I recently concluded a 39-year career as a professor of journalism at NYU. Here I’m trying to explain my next job, and the logic behind it.
The latest Gallup poll found that Americans’ confidence in the news media had “fallen to a new low,” with only 28% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television and radio. Put another way, 7 in 10 adults say they have “not very much” confidence (36%) or “none at all” (34%).
A few days before Gallup’s report of a “new low” in trust, Pew Research reported that “about half of U.S. adults (53%) say they at least sometimes get news from social media.” That’s not stunning news, but maybe this is:
The results from TikTok, the short-form video sharing platform, show that “a fifth of U.S. adults now regularly get news on TikTok, up from just 3% in 2020,” Pew said. Among young adults, the shift is more dramatic: 43% say they regularly get news from TikTok.
Put these two things together — less confidence in the news media, greater reliance on social media — and the results may be a bit of a shock. We know it’s gone, but where did all that trust travel? Part of the answer is, “the same place that trust in Congress went!” Meaning, it melted away like it has for other institutions.
But in journalism something else has been afoot. The consumers of news and information, the people formerly known as the audience (which is what I called them in 2006…) have gone into the production side.
Here’s how I put that shift in 2006, when I described for The Media what’s different about the internet.
- Once they were your printing presses; now that humble device, the blog, has given the press to us. That’s why blogs have been called little First Amendment machines. They extend freedom of the press to more actors.
- Once it was your radio station, broadcasting on your frequency. Now that brilliant invention, podcasting, gives radio to us. And we have found more uses for it than you did.
- Shooting, editing and distributing video once belonged to you, Big Media. Now video is coming into the user’s hands, and audience-building by former members of the audience is alive and well on the Web.
- You were once (exclusively) the editors of the news, choosing what ran on the front page. Now we can edit the news, and our choices send items to our own front pages.
- A highly centralized media system had connected people “up” to big social agencies and centers of power but not “across” to each other. Now the horizontal flow, citizen-to-citizen, is as real and consequential as the vertical one.
Where did all that trust go? Not all, but a lot of it has gone to this other way of delivering, discovering, and discussing the news. And while it’s relevant and true that much of the “new” (or successor) system still depends on “old” media, and the talented people who produce it, it’s also true that the people formerly known as the audience are successfully inserting a social layer between themselves and the newsrooms of America.
Here’s where News Creator Corps comes into view for me, with its motto, “We need more good information reaching people where they already are.”
In the spring of 2025, I began discussions with the nonprofit startup about possibly retiring from NYU and coming to work for them.
I explained it to myself like this:
In your reform projects and your criticism you have been pushing journalism to do better, on the assumption that trust will return with practices that are more trustworthy. That makes a lot of sense. But by most measures trust in the news media keeps falling. To “new lows,” even.
What if we start in a different place, with the people who are increasingly trusted — the creators, as they’re called.
And suppose we offer to teach the basics to those in the creator class who might be interested. By “basics” we mean anything that makes them a more reliable and effective provider of news and information. Could be cultivating sources. Checking facts. Conducting interviews. Reaching more people in your community or content niche. What to know if you’re expanding to a platform new to you.
The point would not be to tilt more students toward the journalism schools; instead we try to meet creators where they are. Find out what they want to know, mix in what they need to know, and point the way to better practices, especially in sharing accurate and trustworthy information. Again: this would not be about minting new members for the journalism profession. We have a lot of programs like that.
In her study of the creators technology journalist Julia Angwin put it this way:
Journalism is facing a trust crisis. Audiences are increasingly skeptical that mainstream media serves their interests and are turning their attention away from traditional news outlets. Meanwhile, online content creators who engage in journalist-style work are building huge, loyal audiences that eclipse those of traditional media.
Precisely. Audiences are migrating to the content creators, whose work is easier to trust, more fun to consume, and (often, not always) better at explaining what just happened. The simple principle of sharing good information — and watching out for the bad — has to migrate with it.
News Creator Corps thought I could help. Help us explain what we’re doing, they said. Help us raise money to do it.
So that’s my new gig, and probably my last project.
News Creator Corps begins with an 8-week pilot program. Those who have been chosen for this initial cohort get a $5,000 stipend, sort of like a fellowship at a university.
“Everyone wants access to good information,” writes Rachel Lobdell, executive director of News Creator Corps. “Content creators have emerged as a critical and powerful type of community messenger. We’ve known for many years that audiences are drawn to accounts run by people over brands, and now, for the first time, more Americans get news from social media than from any other source.”
Those are some of the facts we begin with.
Are there partnerships to be had between newsrooms and creators? Yes, there are partnerships to be had. Can the creator class replace the profession? I say no, it cannot, and should not. But there’s an ideal mix between the two that has yet to be found.
A final note. For the last three decades, I have been trying to improve American journalism by making the profession of it easier to trust. But now I have to recognize another way. The rise of the creator class and its use of the social layer makes it clear: Journalism — the practice of it — belongs not only to the people who call themselves journalists, but to everyone who does civic work with its tools.
As we’re learning every day: that’s a lot of people.