The media industry is facing its most radical redefinition of “who tells the story” since the dawn of broadcasting. For decades, legacy media and broadcasters acted as gatekeepers, setting the pace of public discourse.

Today, a new class of independent creators and influencers has seized not only attention, but also trust and loyalty — commodities that media brands once assumed were theirs alone.

At INMA’s Media Innovation Week in Dublin, the conversation around creators was unavoidable. Two voices stood out: Sophia Smith Galer, an award-winning journalist turned creator, and Kerstin Hasse, known to her followers online as Hasse mit Liebe.

Their interventions crystallised the challenge and opportunity: Creators are not the enemy, but the mirror. They are teaching news organisations how audiences want to be spoken to — and what authentic connection looks like in an algorithmically-driven world.

Yet they were not alone.

Jess Awtry, vice president/digital strategy and communications at the Pew Research Center, and Lena K. Samuelsson, senior advisor at Schibsted, presented audience research and sharpened the case further: Creators are already outperforming traditional media on trust and competing head-on for young audiences.

The lesson from INMA Dublin was clear: News companies must learn, adapt, and partner — or risk sliding into irrelevance.

Why creators matter more than ever

For journalist and author Smith Galer, formerly of the BBC and Vice, the starting point is blunt: The news industry has underestimated the scale of the creator economy.

Creators are not fringe actors operating in a parallel universe; they are shaping how an entire generation consumes information.

“If you are not present in the spaces where young audiences live, you are absent from their reality,” she argued in Dublin.

Smith Galer’s career pivot itself embodies this shift. She has built a direct-to-audience model, producing journalism through TikTok and YouTube that reaches more young people in a day than most traditional outlets could hope for in a month.

The appeal? Accessibility, personality, and relatability. She is a trusted “face” who explains complex issues without institutional baggage.

Hasse’s journey reinforces the point. Branded as Hasse mit Liebe, she speaks directly to her community with a mix of intimacy and authority that feels closer to friendship than broadcasting.

 

Her approach is not accidental — it is rooted in craft: consistency, clear values, and an instinct for audience needs. As she told INMA delegates, “People don’t just follow you for the information. They follow you for the way you make them feel seen.”

Trust and authenticity are the creator advantage

Again and again, speakers returned to the same theme: trust.

Traditional media like to claim ownership of it, but trust has fractured. As consultant and former Politiken executive Astrid Jørgensen explained, credibility gaps widen when audiences feel news organisations are opaque about their motives or too clumsy in their advertising labelling.

Creators, by contrast, wear their intentions openly. A sponsored post is obvious, but so too is the personality behind it.

Here, Pew’s Awtry reinforced the point with stark audience research: 93% of audiences expect honesty, 89% intelligence — but authenticity and even kindness now rank higher than expected.

Those qualities are exactly what content creators provide and why younger audiences instinctively gravitate to them. Awtry stressed that creators “show their humanity,” while many news publishers still appear faceless.

The lesson: transparency is no longer optional; it is the minimum threshold for trust. 

Hasse highlighted the same reality from the influencer’s side. The influencer-audience relationship thrives on a perception of intimacy. Followers feel they know her, and that blurs the line between friend and authority. Legacy publishers, by comparison, often appear detached.

Smith Galer warned that publishers must avoid two traps: dismissing creators as lightweight and attempting to copy them without authenticity: “Audiences can smell inauthenticity in a heartbeat,” she said.

The challenge is not mimicry but adaptation: taking lessons from the creator world about tone, accessibility, and responsiveness, while staying true to journalism’s values.

Lessons from the creator economy

Several practical lessons emerged from INMA Dublin discussions about what news publishers can learn from creators:

1. Personality matters: News brands must put faces to their reporting. Whether through correspondents, anchors, or vertical video explainers, people connect with people, not logos.
2. Consistency beats perfection: Creators publish often, iterate quickly, and accept imperfection. Waiting for the polished feature package risks irrelevance in a scroll-first world. 
3. Engagement is two-way: Creators respond to comments, stitch other content, and let audiences co-create narratives. Newsrooms remain too focused on one-way transmission. 
4. Communities not just audiences: Successful content creators cultivate belonging. They do not just report news; they provide a space where followers feel part of something bigger. 
5. Diversified monetisation: From merchandise to Patreon, creators embody diversified revenue streams. Publishers should pay attention: Dependency on ads and subscriptions alone is brittle. 

Samuelsson cut to the heart of this challenge. She described content creators as “the biggest competitors to classical media” — not fringe distractions, but direct rivals for time, loyalty, and advertising share.

Yet she also positioned them as potential collaborators: If publishers can rethink infrastructure and monetisation with the same agility as creators, they can turn competition into coexistence.

These insights resonated with news publisher case studies presented throughout the week. From Russmedia in Austria experimenting with creator-style newsletters, to Mediahuis Ireland giving younger staff more freedom to experiment on TikTok, the momentum is clear: News companies cannot afford to sit this out. 

