🥧 Creators are eating the media’s lunch

It must hurt the traditional media but it’s not surprising that creators are now increasingly the news source of choice. More biased, maybe, more entertaining, definitely. Traditional media can’t take a trick. And their response? All they can do it seems is rent creators to maintain audience share. There’s no easy way out for old media except to accept a new position in a wider and quite different ecosystem. Happy Thursday, Simon.

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It’s probably not surprising old media is going after creator clout. The Reuters Institute’s 2026 Digital News Report found 27% of people globally now get news each week from independent news creators. Of those, 47% say creators meet most or all of their news needs. That’s 13% of the entire global population effectively replacing the news industry with creators alone. The trust picture is interesting. Creators are widely seen as more entertaining and easier to understand than traditional media, but less trustworthy and less impartial. Those who embrace news creators though are all in. That red pill group is three times more likely to call creator content more trustworthy. It’s all about perceived independence.

Amazon has launched Content Partners, a free programme for independent creators built around a simple problem: AI crawlers are scraping content for free while search traffic is drying up. The programme gives creators visibility into exactly which AI bots are hitting their site, with the ability to block, rate-limit, allow or charge for that access. According to the tech giant: independent creators don’t have the scale or legal teams that big media companies do, and this is Amazon’s bet that helping them survive the AI shift is good business. Who knows? Maybe Amazon is the defender of the little creator?

Traditional publishers are realising they can no longer just push staff content onto social media; they have to embed native creator talent. Forbes has launched a creator network fronted by six digital talents, including TikTok star turned venture capitalist Griffin Johnson (9.5 million TikTok followers compared to Forbes’ 593,000). The logic is blunt. Search and social referrals are drying up for publishers, and a 100-year-old brand can’t out-compete a creator’s algorithm-native feed. So Forbes isn’t trying to. It’s renting the audience instead. Forbes aren’t alone, ESPN, the NFL and the Daily Mail are doing the same thing.

No AI update from me this week, I’m afraid. I’ve been out on shoots and travelling for work, so the machines have had to continue their march towards creative domination without my commentary. Back next week with more useful tools, strange experiments or whatever new thing has appeared to make all of us feel slightly behind again.

AmberDraw gives illustrators animated brushes on iPad, so a static drawing can shimmer, ripple, flicker or breathe without a trip through After Effects purgatory. The Reel shows paintings being brought to life in a way that feels properly creator-led: not “make the whole thing for me”, but “make this thing I made feel more alive”. A small tool, but a useful reminder that the best creator tech doesn’t replace the hand. It gives the hand more tricks.

Social doesn’t have to be a dumping ground for cutdowns. The engineered grid, the cinematic framing, the fourth-wall breaks and the separate burner account all work together to extend the world of the campaign. That’s the tip: the best social ideas don’t just post content. They create a space for people to poke around. The main account gets the polished version. The burner makes it feel like something is happening offstage.

Horror isn't really my thing, but the trends these films throw off always seem to reach me anyway. Obsession, the low-budget hit about a man who buys a wish-granting toy to make his crush fall for him with predictably disastrous results, has produced one of the odder ones. The toy in question, the One Wish Willow, has long since escaped the film. People have taken the idea and run somewhere far sillier, snapping their own willows and wishing for completely pointless things, free parking, an extra hour of sleep, a decent sandwich. You don't need to have seen the film to enjoy watching people wish for nonsense.

A bit of news from our side this week. We've just launched a brand new website, with fresh content and a look that finally feels properly us. Cleaner, sharper, and a lot more on brand than what it's replacing. Plenty of credit goes to the team who pulled it together. Go have a look.