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Photo by Tierney L. Cross for the Washington Post
The 'new media' push into White House Correspondents’ weekend
In 2024, Substack Head of News and Politics Catherine Valentine contacted the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) to see if the platform could buy tables at the annual dinner to show the rise of independent journalists. She said Executive Director Steve Thomma rejected the pitch.
“He said that independent journalists were not news, would never be news, and would never be invited to the dinner,” Valentine said in an exchange that was, ironically, first reported by former White House correspondent-turned-independent journalist Tara Palmeri, in her Substack “The Red Letter.” After publication, Thomma denied having said so. Tickets are only sold to news organizations that have association members, according to the WHCA.
Shut out of the dinner, Substack decided to host its own party. Now, that party is one of the hottest tickets of correspondents’ weekend — just one measure of how dramatically attitudes toward new media have shifted, even on one of the most traditional beats. The weekend has become a showcase of the growing power of new media — from independent journalists and outlets, to increasingly important political creators, and the platforms powering all of them. And this year’s party hosts, and guests, are the most expansive yet.
In addition to “The New Media” hosted by Substack, framed on the invitation as “the alternative to the WHCA dinner,” rival newsletter company beehiiv is hosting its first correspondents’ weekend festivities. YouTube is getting in on the action, with multiple events celebrating creator journalists, and even dating app Grindr is hosting an event. Nine parties this year are being held by media start-ups less than 10 years old, per Axios (itself one of the nine).
Each year, the new media presence grows and the line between creator and journalist blurs. Valentine said that the weekend has become a huge recruiting opportunity for Substack, with many invitees using it as an opportunity to open conversations with the platform about going independent.
“Scott MacFarlane was on that year-one invitation, and now he’s on Substack and YouTube. John Dickerson was on that first invitation list, and he's now Substacking. … Jim Acosta was on that year-one invitation, and he’s now one year into his journey,” Valentine told me. “Some people we put on the list and we just think ‘Oh my god, they’ll never even respond.’ It’s part of how we got Katie Couric on the platform.”
Many independent reporters on Substack have been featured in the White House new media seat in the briefing room, and Valentine said she now works with the House Periodical Press Gallery to screen Substackers applying for credentials, a legitimization “that, in my wildest dreams three years ago, was barely possible.”
The Takeover
🕵🏻♀️ True crime creator Stephanie Soo is making a new podcast on Netflix.
🔑 Ryan Serhant announced the scripted short-form series “The Broker.Age.”
🎞️ Andreessen Horowitz helped launch a 24/7 live stream on X.
📈 Scalable launched a research database.
💼 Unwell hired Joanne Bradford as president as it grapples with high employee turnover and discord between staff and co-CEO Matt Kaplan.
👯♀️ Some creators are replacing themselves with AI clones.
🗳 Hundreds of social media accounts feature A.I.-generated, pro-Trump influencers.
The Group Chat
FIRST IN VERIFIED: Passes, the creator monetization platform, rebranded as a professional product to focus on creators operating as businesses. “We believe that all creators can be entrepreneurs, and we want to be the best platform for creators to be entrepreneurs, which is providing all the tool sets and being the most technical platform out there,” Passes founder and Chief Executive Officer Lucy Guo told me.
Part of that means a visual refresh, with branding changing from pink to blue, which Guo described as “a more gender-neutral color” and more professional. She described a YouTuber she had tried to sign to the platform who told her, “I don’t really want to be on a pink website.”
“Hopefully we don’t get that feedback anymore,” she joked.
Guo said the rebrand reflects what she’s heard from creators skeptical of the technical products offered by Passes, which was founded in 2022. “We were fighting to get them on,” she said. “I think that our last brand felt almost a little bit too playful, Gen Z, if that makes sense.”
With the redesign, “we wanted our brand to feel like something that creators can trust with their livelihoods,” she said, emphasizing Passes’ features such as instant payouts, merch integration and built-in content protections.
The platform, which has raised $66.6 million in funding, is now targeting creators including stock traders, gamers and businesspeople. Guo said Passes is also working on new fintech tools for creator money management and AI tools for creators to maximize their time.
Creator Q+A
Courtesy of Cleo Abram, photo by Kendra Siebert
Cleo Abram is a video journalist who worked at Vox before going independent and launching her hit series “HUGE* If True,” which tackles scientific topics from colossal squids to nuclear fusion for an audience of 7.7 million subscribers on YouTube alone. I spoke with Abram before she participated in a Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow and Washington Post Creator event last week.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Dylan Wells: What goes into an episode of “HUGE* If True”? How do you start conceptualizing it, and what is the timeline between pitch and the final product we see?
Cleo Abram: This is a several-hundred-hour research and production process over the course of several months for every video. We publish one video a month of “HUGE* If True,” [which are] highly produced explainer episodes. The mission of everything that we do, at the end of the day, is how can we take something that people are broadly interested in and is important to the future that we’re all going to be living in, and just explain it in a way that shares with you how it might actually affect your future? Who are the smart people working on this topic? How can I participate in making that future go well?
The key in all of our episodes is [uncovering] that answer in a way that makes people feel like they can participate. So the mission of the show is to show people optimistic futures, because we believe that when they see them, they’ll help build them.
That research process involves hundreds of hours of background interviews with all of the major experts in the field [and] iterating on all the visuals that we’re going to use. We spend at least a month in the preproduction process, figuring out what the story is and how we’re going to tell it. Then we typically do some kind of field shoot. And then, after that, we take all that scripting, which takes several weeks. All of this involves a lot of background and recorded interviews with experts. And then we move into production of the video, and that takes another month, at least, just in the editing and the animation.
Close Friends
Missed opportunity: the Courtyard Marriott Westbury not taking advantage of a viral moment.
Internet drama: creator Santina Rizzi posted about why she stopped creating content for Dr. Miami.
Trending: everything hallelujah.
Deeply disturbing: lizard earrings.
The next drama?: the creator cruise.
Last week, 68 percent of our poll respondents said they are team Alix Earle over Alex Cooper. This week I want to know who your favorite creator to watch right now is — just reply to this email to let me know. Need some inspiration?:
@dylanewells asking your fave content creators who they actually like watch on their fyp for the washington post 📲 #creators #sxsw @We are a newspaper.... See more
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