Who do you trust? Inside how creator journalists earn it

As audiences increasingly get their news from independent sources, it’s crucial for readers and funders to understand who to trust and why. So, I spoke to a groups of indie creator journalists who cite their sources, hire fact-checkers, and are producing trustworthy, fact-checked content.

Seamus Hughes of Court Watch, who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for a project done in tandem with the New York Times, recently shared an anecdote with me that has become his lodestone for journalistic integrity. He started his career in the Senate Homeland Security Committee about 20 years ago, working on an investigation that had the potential to turn into a big story. His boss at the time, congressional investigator and Pulitzer Prize winner Jim McGee cautioned Hughes about the importance of getting things right: “This is a one day story for you, but it’s the rest of their life for the person you’re writing about.” This kind of compassion is crucial for high quality journalism.

Trustworthy news from creator journalists is important, because one in five adults regularly got news from influencers in 2025, according to the Pew Research Center. So do independent creator journalists do the work rigorously and model bst practices for their audience?

Independent journalists like Hughes and me can get lumped in with disreputable creators who share misinformation or fake AI slop. But just like we see a distinction between The Associated Press and The Daily Mail (the latter has been banned as a source on Wikipedia due to its high percentage of fake news), we should evaluate creator journalists based on their own content, not some average of the industry. 

The Project C Community regularly shares and talks through fact checking best practices. This March, Rose Thomas Bannister of Modo di Bere and Anna Pujol-Mazzini of good story (a trained fact checker) hosted a session for the community on fact-checking when you’re working solo. Pujol-Mazzini emphasized the importance of having a second person check your work if at all possible. In her six years of fact-checking brilliant reporters, she says, never once reviewed a piece that had zero errors.

“If you’ve done the reporting, you’re too close,” she said in the live session.

Bannister shared that independent creators have a tendency to respond to mistakes defensively or casually. She recommends a simple, professional response like you would give in a newsroom, “Thank you, corrected.”

Many creator journalists have worked for newsrooms and are familiar with how to create content with high standards of accuracy. A 2025 study of journalists by Muck Rack reports “creator journalists are more likely to have a longer tenure in the industry with around 60% having more than 10 years of experience.”

Hughes, for example, also writes for The New York Times and other publications, pointing out the biggest contrast is that “a major newsroom has major resources.” In a newsroom, it’s not uncommon for multiple writers, editors, and the research desk to review a story. Hughes estimates that 25 people could touch a newsroom story before publication, “which means they may catch something that I don’t catch.”

Independently verifying facts can be more difficult as a solo journalist. Hughes says that sources are less likely to respond to a request for comment or to share extra information when he presents himself as a Court Watch reporter vs. from The New York Times.

Still, the amount of verification the independent journalists I spoke with are able to accomplish is especially impressive considering more limited resources. For example, for a Court Watch story on the Special Investigator General for Pandemic Recovery involving funding fraud, Hughes interviewed more than a dozen people and had a lawyer review the piece before publication.

Hughes calls or emails people named in stories to request comments. If an assertion in a court document seems off or cannot be verified, the Court Watch team will be transparent about being unable to verify independently, or specify that the lawsuit “alleges” the assertion. Papers from both the right and left of the political spectrum regularly pick up facts that Court Watch originally reports. (Hughes says being cited and linked to from a major newspaper generally doesn’t drive traffic or subscribers, unfortunately.)

Julie Holstein of Ward 6 Brooklyn, who formerly worked as a producer at 60 Minutes, feels the difference between working independently versus in a newsroom. “[I’m a] journo who spent her entire career verifying on top of verifying,” Holstein says. “Nothing of mine was published unless it was triple-sourced. It’s now a work in progress.” She is transparent with her readers about which facts she’s able to independently verify in her solo work.

Hanna Raskin of The Food Section requires all contributors to submit sources’ contact information, links to any documents they consulted, and interview transcripts on request. Raskin explains, “fact checking still falls to me, unless I’m the one writing the story,” in which case she hires a contractor.

Quinn Emmett of Important, Not Important says that fact-checking is “table stakes,” but that it’s challenging to hire an affordable contractor with a fast turnaround time. 

A creator journalist myself, I write and publish a newsletter, Amplify Respect, to help readers find less anxiety and more hope about being transgender. I’ve had to grapple with how to ensure my work is accurate and reliable.

Creating a publication on a tight budget, I cannot afford to hire editors, fact-checkers, or research assistants. Instead, my partner edits my posts, carefully reading drafts and calling out typos and content errors. I cite sources and link to primary research when relevant.

Because one of the pillars of my content is using respectful language, I felt especially embarrassed when a long-time reader commented on my inadvertent use of a slur for people with a mental illness (“wacko”) as part of an anecdote. The commenter referred me to a list of ableist words and terms to avoid curated by Ly Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown. 

