On Saturday night, as legacy media journalists crowded into the Washington Hilton for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, the mood was somber. The White House Correspondents’ Association decided to omit its usual comedic performance this year, reportedly because the Trump administration complained about the scheduled host. The association said that they wanted “to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division,” so journalists sat quietly while awards and speeches were given.
It did not make for an exciting scene. “It was all NPCs,” says Alice Ma, using a term that describes non-playable characters in a video game. Ma, the Gen Z co-founder of Mad Realities — the social-media based TV network behind shows like Shop Cat and Hollywood IQ — was in town for the weekend’s festivities, and while she didn’t attend the dinner, she witnessed the scene beforehand at the Hilton. “There was a weird corporate energy. It felt like a funeral.”
Five minutes up the road, at the Line hotel, hundreds of influencers, YouTube stars, newsletter writers, podcasters, Gen Z founders, and political personalities celebrated the death of old media at a counterparty hosted by newsletter platform Substack. They sipped cocktails and noshed on parmesan fries in front of a giant replica White House press podium. That party, Ma said, had “a new energy. People are building and charging new ground. At the Hilton it was like, oh my god, are you guys OK?”
Traditionally, the WHCD weekend has been a celebration dominated by legacy media. Old school broadcast networks, print journalists, and political insiders gathered to hobnob and network. The central events of the weekend were hosted by organizations like CBS, ABC, CNN, and NBC. Under the second administration of Donald Trump, however, it has become abundantly clear that the landscape has shifted. Traditional media outlets have been sidelined in favor of podcasters, YouTubers, Substack newsletter writers, and hyper-partisan content creators. Legacy news outlets are in a free fall as their business models crumble, and journalists with viable personal brands (including myself!) have jumped ship in order to go independent.
The weekend’s events signaled a broader upheaval in the media landscape, where digital platforms and independent creators are increasingly central to political and cultural conversations. And while independent media on the right is flourishing, more traditional journalists are now entering the fray and trying to make inroads into online spaces as influencers are playing a larger role in our political system. The right-wing influencer universe is thriving, as Trump has validated their role by integrating them into the administration’s press strategy and inviting creators into the briefing room, while Democrats scramble to catch up.
“You can’t ignore them anymore”
This transformation could be seen throughout WHCD weekend. Hamish McKenzie, co-founder of Substack, raised his glass in a private room at Minetta Tavern in front of the crowd of creators on Thursday night. Big names like YouTuber Johnny Harris, MAGA influencer Jessica Reed Kraus, and Gen Z political phenomenon Gabe Fleisher, who runs the newsletter Wake Up To Politics, were there to kick off the weekend with a toast.
“This weekend is about legacy media, traditionally,” McKenzie said. “It’s a space for traditional media to gather and talk with the political elites. But this room here is full of pioneers who are showing the way to a new type of order and a new vision of what the media can be.”
Journalist Oliver Darcy’s career itself is emblematic of this shift. Last year, he left his highly regarded role at CNN to launch his own independent media company, Status on the newsletter platform Beehiiv. In just a few months his newsletter became a must-read for executives and leaders in business, politics, and media, and now has nearly 80,000 monthly subscribers. On Thursday night, he too hosted his first ever WHCD party. The Status party attracted a diverse mix of traditional journalists and new media internet personalities. Attendees from legacy outlets gushed over Darcy’s success and asked each other aloud, could they do the same?
Several in attendance have already made the jump. Jim Acosta, a longtime broadcaster at CNN, left the network to become a video star on Substack. Politico’s Ryan Lizza, who quit the company less than a week ago and has since launched a Substack, was also in attendance. The guests at the Status party sipped cocktails and discussed the challenges and opportunities in today’s media landscape.
Darcy told me that, while the economy under Trump has made things less stable for creators and his administration has largely rewarded right wing influencers who push pro-Trump propaganda, which devalues real journalism, news consumers as a whole are flocking to independent voices. “Big brand names don’t matter as much as they did,” he says. “Maybe Trump has played some role in that. But I really think that people are just opening their eyes and saying that we don’t live in 1995 anymore.”
Influencers were everywhere throughout WHCD weekend in a way that they haven’t been in previous years. On Friday, Gen Z entrepreneur Adam Faze, co-founder of the production company Gymnasium, which produces TikTok and YouTube shows like Boys Room, along with publicist Jess Hoy, hosted “The New Correspondents Reception and Dinner” at the Watergate Hotel. There, creators like Deja Foxx, 24, a TikTok star and reproductive rights activist who’s currently running for congress in Arizona’s Seventh District; Annie Wu, a Gen Z influencer and digital strategist dubbed John Fetterman’s TikTok whisperer; Jordan Meiselas, who co-founded liberal YouTube behemoth MeidasTouch;, and Peter McIndoe, who co-founded the Birds Aren’t Real movement, a parody conspiracy theory aimed to poke fun at misinformation, sipped cocktails and discussed the vibes of the weekend, which they all agreed were off.
Natalie Winters, the 24-year-old MAGA influencer and White House correspondent for Steve Bannon’s War Room, was a fixture at this year’s WHCD. Winters sells merchandise under her lifestyle brand “She’s So Right!” — including a tank top reading “More insecure than the border” and hats and totes with the phrase “miss information” — to her massive online following.
