The Independent is doubling down on talent-led media production as part of a plan to create valuable intellectual property for sponsorship and capitalize on the booming creator economy.
The U.K.-based digital news publisher has signed YouTube creator Alan Clery as creative director to kick off the launch of Independent Studios, a unit that will produce a new crop of individual talent-led videos, newsletters and podcasts. Clery has established himself as a respected voice in football media and will now produce his own videos for his YouTube football channel ACFC, which launched last week and has gained more than 30,000 subscribers. Now Clery will have the studio’s production, promotional and development resources to grow his following further.
Clery’s signing with The Independent is part of a longer-term strategy to create trusted verticals led by individual talent — both in-house editors who have built loyal followings on The Independent’s own sites, which include BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post in the U.K., and external creators who have built large audiences on other platforms. The Independent had just under 28 million monthly visitors across its sites in February, according to Comscore.
“The [social] platforms haven’t been designed to give traditional and changing publisher brands a second life. They’ve been designed around people, around creators, and we’re moving with that,” Christian Broughton, CEO of The Independent, told Digiday ahead of the official unveiling of Independent Studios at Advertising Week Europe on April 2.
Clery will combine with The Independent’s chief football writer Miguel Delaney, who has a long-running football newsletter and a new podcast, to provide compelling sponsorship opportunities around football. Meanwhile, Annabel Grossman, global travel editor and executive editor for The Independent, and travel journalist Simon Calder will be the faces of the travel vertical, working on content across video, podcast and newsletters. The Independent’s chief international correspondent Bel True, who has filmed two feature-length documentaries on the conflict in Gaza for Independent TV, will also create content in the new verticals. More packages will come in areas including current affairs, music, film and food.
News ecosystems are rapidly forming on social media, with 64% of U.S. social media users now consuming news on platforms like TikTok. The rise in popularity of short-form video content has fundamentally altered how audiences consume news, moving away from scheduled bulletins to on-the-go, bite-sized and highly personalized content driven by algorithms, stressed Becky Owen, CMO of influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Baby.
“Social media has also democratized news production, enabling new players to emerge into the limelight who are stealing market share from the traditional big hitters in journalism,” said Owen. “The popularity of the likes of Dylan Page [who has 15.1 million followers] compared, for example, with The New York Times’s 1.7 million followers on TikTok, is a demonstration of how consumers — especially younger demographics — trust people over brands.” That makes The Independent’s move to position verticals around individuals, including known creators, a savvy move, she added.
That’s a message The Independent wants to also dial up: that it’s a publication whose history has always championed “independent voices” rather than having any agenda or political leaning, and it’s therefore in a good position to center verticals around individual talent, whether they’re in-house, well-reputed journalists in their fields or external creator hires, according to Broughton.
Currently, The Independent doesn’t have a fixed revenue share structure established for the creators it signs, but Broughton added that will likely emerge over time. “Creators deserve to be incentivized because they work in a way that’s really different to traditional media … we’re certainly going to be incentivizing people to build success,” Broughton said.
As audience consumption habits continue to evolve, publishers, advertisers and tech platforms are increasingly looking for ways to collaborate with individual creators, tapping into their influence, niche communities and engaged followings. Fast Company is another traditional publisher to tap the creator economy lately, launching a creator network to publish articles from independent newsletter writers who have large Substack audiences.
The explosive growth of creators has redefined how news is consumed. And traditional publishers are adapting to that. The value of the creator economy — individual people with their own brands and audiences — has been estimated at $250 billion, and is projected to double to $480 billion by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs.
“The creator economy is massive and growing,” said Broughton. “It’s a bit like AI in the sense that I think a lot of news brands spend a lot of time debating whether they think it’s a good thing or a bad thing, or whether it’s better than the old days or not. But the fact is — it’s here. So work with it. Hold your values dear, but work with it.”
Broughton also said that this will help The Independent compete with other news brands in the U.S., where it has around 50 editorial staff and a fast-growing ad revenue business.
Independent Studios will build off the publisher’s Independent TV channel, which is available online and on connected TVs, and which generated 1 billion views on its site in 2024, according to Broughton.
The launch of Independent Studios is part of a strategy to cement audience trust in its individual content creators and journalists against the ongoing backdrop of digital disinformation and AI disruption, Broughton stressed. “We’re [publishers] fighting a fight for [audience] trust,” he said.
The Independent’s AI-driven news service Bulletin went live this week too. And while it seems a vastly different part of the publisher’s strategy to Independent Studios, the underlying goal is tightly connected, stressed Broughton. The Independent’s journalists will edit and oversee AI-generated summaries of their own stories to create snackable content aimed at busy readers who want to consume their news quickly. Broughton stressed that all the AI-generated summaries will have human bylines, underlying the importance of journalism accountability.
“If I don’t task The Independent’s editorial team to work out how to best leverage both AI tools and to be a voice on platforms which are designed for people, not necessarily published brands — if journalists don’t do it, who will,” Broughton said.