Collaboration, not competition 

One of the more provocative ideas at INMA Dublin was the potential for collaboration between publishers and creators. Too often, legacy media see influencers as competitors siphoning off attention.

But what if creators were partners? 

Hasse made the point directly: “Creators have access to audiences you cannot reach. And you have credibility and resources we cannot match. Together, we can build something more powerful.” 

Examples of such partnerships are emerging. Ringier MediaTech has begun working with creators to expand reach in Switzerland. The Daily Mail has hired influencers as columnists and contributors. The Irish Independent has invited creators to co-host podcasts that blend news with lifestyle. 

Here again, Samuelsson added urgency: The choice is not theoretical. Content creators already dominate attention among under-30s: “The fight for authenticity and authority is accelerating,” she said.

Do news companies want to be left behind, or do they want to learn from the people who have mastered it?

Creators, commerce, and the new advertising reality 

The creator discussion cannot be separated from advertising. The post-cookie, attention-fragmented world is pushing brands to seek trusted intermediaries who can deliver authenticity.

As several speakers noted, this is precisely why influencer marketing budgets are soaring while traditional display stagnates. 

News companies have an opportunity to reclaim ground by building creator-style advertising models. Sponsored content studios can lean into influencer principles: transparency, storytelling, and values-driven partnerships. Mediafin in Belgium and Funke Media in Germany shared experiments blending branded content with creator-led campaigns. 

But Smith Galer cautioned against reducing creators to “just another ad channel.” Their value lies in trust. If partnerships feel transactional, audiences will disengage. Instead, publishers must think long-term: Can they create ecosystems where journalism, creators, and brands align around shared values?

The generational divide 

Underlying the debate is a generational reality. As Smith Galer reminded the INMA audience, teenagers are not waiting for newsrooms to catch up. For them, TikTok is a search engine, YouTube is a library, and content creators are mentors.

This generational gap was visible in the Dublin study tour stops, where executives at outlets like The Journal.ie and Newstalk admitted that they are still learning how to translate legacy authority into Gen Z relevance. 

Awtry’s data underscored just how stark that divide has become: More than one-third of under-30s already get their news primarily from content creators, a figure rising sharply each year. 

Her conclusion was blunt: If newsrooms are not creators themselves, or visibly working with them, they are invisible to the very audiences who will decide the industry’s future. The message was sobering: Publishers are in danger of building products for people who already read them, not for those who never will unless they change approach.

Case studies: how European publishers are experimenting 

Several concrete examples from INMA Dublin showcased how publishers are dipping their toes into the creator economy:

• Svenska Dagbladet in Sweden has trialled “influencer-style” explainer reels on Instagram to boost engagement with under-30s.

• Euractiv has brought in creator voices to explain EU policy in digestible, shareable formats.

• Ouest France has tested creator partnerships in climate journalism, pairing reporters with eco-influencers. 

• Mediahuis Belgium has launched TikTok accounts fronted by younger journalists acting as personalities, not just bylines. 

• Russmedia in Austria has experimented with local micro-influencers to boost regional subscription bundles.

Not all experiments succeed. As with Bonnier News’s AI chatbots, the learning curve can be steep. But the willingness to experiment, fail, and adapt is itself a lesson taken straight from the creator playbook. 

Towards a creator-publisher hybrid future 

So what might a hybrid model look like? A few themes crystallised at INMA Dublin: 

• Platform-native content: Stop repurposing; start creating for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube in their own grammars. 

• Creator academies: Train journalists in creator skills, and offer creators newsroom literacy.

• Shared IP: Codevelop podcasts, newsletters, or video series where both publishers and creators share equity. 

• Trust at the core: Be transparent about partnerships, whether editorial or commercial. 

• Metrics of belonging: Move beyond clicks to measuring community engagement and loyalty.

This vision is not utopian. It is already being trialled — from Schibsted’s creator incubators in Scandinavia to The Irish Times experimenting with new storytelling voices. 

Conclusion: Creators as teachers, not threats

The central lesson from INMA Media Innovation Week in Dublin is clear: Creators are not the death of journalism. They are its provocation. They show us what audiences value when they have infinite choice: authenticity, relatability, responsiveness, and trust. 

For Sophia Smith Galer, the creator economy is an urgent reminder that audiences choose people, not institutions.

For Kerstin Hasse, it is proof that intimacy can scale.

For Jess Awtry, it is data that proves authenticity and transparency are non-negotiable.

For Lena Samuelsson, it is a strategic reality check: Content creators are already competitors — but they can be collaborators if publishers are brave enough. 

The future is unlikely to be a zero-sum game where creators replace newsrooms. Instead, the most imaginative publishers will position themselves as partners, collaborators, and amplifiers — borrowing from creator culture while offering what content creators lack: depth, verification, and public-interest purpose.

The alternative is irrelevance. And as Dublin made clear, irrelevance is not an option.

Editor’s note: This article summarises, with the assistance of ChatGPT, original content created by INMA. All content has been reviewed and edited by INMA editors.

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