A fantastic resource for reporting on trans people with respect is the Trans Journalists Association’s Stylebook and Coverage Guide, answering questions such as, should you use a person’s old name when talking about their past (generally, no), and covering editorial best practices.

In the case of this correction, I replied to the comment to thank the reader for educating me, and edited the post to remove the word in question, with a note documenting that I had made the edit.

I rely on my audience to trust me enough to let me know when I’ve messed up. Any single editor may or may not have caught this mistake before publication. But my work sometimes feels like a collaboration with hundreds of engaged community members who form a powerful fact-checking team. 

Creator journalists don’t have to work independently from newsrooms. Amber Sherman, Creator in Residence with MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, profiled by Project C, created a partnership in which her work as a creator is held to the same standards of journalistic integrity as the rest of the newsroom.

Dave Jorgenson, co-founder of LNI Media and former “Washington Post Tiktok Guy,” left the newsroom with two other co-founders to create their own content. The LNI team had the freedom to develop their own Ethics and Transparency pledge, including publicly sharing sources, funders, and corrections. With three co-founders previously from The Washington Post, the team brings the skills and experience of newsroom fact-checking to independent journalism. 

LNI is partnering with Poynter’s media literacy program to teach teen creators media literacy, ethics, and responsible AI use, helping to inform the next generation about best practices. 

It can be difficult to fact-check one’s own experiences. I wrote about being harassed in a public bathroom as a gender non-conforming person for HuffPost. I was very aware that I had no proof that this situation had happened. Although I had journaled about the experience immediately afterwards, I had no photos or video, nor did I try to interview the man who was interrogating me about my gender - wouldn’t that be awkward!

What I did have was assurances from many other gender non-conforming people in my community that this kind of harassment happens to them often in bathrooms.

I can’t easily cite this word-of-mouth common knowledge, but I know more about certain realities of daily life within the trans community than someone who is relying on studies and interviews to find an angle to report.

So can independent publishers do better than major newsrooms when reporting on marginalized communities?

Newsrooms have a history of preventing marginalized staff from covering issues that may affect them personally, in the name of “objectivity.” This can include reporting on workers, Black people, Indigenous people, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people.

As journalists, it can be disappointing and isolating to not be allowed to report on issues that we have become experts in through lived experience. Bridget Thoreson, founder of MyCareerRiver.com and an executive at a social impact firm, worked as a reporter and editor at a daily community newspaper from 2008 to 2015. Before the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges US Supreme Court decision guaranteeing the right to marry for same-sex couples, Thoreson had traveled to another state to obtain a marriage license for her and her wife. The newsroom leadership banned Thoreson from working on any coverage of gay marriage, although other journalists were putting out content on this timely topic. 

Sitting in the newsroom, Thoreson watched the Obergefell coverage on the TV as her coworkers came by to congratulate her. She reflects, “as a journalist, I was just so deeply disappointed that I could not use my perspective to inform our coverage.”

Thoreson says, “I could not be trusted as a professional not to bring my personal lens to the story without bias … it really made me consider my career more broadly, and where I could go where my unique value would be appreciated.”

Assigning a story to someone who is outside the relevant community does not inherently make it more accurate. Lewis Raven Wallace, author of The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity, writes, “I can’t be neutral or centrist in a debate over my own humanity. The idea that I don’t have a right to exist [as a transgender person] is not an opinion, it is a falsehood.”

Independent creators are able to share stories that matter from their own experience, within the standards of good journalism. Reporting from within their community, journalists can educate from a real life perspective and suggest actions for readers to take. Sources are more likely to trust and share their stories with a member of their own community. 

Starr Dunigan is a journalist who has spent nine years chronicling Black joy, currently at Black Joy Behind the Scenes. She recalls a Black woman questioning her as a reporter, “Why do you only come when we are dead?” Reporting from within the community is important because journalists will likely have more awareness of the variety of stories affecting folks.

A 2025 study by Muck Rack concluded “autonomy is a primary driver for creator journalists with 57% saying their primary motivation is creative or editorial freedom.” 

Looking for specific best practices and credibility markers? Project C, Trusting News, and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism developed The Creator Journalism Trust & Credibility Toolkit. This toolkit helps “local news ecosystem funders assess whether a creator’s work is trustworthy, high-quality and worthy of investment.”

For funders or newsroom leaders, evaluating which creator journalists are worthy of investment helps support high-quality independent journalism. For creator-model journalists, the toolkit serves as a guide for best practices.

Here are some tips pulled from the The Creator Journalism Trust Framework, part of the Toolkit, to help evaluate creator journalism:

For readers, check if creators:

For creator journalists, show your readers you are trustworthy by:

Check out the The Creator Journalism Trust Framework for more guidance.

What do you think about trust and accuracy in creator journalism? Please let us know in the comments.

Rey Katz writes and publishes Amplify Respect, a newsletter to inspire less anxiety and more hope about being trans. Their essays are published in HuffPost and other publications.