The News Creators Disrupting the Mainstream on Social

This report will highlight some of the key trends in the news creator space, and examine where their success is happening.

Let’s dig in.

It might not be an exhaustive list, but it shines a light on this emerging content format, as well as where that content gets engagement. So we took this list as a starting point to see the different platforms where they’re seeing success.

Instagram, however, is where most of the action was, with more than 50 million engagements in December, from around 5,000 posts. This equates to an average of 10,000 engagements per post on the photo sharing platform.

The lesson from Pew’s research is that each of these platforms can serve a very different purpose in the news ecosystem.

For this report, we’re going to focus on three of the more visual platforms of TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, pull out some of the top creators on those platforms in terms of engagement and showcase the different types of content and styles of presentation that perform well on each. We’ll also highlight some of the things that news organizations can learn from these creators, who are often innovating new formats and best practices to reach their audiences.

It’s a visual medium, and allows users to stitch together other videos and screenshots easily for added context or to easily provide background information on the topic at hand.

This lends itself to the kind of quick-take, short-form reaction videos that have proliferated on cable news for decades, though perhaps with more space for context and a whole new audience to consume that content.

A lot of the videos fall into this format, but that doesn’t mean they’re all the same — you can find a variety of different approaches to this kind of content, and the three examples below highlight three of those.

Many of these videos have seen tens of thousands of engagements — sometimes rising to the millions — so there’s an obvious motivation for TikTok to be a key pillar in any audience development strategy.

So, while TikTok is a behemoth when it comes to discovery and audience building, the ultimate goal is to drive conversions and subscriptions, and that often leads back to YouTube.

While the rise of YouTube Shorts to compete with TikTok hasn’t gone unnoticed by news creators, much of the content there is still long-form, often clocking in in the hours rather than the minutes, and tends to be made with a dedicated audience in mind rather than the general population.

This puts YouTube in a fairly unique position, as people are actively seeking out specific topics and videos more often, rather than being served it algorithmically.

Let’s look at some of the examples of the most influential news creators on YouTube.

Though the partisan nature of their work is similar, their approaches are actually quite different. Johnson responds to political and social issues in shorter videos, often barely reaching a minute in length, while occasionally adding in a satirical sketch.

Piker, on the other hand, often dives into deeper discussions with sometimes hour-long live streams that critique conservative policies and current events.

Both creators regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. YouTube tends to be more search-driven than other platforms news creators use, so this shows the value in being able to bring an audience from other platforms onto YouTube, where there are often huge archives of content.

Whether that’s content in different languages, or specific verticals being reported on, there’s always someone there to make content for it.

Tech content resonates across platforms

Technology is also a big area of interest, for news creators, and it’s not limited to a single source. Taylor Lorenz was until recently a reporter for The Washington Post, but has recently launched her own newsletter User Mag as well as still hosting the Power User podcast. This one-two punch is a common path for newly independent creators, and is supported by her presence on social media, with her TikTok of particular note.

Marques Brownlee is another side of this coin in tech reporting. He has built a loyal following on YouTube reviewing gadgets and new technology, but also regularly publishes explainers such as the deep-dive into Honey’s reputational issues below.

That’s not to say that these publishers aren’t taking advantage of these opportunities too, though. As we noted in our recent news publisher report, a majority of the engagement from big publishers is now coming from Instagram and TikTok, rather than web links.

Some key examples of this include the Daily Mail’s TikTok, the FT using Instagram for growth, and CNN’s YouTube channel.

Whatever ends up being their influence on the mainstream, news creators are here to stay, and if you’re not following them you’re missing a huge part of what’s being reported. At the moment, they’re still quite reliant on mainstream news as a source, but that may change as more organizations cultivate and develop their own internal versions of news creators.

• Visual content drives success: Each platform offers its own advantages for news creators, but there are some leading in generating engagement. For the creators identified by Pew Research, Instagram accumulated over 50 million engagements in December, followed by TikTok with over 20 million.
• Platform-specific approaches: Different platforms serve unique purposes for creators. TikTok is ideal for discovery and quick takes, YouTube allows for long-form and revenue-generating content, while Instagram balances news with personal promotion.
• Niche creators drive growth: Creators who target specific audiences, like Carlos Eduardo Espina’s Spanish-language content, or Marques Brownlee’s tech reviews, demonstrate how niche content can fill gaps left by traditional news publishers.
• Creator strategies in the mainstream: Major publishers like CNN, Financial Times, and the Daily Mail are increasingly seeing higher engagement on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. This shift suggests that news organizations may start cultivating their own communities with journalist-driven content that emulates that of news creators.