“I hope this convinces Democrats that we need to invest more in this. They need to work with creatives, not just young creatives but creatives of all kinds, so that We can try to push our numbers on some of the platforms.” says Ryan Davis, cofounder and chief operating officer of People’s First, a political influencer and relative. The marketing firm that partnered with the Biden and Harris campaigns.
Amelia Montooth, a progressive creative who supported the Harris campaign, believes Democrats need to work to build their own progressive media ecosystem. She’s not just thinking about a liberal Joe Rogan or an individual progressive influencer, but about outlets as a whole. She’s actually already trying to do it herself: Montooth is also the cofounder and CEO of Mutuals Media, a new digital-first media company that’s trying to take down right-leaning culture brands like Barstool and Old Row.
“What it really does well is a funnel that I believe starts with barstool sports that reaches a mass audience,” Montooth says. “The left is missing the top and middle of those funnels … instead of working with individual influencers, they should focus on building that piece of the ecosystem, that funnel.”
Another surprising revelation in the Pew report was that the majority of news influencers in the study have X accounts (85 percent). YouTube was second with 50 percent of creators using the platform. The report doesn’t say how active they are on X, but it does show that most creators, at the time the study was conducted, used the platform as their primary means of getting and sharing news online. But saw
Even with new options like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, X still has a monopoly on text-based social platforms. However, the report does not account for post-election departures from X. In the coming weeks and months, however, I’m curious how 85 percent might face new competition from alternatives like Bluesky, which reached more than 20 million users after the election. Musk wanted X to be a digital town square, but Trump’s billionaire backing may make that dream less feasible.
Chat room
Are you one of the 50 million people who get at least some of their news from news influencers? Who do you follow? Why do you trust them? Can traditional media learn a lesson from them? I want to hear what you think!
Send your thoughts to mail@wired.com.
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🔗 Weirdest domain Alex Jones has to give The Onion: The Onion bought Info Wars last week, and the notorious conspiracy site comes with a handful of silly domain names, like goblinlove.com and cuckdorsey.com. (Gizmodo)
🔗 Social investors of the truth expected to be ‘very rich’ after Trump’s win. Not at all: Some of Trump’s most ardent supporters bought Truth Social stock. The former president’s re-election was supposed to turbocharge the company’s value, but has yet to do so. (Washington Post)
🔗 Maxwell Frost in race to become first Gen Z congressional leader: Democrats are still reeling from their election losses, but soon they will elect DNC leaders who can lead them in a new direction. Maxwell Frost, a congressman from Florida who has led digital awareness campaigns, announced this week that he is jumping into the race to co-chair the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. (axis)
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On Wired Politics Lab On this week’s podcast, Leah talks to Vittoria Elliott and David Gilbert about Bluesky, X, and the fragmentation of social media platforms.
I’m taking a break from the newsletter over Thanksgiving, but it will be back in your inboxes on December 5th.
For now, here’s Justin Trudeau making shakes with a cute old man on TikTok.
That’s it for today — thanks again for subscribing. You can contact me via email, Instagram, XBluesky, and Signal at Makenakelly. 32.
