We know more about creator journalists than we ever have

I'm writing this from Perugia, where the International Journalism Festival is in full swing and the Center for News, Technology & Innovation (CNTI) just dropped the most in-depth report we've seen on the U.S. independent creator journalism landscape. Amy Mitchell, CNTI's executive director, presented the findings here yesterday on a panel with me, Justin Bank, Justin Arenstein and Dave Jorgenson. (Full disclosure: Project C was a research partner on the study.)

I want to talk about what stood out to me from the study and why a few of you told me it bummed you out.

Here's the setup: CNTI surveyed 43 independent information providers across the country, then went deeper with 26 of them in long-form interviews (literally long. Like 90-minutes each). They focused on earlier-stage creators on purpose, so keep in mind the results are NOT inclusive of runaway creator era stars like Joy Ann Reid, Don Lemon or Carlos Eduardo Espina. 

Out of the 26 interviewed, 19 had some journalism experience, and for 10 of them, reporting was the only career they'd ever had. Only three had launched before 2020. Job loss or industry uncertainty is what pushed most of them into this life.

One creator, a former journalist now running a consumer product-focused outlet, summed up the whole thing in one sentence:

"Unless I build the thing that I want to work for, it's not going to exist."

That line stuck with me and reminded me of what I heard when I did a similar survey back in 2024 when I was contemplating launching Project C. At the time, I talked to a handful of journalists who had left traditional news organizations to launch their own channels or newsletters. The way that they described it to me was that, in addition to feeling industry instability, they didn't feel that they could produce the kinds of content that they wanted within institutional corporate brands who were increasingly beholden to advertisers (and billionaire owners) anymore. 

It captures something essential about this moment. The people doing this work didn't set out to become entrepreneurs. They set out to keep doing journalism. The business part showed up whether they wanted it or not, because the work they wanted to do only existed if they built it themselves – which meant learning how to run a small business, build marketing strategies and figure out how to make money. 

Very few of the creators studied by CNTI reported earning a profit. (Again, remember that most of the people surveyed were members of Project C who are early in their building phase with their ventures.)

Just three out of 26 said they could fully fund their lifestyle with this work. Fewer than one in three had a fully developed business strategy. For former journalists especially, building a brand and figuring out how to monetize felt like what the report calls a "mindset shift," and a distraction from the work they actually want to do. As one of them put it, “I had no idea I was going to be running a business."

The learning curve is steep and mostly self-taught. Fewer than half (11 out of 26) had taken a structured business course of any kind or reached out to the Small Business Administration. The biggest teacher, as one creator with management experience put it, was "either personal experience or chatting with peers."

We knew this a couple of years ago, but it was interesting to see it confirmed at scale. This is the reason that the Going Solo curriculum concentrates on the business skills creators need to grow audience and revenue, not the journalism fundamentals they already have.

Then there's the loneliness. Going independent is fulfilling but exhausting, and the report found the physical and mental toll is unsustainable for many of these creators even as they deeply value their editorial freedom. One creator, who has since grown her operation to a team of five, told researchers, "I burned out like every other month being a one-woman show."

Meanwhile, 18 of the 26 are active on at least three platforms. Not because they want to be everywhere (nobody wants to be everywhere), but as a hedge against the next unpredictable algorithm change. They're stressed trying to balance formats, audiences and revenue options across a shifting landscape. Newsletters are common even among video producers. AI is showing up in internal processes but not yet in distribution.

After the report dropped, I heard from a few people in the Project C community who said it felt like a gut punch. One person called it depressing.

I get it. When you're in the trenches, juggling your editorial calendar and your ad outreach and your subscriber growth and your podcast editing and your taxes (BLERGING taxes!) and also somehow your actual reporting, the last thing you want to hear is that the data confirms how hard this is.

But we needed this snapshot of a moment in the evolution of this growing space.

Up until now, most of what we've known about independent creator journalism has been anecdotal or focused on audience habits. We've read about or heard success stories and cautionary tales. What we haven't had is rigorous research that tells us what the landscape actually looks like for the people doing this work every day. Now, with this CNTI survey and the Video Consortium research that dropped earlier this year, we do.

This knowledge changes what we can build. When we know that business skills are the gap, and that nobody is even taking a basic small business course, you can design programming to fill it. When you know creators are learning almost entirely through peer exchange, you invest in community. (That's exactly what we're doing at Project C.) When you know that only three out of 26 can fully sustain themselves on this work, you can stop pretending that "just start a newsletter" advice is enough, and start advocating for real infrastructure: bundled subscriptions, funder support, institutional partnerships that actually move the needle and real back-office shared service solutions.

Here's the part that gives me genuine optimism. This research isn't stopping. CNTI is set to release a parallel South Africa study with Code for Africa. They're planning to expand the interviews into more countries and we have ambitions to broaden these early findings into a much larger quantitative study.

If you're an independent creator and you haven't read the report yet, go read it here. Then tell me what resonated, what made you wince, and what you wish the next study would dig into.

No links today, but if I'm especially good on the plane home this weekend, I'll send an extra weekend edition chock full of the latest!