Creator Journalism is fueling a bigger decentralization shift

This edition sponsored by Outpost for Ghost publishers

A decade ago, Facebook's consolidation of distribution power was so absolute that publishers pivoted to video on command and the industry moved tons of journalists in that direction. Today, no single platform has that power. The result: creator journalists are platform-shopping with strategic freedom.

In September 2025, Alison Roman announced she was moving her 343,000-subscriber newsletter from Substack to Ghost. A month later, Anne Helen Petersen — one of Substack's most successful writers and a beneficiary of their six-figure development program — decamped for Patreon. 

Dave Jorgenson, the Washington Post's "TikTok Guy," spun out his Local News International franchise into an independent venture, taking 85% of The Post’s YouTube audience with him, and has openly discussed how his growth is actually happening on YouTube. 

These aren't isolated decisions. They're responses to a structural shift that traces back a decade and explain the shifting power dynamics and fluid relationships between platforms, publishers and the individual producers of journalism.

In the mid-2010s, Facebook's consolidation of distribution power was so absolute that its modest investment in short-form video led to the industry's infamous "pivot to video." Looking back, that moment came too early — the vertical video explosion happened, just not when Facebook prompted it. But the pivot-to-video wasn't really about video. It was about consolidated power.

Facebook could force industry-wide strategic shifts because it controlled distribution. 

The platform was capturing web attention from Google and the open web just as mobile technology pushed audiences into apps and walled gardens. Facebook's social graph — which could ingest phone contact lists and leverage network effects — created distribution consolidation unprecedented since the printing press or broadcast license. 

Platform consolidation led to content consolidation and audience consolidation.

That consolidation began eroding around 2018-2020. Facebook faced regulatory pressure, competitive threats from TikTok, creator exodus, and declining organic reach. Critically, TikTok introduced a different algorithmic model: affinity-based recommendation over social-graph distribution. Where Facebook showed you content from people you knew, TikTok showed you content aligned with your interests, regardless of social connection. This broke the assumption that controlling the social graph meant controlling distribution. The strategic question shifted from "how do we win on Facebook?" to "which mix of platforms serves our business model?"

Today's landscape features competing specialized platforms: TikTok and Instagram battle for vertical video, Ghost and Beehiiv and Patreon compete for newsletter writers, Twitter/X and Threads and Bluesky fragment text-based conversation, Spotify challenges YouTube for long-form audio and video. None dominate the way Facebook once did.

This platform fragmentation naturally leads to audience fragmentation — and creators have responded in kind which has, in turn, led platforms to continually adapt how they interact with creators. We’re so far into the counter-cycle that Facebooks is once again actively recruiting contributors with increased payments.

For years, platform-era conventional wisdom held that creators needed to "pick a platform" and commit. Build on YouTube. Go all-in on Substack. Blog on TikTok. Platforms wanted this exclusivity — Substack positioned itself as the everything app for writers with announcements about why they believed in paying writers, YouTube and TikTok competed through monetization programs and recommendation algorithms.

2024 and 2025 revealed a different pattern. Sophisticated creator journalists treat platforms as temporary infrastructure — utilities to mix, match, and migrate between as business needs evolve.

As we've documented in Project C, they're building "poly-platform paths forward," forging and re-forging these paths with increasing speed.

The past year saw significant movement from Substack to Ghost, Patreon, and Beehiiv.

Lyz Lenz's October 2025 move to Patreon illustrated the economics. She cited thousands of bot subscribers tanking engagement while Substack's algorithm prioritized "rage, Nazis, transphobia, and conspiracies." Within two weeks on Patreon, she recovered 70% of her paid subscriber rate. Virginia Sole-Smith followed similar logic, with Patreon promoting her migration via Times Square billboard.

The economics extend beyond direct subscription revenue to business capability. Brad Hargreaves, running Substack's highest-grossing real estate newsletter, moved to Ghost in September 2025 because he needed API access and webhooks to integrate courses and database products. Substack's closed platform couldn't accommodate his business expansion.

