes, “I want to be in that number.”
Great! Learned something, as always. :)