When I started my career in public relations 15 years ago, there were 54,000 Americans working as reporters. That number in 2025 stands at 45,000, even as our economy has grown substantially. As newsrooms have shrunk, we’ve lost thousands of experienced journalists, sources of truth and accountability, to other industries or retirement. Layoffs have left a culture of cost-cutting and fear across many news organizations, with venerable and popular outlets not spared from sharp cuts. 

And while this trend has been ongoing for more than a decade as the true impact of the Internet on the news industry has shaken out, it’s really been just since the Pandemic that we’ve seen a new trend emerge in digital publishing: a Cambrian explosion of new what we’re calling “Creator Media.” 

Ironically, while it’s never been harder to work as a reporter, it’s also never been easier to start a media outlet. The internet, APIs, low code design, content management systems, the Cloud all these tools have made publishing a straightforward enterprise. Platforms such as Substack and Medium have further simplified the process of writing for an audience. The result has been a fracturing of our media system. Instead of relying on a handful of trusted, reliable sources of news and information, you can find a niche for basically everything. 

What hasn’t changed, however, is that building that audience remains difficult. Our most trusted and broadly read outlets have erected brands of reliability and credibility over hundreds of years. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, these edifices were built by millions of pages and thousands of people honing their publishers’ reputations over decades.

That’s why we’re heartened to see a powerful new trend emerging in the media. Experienced, traditional reporters are setting out to start new outlets using the technology platforms that enable these publishing services and are bringing with them their trusted audiences. They’ve found that while the economic realities of the media business make working in a newsroom a dicey proposition, the Creator Economy offers new and direct ways to build a business around their reporting prowess. 

This has created a flood of new media outlets that cater to smaller, but highly specific and engaged readers or listeners. For a PR or comms professional that creates new ways to find and engage our client’s audiences, but it also presents a challenge. These new outlets are harder to find, and harder to assess their reach.    

That’s why we created a new resource for our agency and our industry, what we’re calling the Creator Media Index and today, we’re publishing the Top 40 “Leaderboard,” built out of that assessment. We’ve identified the top tech and AI new Creator Media Outlets, operating in this new environment. Using a proprietary formula, we’ve identified the most influential and wide-reaching of these new outlets. 

This list represents, for us, a new way to influence public opinion in a positive way for our clients, working with journalists who deeply understand the industries and communities they've dedicated their reporting lives to. It also presents us the opportunity to promote and expand the audiences for these new media outlets. We can do the work of convincing our clients that these outlets matter and are effective channels. That will drive new subscriptions, sign ups and followers, further establishing this trend as a lasting one.

Download the complete 2025 Creator Media Leaderboard to discover how these emerging publishers can help your organization reach highly engaged, niche audiences and establish your executives as thought leaders in this evolving media landscape.

If you’re curious about how Creator Media can work for your brand, book a quick call with Treble vice president, Will Kruisbrink.