Millions of Americans are turning to social media influencers for news. But they couldn't do their jobs without traditional journalists.

Every morning, V Spehar scours a variety of traditional news sites, including Reuters, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the New York Times and Yahoo News, to find the stories they will share with their 3.5 million TikTok followers.

Sometimes they’ll get a suggestion or request from their followers to cover a particular topic — “We have 2 elections in Florida on April 1. Could you please talk about this?” one commenter wrote in a recent post — and they’ll read up on the reporting that’s already out there before trying to explain it themselves.

The 42-year-old Spehar, who worked as a chef and a political event planner in Washington, D.C., until 2021, is part of a growing cohort of news-focused content creators, or “newsfluencers,” who’ve built large followings online by tapping into the public’s increased distrust of traditional media. Many of them, however, admittedly rely on the work of professional reporters to stay informed themselves.

“I don’t have boots on the ground in Ukraine. I don’t have a reporter in the briefing room at the White House every day,” Spehar told Yahoo News. Still, they said, their followers “see me as someone who’s more like them than the authority figures or newscasters of the past.”

According to a Pew Research poll released following the presidential election in November 2024, about 1 in 5 U.S. adults (21%) said they regularly get their news from social media influencers. This is even more prevalent among adults under age 30, 37% of whom said they regularly rely on influencers for news.

Last month, Pew hosted a virtual panel to discuss the findings of its study. The event featured several news influencers who offered their own theories on why their followers may be more inclined to trust them than traditional journalists or mainstream media personalities. For many, the difference seemed to come down to influencers’ ability to voice their personal opinions.

“I have free reign, and that’s really appealing to audiences,” Raven Schwam-Curtis, a creator who focuses on racial issues, the Israel-Hamas war and politics, said. Schwam-Curtis has over 200,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok.

The Pew survey from November found that like Spehar and Schwam-Curtis, 77% of news influencers have no current or past affiliation with a traditional media organization, while 23% have had some experience working in the news industry.

Mosheh Oinounou is part of the minority group, having worked at Fox News, Bloomberg TV and CBS before launching his own platform, Mo News, in 2020. He now has a podcast, a newsletter and an Instagram page with over 500,000 followers.

“There was a time where having a legacy media background was important to the audience,” Oinounou said during the Pew panel in February. “Today, it feels like a strike against you.”

Still, Schwam-Curtis said she listens to NPR’s podcast every morning, while Oinounou said he subscribes to dozens of newsletters from platforms like Axios, Politico and national newspapers.

Often influencers will show their work, featuring screenshots of the news articles they’re citing in their social media posts.

“I always make sure the headline and the reporter’s name is behind me and the outlet,” Spehar said.

But not all influencers are as transparent. Nor do many of them take the time to vet the source of the information they’re sharing with their audience. A 2024 survey of top digital content creators conducted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) found that 62% said they do not vet the accuracy of news content before posting it.

The future of news?

One need not look further for proof of the changing media landscape than the current White House, which has blocked traditional news outlets like the Associated Press from events while inviting conservative social media influencers to briefings with senior Cabinet officials.

“These folks have larger followings than most mainstream media ‘reporters,’” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tweeted after a group of conservative influencers were invited to a “policy briefing” with Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. “The media landscape has changed, and we are fully embracing it here at the Trump White House.”

Jess Rauchberg, an assistant professor of communication technologies at Seton Hall University, agrees.

Rauchberg, who studies the impacts of digital media, said the rise of news influencers is not a trend but a sign of “where our media landscape is growing and going.”

“It’s here to stay,” she said. “But [it] creates some pretty serious implications for older, what we call ‘legacy media’ and traditional forms of journalism.”

Traditional media, for its part, has been making some attempts to adapt to this sea change. For example, Fox Corp., which owns Fox News, bought Red Seat Ventures, a digital media firm that produces audio and video podcasts for mostly conservative internet personalities like former Fox News hosts Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly and Tucker Carlson. NBC tapped “Call Her Daddy” host Alex Cooper to host several interactive watch parties for Peacock during the 2024 Summer Olympics. And ESPN launched a creator network in 2023 to grant access to creators so they can cover events for younger audiences.

But whether these efforts will have the desired effect remains to be seen.

“[Successful creators] being scooped up into these major news conglomerations isn’t going to do anything but cannibalize and destroy this budding industry because it separates you from the people too much,” Spehar said.

For now, though, Rauchberg noted, traditional news organizations still have something that news influencers don’t: professional reporters.

“These influencers rely on reporting from legacy media,” she said.