ICFJ's Patrick Butler explains disruptive power of non-traditional digital "news creators"

Gen Z audiences are increasingly coming to rely on digital creators for their information. (Image by Wix AI)

By CHARIS LETO

Global Business Journalism reporter

The biggest disruption in journalism isn’t artificial intelligence — it’s TikTok. That was the headline delivered by Patrick Butler, Senior Vice President for Content and Community at the International Center for Journalists, during a campus talk at Tsinghua University on October 27.

While AI dominated headlines last year and continues to pose a concern, Butler told Global Business Journalism students, the increasing challenge now comes from non-traditional “news creators” on platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

In 2024, he said, journalists identified artificial intelligence as the most important challenge to their jobs.

“That was last year,” he noted. “This year, the answer was the rise of non-traditional journalists — content creators.”

Patrick Butler

Traditional news outlets still demonstrate journalistic reach and high editorial standards. But younger audiences are choosing individual creators who resonate and engage them on their terms. That audience migration, Butler argued, is remaking news distribution, trust, and the business model of journalism.

"They want a source of information that they can trust,” Butler, a veteran journalist who has trained reporters worldwide, said of younger audiences.“There is a transparency of intention so that we understand what their motives are. Why are they in this? What are they trying to get out of it?”

Citing research discussed at the International Journalism Festival, Butler said the ideal news experience for Gen Z is built upon the following three foundations:

• Trusted sources: credibility, affinity, and transparent motives.

• Personal significance: relevance to identity, community, and actionable choices.

• Compelling format: concise, conversational, mobile-formatted storytelling (often short video or visual explainers).

Butler has managed the Global Business Journalism program for the International Center for Journalists for more than a dozen years. ICFJ co-founded GBJ with Tsinghua University and Bloomberg News in 2007 and has been its managing partner since its launch. He urged students to use the International Journalists’ Network, also known as IJNet, for information on fellowships, training, tip sheets, and weekly updates on tools from AI to mobile video.

In his discussion with students in GBJ's "Hot Topics in the Global Economy" course, Butler outlined four types of digital information creators:

• "investigators” who report independently outside of traditional newsrooms

• “explainers” who distill complex issues like geopolitics, policy, or science into digestible posts

• "commentators” who blend analysis with perspective, and

• “aficionados” or “news-fluencers,” who build trust around niche passions, from football to true crime, and often edge toward journalism itself.

"They're building their personal brand as someone who is absolutely passionate about this issue," Butler said of these news-fluencers. "They're kind of adjacent to journalism. They might be gamers. They could be comedians. They would never call themselves journalists, but they are providing a lot of information and a lot of people rely on them do that."

As an example of effective digital information dissemination, Butler highlighted an ICFJ-supported Nigerian project that centered around teaching people to spot AI-generated deepfakes. It used short, online informative videos delivered in Nigerian Pidgin and infused with humor. The project showcased how the tone and language of delivery determined reach, noting that fact checks delivered in formal English would have missed audiences most vulnerable to disinformation.

"Most Nigerians speak pidgin English, which is a local dialect," he said. "And so when we were working on this project, we wanted to talk to people the way that they talk among themselves."

The digital world has not been kind to traditional news sources as their news distribution model has been upended. To serve the next generation, credibility must travel at the speed of digital creation, he said. Content must be clear in intent, relevant, and formatted to fit feeds. For ICFJ, Butler said, that means working on digital channels that empower creators who inform responsibly.

"We think it can be really valuable to bring together legacy media with content creators," Butler told the Tsinghua students. "Legacy media have a lot of resources in comparison to content creators. Sometimes content creators work alone, sometimes they have small teams. They probably don't have the resources to do a lot of their own reporting, certainly not investigative reporting. They don't necessarily have the resources to cover the world, to go beyond their local communities.

"Traditional media outlets also have trained journalists who adhere to high ethical standards, but they are losing their audiences. Nobody's paying attention to that among younger viewers and audiences. So they need to find new ways to engage with young audiences. The content creators have those audiences. They tend to be very popular among younger people, and so we think it could be a benefit for both sides to come together."

ICFJ is supporting creators and newsrooms in adopting targeted delivery strategies, focusing on at-risk communities and trusted messengers. Butler also described a collaboration with Project C, which aims to curate and verify regional lists of reliable creators, starting in Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and Southeast Asia, to help both audiences and newsrooms find credible voices. He invited GBJ students to nominate standouts from their home countries.

ICFJ operates 67 programs in 95 countries, including GBJ. Butler offered an overview of ICFJ’s work, from investigative collaborations in Eastern Europe and cross-border financial tracking in Latin America to two-way newsroom exchanges and research on online abuse targeting women journalists. He said government funding cuts recently derailed a Southeast Asia investigative network, underscoring the fragility of donor-reliant initiatives. Even so, ICFJ remains largely supported by private philanthropy, citing the Knight and Gates foundations, as well as support from partners such as the U.K.’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.

Butler acknowledged some private funders have grown skittish amid polarized politics in nations around the world, while others are refocusing domestically. That makes diversified, international support and alliances with creators who already reach hard-to-serve communities all the more critical, he argued.