Hi there,
Last week I spent an hour on the phone with Tracy Wholf who, along with four collaborators, hit on a pretty novel model for indie creator journalists: pooling their reporting and their audiences around one topic, with no shared employer, no masthead and no ad budget.
Tracy was laid off from CBS News last October. This month she executive-produced Betting the House, a joint investigation into climate risk and housing with Emily Atkin (Heated), Chase Cain (Chase What Matters), Rachel Ramirez (The Confluence) and Ben Tracy (Climate Central). Nieman Lab called it a pop-up newsroom, which is right. But what Tracy described to me, and what the whole crew laid out on a very candid webinar afterward, is something more useful: a playbook anyone on any beat can steal – and the parts they'd do differently.
How it came together
The group got talking at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference last April, with an assist from Kyle Pope at Covering Climate Now. The idea that stuck was Chase's: instead of five people reporting separately, what if they all "swarmed" one topic at the same time, each in their own format, and sent their audiences to each other?
Picking the topic was harder than the reporting. The midterms died fast, because Ben's work runs through Climate Central, which is nonpartisan. What finally clicked was Covering Climate Now’s Mark Hertsgaard's suggestion of housing and insurance, big enough that everyone could find their own story inside it.
Emily went undercover house-hunting in Miami to see whether realtors would level with a buyer about flood risk. Chase went to New Orleans to find people who know it's unsafe to stay and can't afford to leave. Rachel dug into Hawaii, where sellers have to disclose sea-level-rise risk and out-of-state investors keep outbidding local buyers anyway. And Ben traced the same crisis up the East Coast, from an Outer Banks family who paid to move their beach house back from the water to a Connecticut homeowner who raised his house nine feet in the air.
Image courtesy Covering Climate Now.
Did it work?
It sure did:
Emily's stories at Heated usually pull 65,000 to 70,000 views. Her piece for this project got 86,000. She also used it as the hook for a fundraising email about Heated's reader-only model and got 50 new paid subscribers from that one send. That's a big deal for a newsletter where, by her own count, fewer than 3% of 145,000 subscribers pay.
A quarter of Chase's YouTube views came from outside links, and the top referrers were the Covering Climate Now project page, Heated and LinkedIn. That's the swarm doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Ben saw a bump on YouTube in the first couple of days, and his Instagram post took off after a comment-section fight over whether people should keep rebuilding in high-risk places (some of it tipped into shaming homeowners who were already losing their homes, which is worth planning for if your topic carries that kind of charge).
Rachel's piece, the longest thing she's published at The Confluence, was picked up by Mariana Press in the Northern Marianas, putting climate-risk reporting in front of a Pacific Islander audience that rarely gets it.
What they'd do differently
Nobody was the editor. "We really did need to put an editor hat on someone," Tracy told me. Rachel ended up asking Emily and Tracy to read her draft, which helped, but it was informal.
Nothing was in writing. No MOU, no agreed list of acceptable funders, no plan for what happens if someone drops out. That got tested in real time. Covering Climate Now covered travel, and only Chase and Rachel took it. Emily's business is 100% reader-funded, so she declined, and big climate NGOs were ruled out as funders entirely. On the webinar, Tracy floated hiring a social media person next time out of shared money. Emily was in right away. Rachel's answer: "I can't afford to pay them." Some collaborators can absorb a shared cost against a bigger business and some can't, and that's a conversation to have before the reporting starts.
The business side started too late. The package launched the same week "60 Minutes" returned, which ate up most media reporters' bandwidth. Tracy's own lesson was that the fundraising and press outreach should have started "a lot sooner." The channel that did work was LinkedIn, where other journalists started asking, basically, how do I do this on my beat?
They swarmed a topic, not a story. Emily's sharpest note: next time, five people should cover one story from five angles. Her example was a single data center going up next to a single gas plant. Kyle added that the pieces should reference each other, so a reader has a real reason to click from one to the next. Neither idea costs more money. Just more planning.
What I'd add
Liability coverage. Tracy told me they each carried their own liability coverage, and for a housing story that held up. But a joint investigation means your names are on the same package. If your swarm is going after a company, a developer or a public official, sort out coverage before the reporting starts, not after a lawyer's letter shows up. It's also exactly the kind of thing a convening partner like Covering Climate Now could help with, the same way it covered travel.
If you want to try this
Tracy and her collaborators produced some incredible journalism, but for me the real value is in proving out the model. Here are some tips based on what worked (and didn't):
Two people is enough. Five was their number, not the minimum.
Mix places and formats on purpose. Different geographies and a mix of newsletter and video gave readers a reason to click through instead of reading the same story five times.
Name a wrangler. Someone has to own the shared doc, the schedule and the "can you send me your assets" emails.
Name an editor. One person with the standing to push back before anything publishes.
Write it down and establish norms. A short agreement covering who pays for what, which funders are off-limits and what happens if someone drops out, plus the norms for how editing works, who signs off, and when deadlines actually are.
Start the business side on day one. Fundraising, press and promotion are part of the reporting plan, not an afterthought.
Check your coverage. Make sure everyone's liability insurance covers the work, and ask your convening partner whether it can help.
Watch the webinar. The team hosted a call last week to talk about the project and its chock-full of insights.
Tracy's framing is that this isn't a climate story that happens to be replicable. It's a media-structure story that happens to be about climate. I think she's right.
