The US midterm elections are just around the corner. Politicians, particularly those on the left, are ramping up their creator efforts to reach and sway voters.
Some, like Democratic Maryland Governor Wes Moore, are debating young voters on Jubilee Media’s YouTube show “Surrounded.” The creator-focused media company and CNN also announced last week that they would co-host a town hall with James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas.
But there are still big questions about how effective these strategies will be—and what the rise of creators means for the future of news and politics.
New research from Syracuse University, first provided to Scalable, gives us some insight.
The way voters get their information is highly fragmented. While YouTube was the most-used platform for political and election news, it was only slightly ahead of traditional TV news and print news' apps or websites. Other social platforms, including X, Facebook and TikTok, as well as podcasts, were lower on the list.
Respondents also placed higher levels of trust in professional journalists than in independent news creators when it came to reporting the news. That held across all political affiliations, though Republicans were less likely than Democrats and Independents to trust professional journalists. Differences among age groups were not statistically significant.
These results may come as a surprise, especially given the strong role right-wing podcasters played in getting people, especially young men, to the polls in the 2024 US presidential election.
That’s a major reason why the Democratic Party has experimented with more creator and social media strategies this year: As New Jersey Senator Cory Booker told us in February, Democrats got “shellacked” in the 2024 election, in part because they didn’t lean into social media and creators as successfully as Republicans.
Zooming out, the Syracuse findings also come as trust in mass media has seen an unexpected rebound overall. According to Gallup, 33% of Americans now have a great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media, up from a record low of 28% last year. Republicans drove the increase, with trust catapulting from 8% to 22%.
Taken together, that suggests that mainstream media might be making a comeback. Still, there are several caveats.
Despite the uptick, trust in media institutions is still at historic lows: Even in Syracuse’s survey, people were less likely to trust news outlets than the journalists who work for them.
People’s opinions toward news creators are also much more complicated than it might seem. Six-in-ten (61%) respondents polled by Syracuse said they trusted a well-known independent news creator as much as a well-known professional journalist on political topics. And trust in independent news creators and professional journalists on reporting the news was roughly equal overall.
Perhaps most tellingly, respondents considered independent news creators and traditional journalists to be distinct roles. In fact, 79% of respondents said that there was a “meaningful difference between an independent news creator and a journalist.”
79% of American adults see a “meaningful difference between an independent news creator and a journalist”
Syracuse didn’t speculate on what those differences might be. The data also didn’t account for the fact that more professional journalists have gone independent.
We suspect that people turn to news creators to help them make sense of the current events and offer a point of view on the issues they cover, rather than to simply report on the news. That could help explain why people trusted journalists more with reporting, specifically.
Some creators think about their own work similarly. AI-focused creator Cat Goetze, better known as CatGPT, recently told us that she focuses on helping her audience feel empowered rather than breaking AI news. That includes who to vote for in the midterm elections to get the AI regulations they want.
“I never purport or claim to be an accredited journalist,” Goetze said. “But what I can do is change the way people think about these issues.”
Still, not all creators feel this way. That’s particularly concerning given that more non-political creators are now getting more comfortable talking about politics—and more campaigns and government officials are turning to creators and podcasters instead of traditional journalists.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, for example, recently came under fire for his team’s “influencer group chat,” which included over 200 creators. While the content in the chat seems similar to the types of pitches a journalist receives, creators without journalistic training probably won’t give it the same critical eye before sharing it.
But it may not matter that much to audiences: 46% of respondents in Syracuse’s survey said a lack of journalistic training wouldn’t make them trust a creator less.
🎙️50 Episodes of Scalable
We can’t believe we just published our 50th episode of the Scalable podcast!
To celebrate, we went through the archives and pulled the biggest lessons from nearly a year of conversations with founders, creators and CMOs, along with what we’ve learned (often the hard way) about building Scalable ourselves.
We also look back at some of the funniest and most surprising moments of the year, from nearly getting taken out by giant umbrellas during a windy outdoor taping in Austin to why so many guests can't wait to drop F-bombs once they leave traditional media.
📝We’d love your feedback on the show! Take our quick listener survey, to let us know what we should cover next.
The Round Up
The Team, formerly known as Wasserman, acquired UK-based digital talent agency Outreach Talent Group. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but CEO Emilio Arciniega will join The Team as senior vice president of creators. Read more about how the talent agency landscape is shifting to accommodate creators here.
