The debate about whether creators belong in journalism is over. The question now is how — and who is willing to put real money behind finding out.

This week, the Lenfest Institute for Journalism announced US$818,000 in funding for 10 news organisations joining what they call the Lenfest News Creator Collaborative. The selected organisations will develop and test strategies to partner with independent news creators — with a focus on engaging new audiences and new approaches to both revenue generation and brand marketing — over the course of one year.

The numbers behind the selection are telling: the 10 grantees were chosen from more than 120 applications.

The investment comes at a moment when the urgency around human voices in journalism has never felt greater. As AI-generated content floods the Internet, trust and recognisability are becoming competitive advantages. 

I spoke with Tristan Loper, who is head of national programmes at the Lenfest Institute, and he put it plainly: “If there is more and more AI content out there with this sort of synthetic feeling, it creates a need all the more for the human face.”

The 10 selected projects reflect very different bets on what creator collaboration can look like. For example:

• The Haitian Times is co-creating content series with established Haitian influencers on YouTube and TikTok, a direct answer to the question of how journalism can serve communities.

• The Salt Lake Tribune is taking a different route: hiring and developing an on-camera personality to become the face of the newsroom. 

• And Spotlight PA is perhaps the most ambitious: turning existing staff reporters into creators, including social-first coverage of the 2026 Pennsylvania governor’s race. 

These are only three organisations of the 10 selected. But what we already see are three models with one shared question: How do you make this work economically?

Proof is needed

Loper is candid about what this first push can realistically achieve. 

“I’m skeptical that this current round will fully answer how news organisations can successfully make money and capture an audience,” he told me. 

The more realistic objective, as he sees it, is to establish a clear business justification for creators within journalism — proof this isn’t just a brand awareness play but something with real economic logic. Because without that, he argues, the momentum won’t hold.

The financial reality of independent creator journalism is sobering. As I mentioned here two weeks ago: a recent report by the Center for News, Technology & Innovation found that of 43 independent creator-journalists surveyed in the United States, only five said they could fully fund their lifestyle with content creation income, while just over half said they couldn’t fund their lifestyle from their content at all. 

The Lenfest bet is, in part, a bet that the partnership model can change this equation — for creators and newsrooms alike.

What makes it a win-win?

But the deeper question remains: What is actually in it for creators to tie themselves to news organisations, and what is in it for news organisations to genuinely share power with creators? 

Neither side has answered this well yet — not in the U.S., which is considerably ahead of Europe in this space, nor here in Europe, where many newsrooms are still debating whether they need to engage with the creator economy at all. (My answer: They do.) 

The diversity of the selected projects hints at why there’s no easy answer: There is no single model. The path forward will look different for a community-focused outlet like The Haitian Times than for a legacy brand like Spotlight PA.

The creator trend is filling a gap that newsrooms could also fill if they acted a little smarter. I am looking forward to seeing whether and how these 10 newsrooms will succeed and what lessons the rest of us can take from it.

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