Winters told me that, like many other MAGA influencers, this year was her first ever WHCD weekend. She was swarmed by fans at the Daily Mail party. Unlike during Trump’s first term, she says, old-school journalists are being forced to pay attention to the power of the internet and the shifts in the ways people get information. “Maybe if they would have started covering all this stuff years ago, that would have impacted the election,” she says. “But they’re so late to the party, and even now they don’t really understand the ecosystem. I don’t think they’ve ever made a genuine effort to.”
Winters described the actual WHCD dinner as “doomsday prepper vibes” but said that she was enjoying the opportunity to debate legacy media journalists. “I was having a 30-minute conversation with some Washington Post columnist,” she said, “explaining why we must have no foreign students at community colleges. Then a bunch of other legacy media journalists started coming around. By the end of it, their jaws were literally dropped.”
Winters rejects the idea that right wing influencers are sycophants who simply use their position in the briefing room to praise Trump. There is such a wide range of personalities and conflicting viewpoints on the right, she said, and she hopes to challenge the administration on the issues that she cares about, like cracking down even harder on immigration and auditing defense expenditures in Ukraine. “I have tried to reshape what it means to be a White House correspondent,” she said. “I think some of the questions that are asked in the briefing room from the new media people are quite cringe to be honest.”
CJ Pearson, a Gen Z influencer and chair of the RNC’s Youth Advisory Council, says that this was his first WHCD weekend, too. “You’re seeing the inclusion of so many new media personalities and influencers into the programming of this WHCD this year,” he says. “You have events dedicated to influencers and new media, like the Substack party or the Crooked Media party with influencers on the left. I think it’s because you can’t ignore them anymore. These people reach a lot more folks than the traditional corporate media.”
“This is the year where the transition feels real”
McKenzie took to the balcony to address the crowd at his party in the lavish two story ballroom, to praise the new paradigm. After noting that he “loves journalists,” McKenzie spoke about the wider range of ideologies reflected in online media.
“I love the rat-bags from the right,” he said. “I love the pugilists on the left. I love the centrists, and the nutjobs, and the fringe views and the radical voices, those from outside the establishment, the pro-establishment, the anti-establishment. And I really love that they’re all on Substack.” Substack takes a 10-percent cut of subscription revenue from all creators monetized on their platform, so it’s not surprising that the company wants as many publishers as possible, regardless of ideology.
After the Substack party, some MAGA influencers headed to Butterworth’s on Capitol Hill where Steve Bannon was hosting his WHCD weekend party for the “uninvited” media. After opening last fall, Butterworth’s has become a sort of clubhouse in D.C. for right-wing reactionaries, DOGE staffers, and conservative internet personalities.
At brunch hosted by Politico and NOTUS, a nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news outlet backed by the Allbritton Journalism Institute, guests reflected on the weekend’s vibe shift.
Matt Friend, a comedian and content creator who is known for his impressions of both Republican and Democrat political leaders, and performed at last year’s WHCD, says that the challenges the organization is facing right now reflect the broader fracture in media and entertainment.
“I’m 26 years old,” he says. “I built a career by getting discovered on TikTok and Instagram. Media is evolving and traditional media, regardless of whether they want to or not, have to face it. I’m not saying they need to invite a bunch of rando influencers to run around the event, but I think it’s important to have TikTok and Snapchat, and Instagram to have a presence at this thing or it will go away.”
He says that the WHCD was centered around an old guard that is no longer relevant in today’s cultural landscape — and doubling down on the solemn mood was a mistake. “Look who’s running Congress,” Friend said. “It’s 82-year-olds. Congress is an old-age home, D.C. is older, and traditional media (is) too. Some young blood in there wouldn’t hurt. We need things to freshen it up. It was a huge mistake not to have a comedian perform. Especially this year with Hegseth, Bernie at Coachella, people in space. Regardless of what side you’re on, how the fuck are we not making jokes about it? It’s infuriating. We need jokes!”
Mosheh Oinounou, a longtime journalist who’s worked for Fox News, Bloomberg, and CBS, attended his first WHCD in 2007. He said that this weekend, however, felt like the end of an era. “This is the year where the transition feels real,” he said.
Democratic consultants at the brunch said that they were worried about how far behind their party appeared to be in acknowledging these changes in media and consumer behavior. They discussed Pete Buttigieg’s recent viral appearance on Flagrant, a podcast hosted by Trump-supporting comedian Andrew Schulz, noting how well he performed. They talked about how they were focusing on social media appearances, and landing their clients podcast spots.
MAGA influencers who attended the weekend’s festivities thanked Trump for validating them, rather than shunning independent voices who don’t tow the line, as the Democratic party has done. “Some of us are empowered because MAGA has embraced independent media,” said Jessica Reed Kraus, a right-wing Instagram influencer and newsletter writer with more than 1 million followers. “My White House access is a dream right now, and that’s only because Karoline Levitt found value in it.”
Many on the right gloated over the failures of legacy journalism, which they feel has long failed to hold the Democratic party sufficiently accountable.
“Traditional media is on the verge of extinction,” Pearson says. “A lot of legacy folks this weekend will be patting themselves on the back, when I think what they really should be doing is some soul searching. They should be worrying about how they can actually regain the trust of the American people.”