Blue Duck Capital Partners wants Snap to raise capital by selling a stake in its AR glasses business, the Los Angeles Times reported. The hedge fund is the latest Snap investor to push for changes at the company.
Pinterest launched Beauty Guides, a new AI tool that looks at hair and nail posts and turns them into a guide for getting that look, including products to try or what to ask for at a salon.
Substack announced new sponsorship formats, including the ability for a brand to sponsor a creator’s paid post or provide a month of paid access to a writer’s publication to free subscribers.
Twitch is promoting a new Shopping category on its homepage that features creators selling products from parent company Amazon, according to gaming outlet Kotaku. Amazon also recently announced a partnership that allows YouTube creators to tag products in their content. We went deeper into the competition between Twitch and YouTube in a recent podcast episode, featuring Twitch’s new CMO Christine Cassis.
See You on Sunday?
🛍️If you’re in LA this weekend, come shop with us! We’re kicking off our partnership with Alice + Olivia at its Beverly Hills store this Sunday (October 11) with a shopping event from 3 to 6 pm.
Bring a friend, or get a gift for your spouse or sister, and enjoy a 10% discount. An additional 10% of net proceeds will go to the Colorectal Cancer Alliance, in honor of Kaya’s mom.
RSVP at: [email protected]. We hope to see you there!
📊 By the Numbers: $2.8 million
That’s how much Danielle Bernstein, fashion influencer and the founder of WeWoreWhat, said she earned from brand deals and commissions in 2025 in a Wall Street Journal profile.
Bernstein also announced a rebrand and new licensing partner for WeWoreWhat, which was accused of copying designs from other clothing brands.
“We should have been more careful,” she said about the accusations.
Creator Moves
The Golden Globes named the 30 podcasts eligible for next year’s “Best Podcast” award. The list includes “Call Her Daddy,” “The Toast,” “New Heights,” “The Joe Rogan Experience” and shows from Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly. Each podcast must submit by Oct. 30 to make the ballot.
Mark Rober’s Class CrunchLabs, a free STEM education program, received a $2.5 million grant from YouTube and Google.org. The money will help expand the free curriculum for third to eighth graders, including by adding new teacher resources, videos and translations to more languages.
“Shark Tank” is in its creator era. MrBeast made an investment on the business-focused reality TV show, taking a 55% stake in the maker of Ball 2, an AI-powered toy ball, for $250,000. Steven Bartlett and the Foster sisters are also guest sharks this season.
Dhar Mann announced Creator City, a new four-acre production campus in Los Angeles for creators, brands, live events and podcasting. During Advertising Week in New York, he also announced an initiative to drive $100 million in creator-brand partnerships.
Scarlett Johansson’s skincare brand The Outset is shutting down after about four and a half years. The brand seemed to intentionally limit her presence in its marketing, unlike Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty or Hailey Bieber’s Rhode. Unlike Gomez and Bieber, Johansson did not have her own social media presence, which could have played a role in The Outset’s fate.
Smosh, a YouTube sketch comedy and improv channel, added four new creators to its cast. Earlier this year, the company also hired a new chief content officer and moved into a bigger production studio.
Court Docket
Remember the F-Factor diet drama?
Six years after fashion influencer Emily Gellis was accused of defaming and harassing Tanya Zuckerbrot and her company F-Factor, the case has finally been settled. In an unusual agreement, Gellis shared an apology video online that must be pinned to the top of her social media accounts for three and a half years, according to the New York Times. The saga was featured in Hulu’s 2023 docuseries “The Age of Influence.”
Talent Tracker
Melissa Drucker is the new head of brand partnerships at Dhar Mann Studios. Before that, she was head of global brand partnerships for MrBeast.
Sarah Yourgrau joined Upworthy as head of its new entertainment studio. Upworthy was an early social media aggregator of uplifting stories and now plans to expand to new entertainment formats. Yourgrau is an Emmy-winning producer who previously founded and was CEO of Common Ground Studios.
Stefan Heinrich joined Google Labs to work on DeepMind’s new gen-media products. Previously, Heinrich co-founded Mayk.it, an AI music and UGC platform and was an early employee at Musical.ly and TikTok.
Andreessen Horowitz is hiring a chief of staff to help general partner Erik Torenberg run media initiatives.
