This creator-journalist launched with a Casey Neistat collab

^{Making a living as a creator shouldn’t be some elusive thing. And what’s the best way to learn how creators are making it work? To go behind-the-scenes. These bi-weekly interview issues are like having coffee with your favorite creators. If we haven’t met before, I’m Amanda Smith. I write about solopreneurship and the creator economy.}

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There’s no shortage of content about legacy journalists going independent. While there’s growing malaise about traditional media, there’s a growing momentum around creator-led media models. 

Veteran journalists spend years acquiring a mass audience through their mainstream work, so going independent doesn’t mean starting from zero. 

But journalists aren’t just jumping ship to Substack. They’re creating mini media companies themselves – newsletters, YouTube, events, books, the whole shabang. 

And they’re pulling off what legacy media was never able to achieve at mass scale: Paying for content. 

Ex-Wall Street Journal journalist, Joanna Stern’s New Things is a playbook to how this is done. Her first YouTube video? An interview with none other than Casey Neistat. That video racked up 171K views and gained her 53K followers in five days. 

Neistat gave Stern this advice: “Being human is not enough. You have to only be you.” 

Stern went on to share the two ways she plans to make money: newsletter subscriptions (from $10/month to $550/year) and YouTube sponsorships. Unlike the OG influencer, creator-journalists like Stern communicate their standards and ethics as it relates to sponsors. 

She hasn’t fully hung up her mainstream hat, as she’s a contributing correspondent to NBC News – which could be part strategy, to keep her in front of mainstream audiences. 

This trend isn’t just playing out in media circles. Other types of professionals are becoming creators, too. Fertility doctor, Lucky Sekhon, has amassed an audience of 118K on Instagram, published a book, runs a podcast, and still practices medicine. She captioned this video, “if influencers are going to doctor, doctors are going to media.” 

Sekhon is outspoken about reducing misinformation that’s rampant in the fertility content online. It’s why she started posting content online. 

There are dozens of other examples of untraditional content creators, some we’ve even covered here – such as the electrician-turned-YouTuber, Carl Murawski or one of the original Instagram influencers who is now a creator for Adobe, Elise Swopes. 

With the rise of the portfolio career, mass layoffs every other week and perpetual AI anxieties, there’s a broad shift from institution to individuals underway. And as such, a new class of creators will form, in areas and industries that never existed before. 

The more that AI disrupts and dismantles the traditional job, the greater the need for self-sufficiency and a creative outlet. As more people strike out on their own and experiment with content, the very concept of the creator will likely evolve, too. 

It will be less about brand deals and exclusive parties, and more about aligned projects and intimate communities. Less creator, more consultant. 

Of course, a big app or idea could come in and change everything at any moment, but from where we’re standing, the future for the creator, whatever that might look like, is wide open. 

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Amanda

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