Trust in the news media is at historic lows. Audiences are increasingly skeptical that mainstream media serves their interests and are turning their attention to independent media creators. But that doesn’t mean that real journalism isn’t being done. In this panel, we talk to three online content creators who do journalistic work about how their work is both alike and different than mainstream journalism, how they engage with audiences and what traditional journalists can learn from them.
Featuring:
V Spehar is an award-winning digital journalist, TikTok personality and podcaster. Spehar launched UnderTheDeskNews with the aim to make news media less intimidating and easier to understand and rapidly amassed a collective 4 million subscribers to their various social media platforms. Their original reporting has won them one on one interviews with Vice President Kamala Harris, President Biden, President Obama, Sec. Buttigeig, Sec. Austin, Sec. Blinken as well as several members of the House & Senate. They covered the 2024 DNC as an official digital streamer, and the Paris Olympics in partnership with TikTok. In addition, they have lent their talents in reporting to serve as a field correspondent and host for The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and NBC News. Spehar has received a special achievement Webby for their concise and compassionate reporting and was a finalist for a GLAAD media award. They were named a MediaWise Ambassador by the Poynter Institute and a RISE25 ambassador for digital excellence by Mozilla. They currently host the podcast American Fever Dream with Betches Media, release a twice weekly Substack, dozens of short form video explainers on the day’s news in a kind way from a safe space, and are working on a book with Zando Publishing to be released early 2026. While at Shorenstein, Spehar will explore the role of online content creators in journalism — particularly how influencers establish credibility and what pathways exist for professionalization.
Joss Fong is an independent journalist and video producer specializing in science and technology explainers. She helped start the Vox Video team in 2014 and spent nearly a decade there building an audience of more than 12 million subscribers. She also produced episodes of Vox’s Netflix show “Explained,” and a YouTube Originals series called “Glad You Asked.” Her coverage of gene editing has been recognized by the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism awards and her coverage of Covid-19 won an Online Journalism Awards. Her current project is a YouTube channel called Howtown, launched alongside journalist Adam Cole. With a mission of increasing evidence literacy, the channel answers “How do they know that?” in each monthly episode. Joss holds a master’s degree in Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting from NYU and is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Jessica Yellin, (Harvard ’93) is the founder of News Not Noise, a viral Webby award-winning independent news brand. Over 1.3M+ subscribers and followers across Instagram and other digital media rely on Jessica and News Not Noise to understand what matters, which experts to trust, and to manage their “information overload.” She was among the first national journalists to launch news content on Instagram, helping to pioneer the wave of news creators. She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy and Gracie Award-winning political correspondent for ABC, MSNBC and CNN. Follow her on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @JessicaYellin. You can also find the News Not Noise Newsletter on Substack.
Julia Angwin is a Pulitzer-Prize winning contributing Opinion writer for the New York Times who writes about the impacts of technology on societies. She is an investigative journalist and entrepreneur who founded The Markup, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom that produced methodologically precise investigative journalism. She also led data-driven investigative teams at ProPublica and The Wall Street Journal that were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She was also a member of a Pulitzer Prize winning team at The Wall Street Journal. Her New York Times bestseller, “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance,” published in (2014), chronicled her attempts to evade having her personal data exploited, and called on us to take a collective approach to protecting privacy. Her book “Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America,” published in (2009), was an early look at the promise of social networks and the boardroom battles to control the emerging technology. She has a B.A. in mathematics from The University of Chicago and an MBA from Columbia University. She is currently an entrepreneur-in residence at the Columbia Journalism School’s Brown Institute. You can follow Julia Angwin on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky or her personal newsletter.
