Help us pick the Project C 100!

This issue is sponsored by Pew Research Center

Hi there,

Big news! Nominations are open today for the Project C 100: Creator Journalists to Watch, 2027, and I need your help deciding who belongs on it.

Last year, Project C published the first definitive list of journalists reimagining what independence can look like: people who truly met our definition of “creator journalist” and exceeded expectations by delivering vital, impactful news and information to audiences via newsletters, YouTube and TikTok channels and, in one case, even via a Twitch stream.

A little over a year later, we’re doing it again, and this time the list grows to 100. That expansion matches the field’s growth. Over the last 12 months, journalists leaving legacy newsrooms (by choice or not) have kept launching independent, direct-to-audience ventures at a staggering pace. The Independent Journalism Atlas now maps 2,432 practitioners, and that figure grows every week.

Last year’s list put real examples behind the definition. This year we want to paint a picture of the work, innovation and impact that’s actually changing the information landscape: people (yes, real humans) committing acts of journalism that make a difference.

What “difference” means is open to your interpretation. That could mean that, like Bryan M. Vance in Portland, they are covering a super-niche topic (in his case grocery prices) in a way that provides huge utility for a community. Or it could mean that, like Syeda Khaula Saad (who creates content about Desi women’s sexual health), they are bringing something new to an audience that has been historically underserved. Or it could mean that, like Amanda Shendruk, they’re using data visualization to help us understand massive tranches of data. Or that, like Anthony Pellegrino, they’ve discovered that an 18-year-old armed with an iPhone can help Gen Z understand what happens inside Congress and reach audiences that scroll right by national news accounts.

This is where you come in. Tell us who belongs on the list.

If you're wondering who to submit, think about who you get real value from. Who do you follow? Which newsletters do you never skip? Where did you first hear about a recent breaking news story? No account is too big or too small, and the person behind it doesn't have to be a trained journalist, as long as you trust that you're getting rigorous, fact-based information about your world from them. That may mean a journalist who left a traditional newsroom, but it may also mean somebody like Katelyn Jetelina, the epidemiologist who launched Your Local Epidemiologist – the Substack newsletter that has become one of the top sources of public health news for Americans.

It doesn’t matter where they publish, free work counts as much as paid, and the call is open to creators anywhere in the world. And yes, you can nominate yourself, or someone who was on the 2025 list.

Nominations are open through Friday, Nov. 13, at 11:59 p.m. ET, and the list launches in January. Until then, we’ll be gathering your nominations along with names from a group of people we’ve asked to send candidates, including last year’s honorees, who we’ve asked to nominate others doing work they find inspiring and crucial.

Then a panel of eight people from across journalism and the creator world will vote on the final list. We’ll name them when the list launches.

The panel will weigh impact first: It’s less about the size of an audience and more about the quality of that audience and the engagement with them. Who’s reaching people and changing how they think? Then innovation: Who’s doing journalism in a way a newsroom wouldn’t, or couldn’t? The final list will be 10 groups of 10 grouped around tbd themes, and it isn’t ranked.

We don’t publish nominations, only the final 100, and our sponsors have no say in who makes it.

For now, send your nominees in. You can send as many names as you like, yours included!

How this newsletter is made: A human (hi, it's Liz 👋) writes, edits and makes every editorial call here. I use Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, as a research tool — each week it sweeps my sources and assembles the first draft of the links roundup. Every link and every word gets a human read before it reaches you.