Beehiiv claims nearly 3,000 creators migrated from Substack in the past year, with close to 1,000 moving between January and March 2025. CEO Tyler Denk has actively engaged with on Threads and held a Reddit AMA to engage their user base. CEO Tyler Denk is engaging on Threads with creators frustrated with other email/content platforms on Threads on a near daily-basis and recently held a Reddit AMA to engage their user base.

Dave Jorgenson's trajectory demonstrates how platform/publisher promiscuity has evolved into a deliberate strategy.

Starting in 2019, he built the Washington Post's TikTok to 1.9 million followers. When he launched Local News International in February 2025, he used his personal YouTube account while the Post produced the series—a hybrid model splitting ownership and production. By July, he'd spun out independently. By September, the erstwhile “TikTok Guy” was openly discussing how he was seeing more growth and engagement on YouTube.

This is modern publishing risk management. No single platform controls his distribution. TikTok could face regulatory ban. YouTube's algorithm could shift. Email deliverability could fail. By maintaining cross-platform presence and owning audience relationships (email lists, RSS feeds, personal accounts), he's insulated from any single platform's decisions.

Macy Gilliam's relationship with Morning Brew illustrates another hybrid model. In April 2025, she transitioned from employee to creator under a contract nearly doubling her compensation. Morning Brew owns the "Out There" IP, but she promotes personal channels and creates personal content. She calls it "a really safe way to be an entrepreneur" — institutional backing with creator flexibility.

This differs from Katie Gatti Tassin's path, which she announced in an Instagram carousel. She is buying back the "Money with Katie" newsletter/brand that she sold to Morning Brew in 2021 to work under their umbrella. She explains how the buy-back is prompted by the growth of her longform social/cultural podcast Diabolical Lies this year. As she launched her own second-vertical, she wanted to be able to be fully independent with her constellation of brands.

Leaving publishers and launching on new platforms. Staying with publishers and growing on different platforms. Selling to a publisher and buying back once you’ve developed a new product/platform. All of these paths (and more!) can work. The key is matching structure to goals and maintaining optionality to change as the reality on the ground shifts, as well.

The ability to move between platforms, partnerships, and business models represents a fundamental power shift. For decades, media professionals had two options: institutional employment or solo independence. Institutions provided stability, resources, distribution — but controlled your work. Independence provided freedom, but required building everything from scratch.

These aren't binary choices or permanent commitments. They're flexible arrangements that flow based on what serves the audience and sustains business.

This represents a structural improvement over the old system in three ways:

1) When creators can migrate, platforms compete on service quality, not just network effects. 

2) When publishers know creators can leave, they offer fair terms. 

3) When creators own audiences — email lists, RSS feeds, direct relationships — they can't be held hostage by distribution channels.

Platform promiscuity also distributes risk. Algorithm changes happen without warning and cut deep. When YouTube adjusted its recommendation algorithm in 2019, many creators saw 50-80% drops in views overnight. A creator dependent on algorithmic distribution for 80% of traffic could see revenue drop from $20,000/month to $4,000/month in a single week.

If TikTok faces regulatory challenges, you're not solely dependent. If Substack's discovery engine stops working, you migrate to Ghost. If YouTube changes monetization terms, you have Patreon.

Platforms remain important — which is why choosing the right mix for your specific situation matters. What's changed: creators increasingly understand platforms as rented infrastructure to evaluate and optimize, not permanent homes requiring loyalty.

The creator journalists who succeed in the next five years will be platform athletes — skilled at understanding each platform's strengths, combining them strategically, migrating as circumstances warrant. They'll negotiate comfortably with traditional publishers while running their own Ghost installations. They'll think in diversified revenue streams, not single income sources.

Platform promiscuity distributes risk, which paradoxically creates more stability than platform loyalty. When your business model doesn't depend on any single platform's decisions, when you can migrate smoothly between alternatives, when you own core audience relationships — that's more durable than any platform commitment could provide.

The creator journalists who thrive won't be the ones who picked the right platform. They'll be the ones who treated platforms as temporary infrastructure and owned the relationships that matter — the direct connections with their audiences.

Platform promiscuity isn't a trend to ride out. It's the new baseline for media sustainability.