What I told the Cronkite School graduating class

This edition sponsored by Outpost for Ghost publishers

Project C is on a holiday break, but last week, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the fall convocation at ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications. I’m sharing the text of that speech here because it speaks to a moment in time, an inflection point that we’re all living through in both slow motion and hyperspeed. It applies, I think, to a wider audience than just new grads. We are all able to start over at any point. A huge thanks to Dean Battinto Batts and new Knight Center for the Future of News Director Andy Pergam for hosting me and giving me some time to talk to this impressive graduating class of undergrads, grad students and new Ph.Ds.

In the summer of 2023, I was sitting in a meeting in a job I loved, with a team I adored, at a news brand – Vox – whose mission I believed in with all my heart. We were getting the latest report on our website’s performance. I won’t share specific numbers here, but the loss in audience traffic was catastrophic. It wasn’t just us – we were hearing reports from peers at other newsrooms too with the same downturns.

I felt my stomach drop in that meeting. 

I thought, “What are we doing? Why are we pouring our hearts into beautiful explanatory journalism for an audience that just isn’t showing up anymore?”

Nothing about the journalism had changed. But the conditions in which that journalism lived had changed completely. And nothing we did could bring them back to the kinds of numbers we’d had just a few years earlier. 

Or like when I started out: You published a story and the whole town, the whole country, sometimes the whole world read it. By 2023, those moments just didn’t happen that often anymore.

A few months later, I left Vox and eventually launched Project C. Not because I fell out of love with journalism or working in news organizations – but because I could feel that the ground beneath us was shifting. I needed to make a change for myself. But also for what I cared about:  the future of how people get news and information, how they connect with and build trust with news sources. 

And that’s what I want to talk to you about: You are not just making choices about your own career. You are making choices that will shape the entire future of how people get information – who gets access to it and who is left out. And you are shaping what kind of information even exists: what is credible, what is trustworthy, and what survives in the public square.

So what does that mean?

If your mission is to inform the public – if your goal is to get credible information to the people who need it – you must evolve along with the ways people actually discover and consume information.

It’s in a different place now than it was when I graduated from college. And the pace of change is snowballing. We are living through an inflection point in journalism and the broader world of media, in information distribution, and in trust. Not in a vague “future of media” sort of way – but in a very real, very human way. You feel it. I feel it.

We all know someone who seems to be living in an alternate reality, relying on sources you either don’t trust or have never heard of.

My son is 15. He’ll vote in the next presidential election. His main news sources? YouTube and TikTok. And no, there is no magical moment when he and his peers will suddenly “age into” traditional media. They are not going to wake up one day, subscribe to the local paper, and start watching the evening news. I wish they would. The local paper and the evening news still matter. But wishing doesn’t change reality. We must adapt. Gallup released its annual trust-in-media poll in October. Trust has now dropped to 28% – the lowest ever recorded. Down from 74% when the survey first ran in 1974. At the same time, younger audiences are bypassing traditional news in favor of individual, personality-driven creators across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and newsletters.

A recent Pew study found that adults under 30 are now nearly as likely to trust information from social media as from national news organizations. So what does this mean for all of you – the investigative journalists, the sports reporters, the storytellers, the audience strategists, the PR and policy communicators, the social-first journalists?

It means this is a hard moment to graduate.

Newsrooms are shrinking. Misinformation is accelerating. AI threatens to drown credible sources in oceans of synthetic slop.

But here’s the part I need you to hear: This is also a moment of creation. Of reinvention. The news isn’t dying; the media industry isn’t dying – it’s all decentralizing, giving more power and opportunities to aspiring difference makers, like you.

Communications platforms aren’t narrowing – they’re expanding. Audiences aren’t disappearing – they’re shifting their trust. And that shift creates enormous opportunity for people who are adaptable, creative, technologically fluent, and unafraid to take risks. Bad actors have already figured this out. We need the good actors – you – in that arena, too. Because we need credible, ethical, fact-checked content flowing into the algorithms.

Let me go back to my own pivot. I walked away from Vox in 2023. Here’s what pushed me over the edge: I was working with two incredibly talented video journalists, Joss Fong and Adam Cole, who wanted to build their own brand online. As VP at Vox, I did everything I could to keep them. I saw Joss and Adam – and people like them – as the future. 

But they didn’t see legacy media, even a digital brand like Vox, as their future.

Instead of sticking with Vox, they joined the wave of journalists launching YouTube channels, newsletters, podcasts, and Twitch streams. Because that’s where the next generation – and advertisers – already are. Today they have 1.1 million subscribers on their channel, Howtown – plus sponsors and a thriving Patreon.

I left Vox, too. Six months later, after doing a deep dive as a Sulzberger Fellow at Columbia University, I launched Project C. It is the best job I’ve ever had – and it’s one I built from scratch.

My path started out linear: small papers, bigger papers, digital news, up the ladder. That ladder still exists – and some of you will climb it brilliantly. But many of you won’t – not because you aren’t talented or because you aren’t trying hard enough, but because the jobs simply aren’t there. News employment has dropped 75% since 2005. More than 3,500 newspapers have closed.

But here’s the good news: You don’t need the old ladder. There are multiple paths now.

And the best path is the one that makes sense for you – whether in a legacy newsroom or a platform you build for yourself. You may even switch back and forth a few times. We are watching many journalists do exactly that:

These are not side projects. They are newsrooms of one – shaping public understanding every day.

The track or path you take is up to you. I’m not telling you to go out and become an influencer; maybe you will, or perhaps you will choose some other route in media But whatever the case, I want you to understand that in a noisy, fragmented world, trust attaches to people – not just institutions. And where trust goes, eyeballs go. And where eyeballs go, funding goes.

Speaking of funding, there’s one more piece:

You must understand the business of it all. Even if you never want to think about money – you have to understand how platforms work. How revenue flows. How to diversify income. How to own your work. How to advocate for yourself. How to protect your independence.

Approach it the way you approach reporting: Be curious. Ask questions. Follow the money. Learn the system so you can navigate it – or change it.

I wish I had learned all of that earlier. You get to learn it now. And that is a gift.

I’ve shared some tough truths tonight. But I am WILDLY optimistic. Because I see all of you in front of me. Your ideas. Your talent. Your values. Your fire.

You are graduating at a moment when the old paths are narrowing – but the new ones are multiplying. Your careers may be less predictable – but they will be far more possible. And you won’t do it alone. You have your professors, your peers, your mentors. You have this extraordinary Cronkite community. You have a broader universe of journalists, creators, communicators, and builders who care about this work.

If you take anything away from me today, let it be this:

Be adaptable.

Be entrepreneurial.

Be curious and open-minded.

Be humble.

And above all, be opportunistic.

The future of journalism, media, communications, and public information is being built right now. And you – each one of you – are about to shape it. Congratulations, Cronkite Class of 2025. And thank you so much.

Thanks for reading along today, and every week. We’ll be back in 2026!