The links are below. ⬇️
🔥 THE LATEST THINGS
Kevin Roose and Casey Newton launched their own media company: Machine Gods. The two Hard Fork/Platformer-adjacent stars are striking out on their own (machinegods.fm) — two more marquee names betting on independence over an institutional seat. The Publish Press · podnews.net
The Television Critics Association just rewrote its bylaws to explicitly welcome creator-journalists — podcasters, newsletter writers, vertical-video reporters — while banning fully AI-generated work outright. Membership now turns on the quality and ethics of the work, not the platform it runs on. Project C's own Andy Dehnart, a TCA board member, helped pass it. TV News Check
A bipartisan Senate Creators Caucus just launched (Booker/Kennedy), and the creators in the room told Congress it's already behind – MatPat: lawmakers are "behind the ball" on creator-specific tax and likeness issues. First order of business: supporting the NO FAKES Act against unauthorized AI voice/likeness replicas. Washington Post Creator · YouTube blog
The Kyiv Independent just won an Online Journalism Award for its revenue strategy – membership grew 78% (14,300 → 25,500) in a single year, monthly recurring revenue up 69%, and reader support now covers ~70% of the budget across 35,000+ paying members. About as clean a proof point as exists that reader revenue scales past "nice hobby" size. Kyiv Independent
California will now fine influencers $5,000 per post for undisclosed paid political content – AB 1130, prompted by Tom Steyer's campaign quietly paying influencers who didn't disclose it. Worth knowing exactly where the disclosure line sits if you ever take a paid political client. TechCrunch
A 32-year-old journalism-school dropout just out-streamed TV Globo's decades-long World Cup monopoly. Casimiro "Cazé" Miguel went from streaming soccer on Twitch in his off-hours to 41 million YouTube subscribers and a FIFA-blessed free broadcast of the 2026 World Cup – 24 million viewers for the semifinal alone, 11 sponsors to Globo's four. Nieman Reports
"Finally, a publisher that gets niche-ing down." That's my read on Wired global editorial director Katie Drummond's new global app launch: "I am very comfortable with the idea that Wired's audience in the future is a smaller audience, but we want that audience to be loyal." Axios
Getting paid outside the US is its own unsolved problem. Inbox Collective's deep dive on how the lack of local payment rails (like Pix in Brazil) quietly throttles newsletter revenue for journalists working outside the US. Inbox Collective
VidCon is moving from Anaheim to Denver after being acquired by Lions. Ownership and location news for the biggest creator-economy conference on the calendar. TheWrap
Local News International (Dave Jorgenson's operation) launched a new long-form show, "What's Your Source?," digging into AI and misinformation. lni.media
"Peak newsletter?" Semafor's Max Tani argued the format has crested; Who Sponsors Stuff pushed back point by point, arguing it's still growing, just maturing. Semafor interview · Status News
😃 FROM THE PROJECT C COMMUNITY
Bryan M. Vance (Stumptown Savings) hit 8,000 newsletter subscribers, three months ahead of his own goal – and picked up 500+ new subscribers from a single Instagram shoutout. Two local press hits are lined up this week too. 🎉
Becky Bullard (Democrasexy) had a huge run: her Texan Optimist podcast teaser outperformed her recent reels by 200% and pulled in $1,000 in launch-party support within an hour, Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin floated a long-term partnership, and she landed her first press pickup. Austin CultureMap 🔥
Mike LaSusa published his 100th short-form video and shared what he's learned making them. LinkedIn 📈
Soleil Ho and COYOTE Media Collective are moving into their first physical office space in downtown SF! 💪
Seamus Hughes' longtime Court Watch collaborator – who started as an unpaid intern – was just awarded the outlet's first-ever journalism grant, $25K, for an investigative court-watch series. 🎉
Yulia Denisyuk (Going Places Media) tripled her free-subscriber growth rate in two weeks, and a paid member landed a $2,500 fellowship sourced from her newsletter's opportunities roundup. 📈
Joey Scott landed a recurring paid-contributor slot and brokered a cross-publication deal between two outlets covering the same story. 💪
Julie Holstein (Ward 6) was the only journalist at a pivotal Brownstone Brooklyn development meeting – and got recognized in the wild, via her outlet's sticker, by a fellow Independent Journalism Atlas member. 🕺
Maureen Kelleher (Board Rule) published her first sponsored-content piece, partnered with a Chicago nonprofit arts-education organization. 🎉
Mythili (Export Quality) launched a new weekly series pairing a news roundup with an illustrated video. 👏
Marin Cogan launched a new Substack on travel, urbanism, and "the components of a good life" after three years living in Switzerland. 🥳
Members get at least one live event a month, usually more. All times ET.
Tuesday, September 29 · 11 AM ET · AI Journalism Labs: Leaders and Creators info session. Newmark J-School just opened applications for two tuition-free 2027 AI journalism programs – including the Creators track, which Project C helped design. Come hear how it works and ask questions! RSVP → · Details
Tuesday, September 29 · 1 PM ET · Step Forward on Sponsorships: 60-Day Check-in & Showcase. A lightning-round showcase where sponsorship-series participants share what they've put into practice. Members only. RSVP →
Tuesday, October 27 · 3 PM ET · Legal Office Hours with Julian Sarafian. Monthly attorney office hours on contracts, IP, brand partnerships and entity setup – near capacity, just 3 spots left. Members only. RSVP →
🎤 And here's where I'll be:
Wednesday, October 14 · Washington, DC. Moderating "Byline vs. Bio: Navigating the Divide Between Creator Journalists and Influencers" at MarCom Summit DC. Details
Wednesday–Friday, October 14–16 · Durham, NC · Blue Engine Local News Camp. I'm talking about "The year you actually make money with video" with LNI’s Micah Gelman and Video Consortium’s Sky Dylan-Robbins. It's sold out, but you can join the waitlist for last-minute tickets. Details
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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.
