At the 2025 Rebele Symposium held Tuesday in Encina Hall, moderator and Stanford journalism professor Janine Zacharia asked what lessons legacy media and new content creators — or “news influencers,” as Zacharia called them — can learn from each other.
Zacharia was joined by guests Peter Hamby, host of Snapchat’s “Good Luck America” series, Matt Kiser, author of newsletter “WTF Just Happened Today” and Kyla Scanlon, author of “In this Economy: How Money & Markets Really Work.”
The annual Rebele Symposium, named after the late publisher and philanthropist Rowland “Reb” Rebele ’51 and his wife Pat Rebele, is hosted by the department of communication. The Rebeles have funded the Rebele Internship Program since 1986.
In 1979, the world watched as video killed the radio star. Fast forward to 2025, more people favor online content creators over legacy mainstream media. According to a Pew Research Center survey, nearly 40% of U.S. adults under 30 regularly get news from online content creators.
Hamby worked at CNN for ten years before joining Snapchat. “Twitter did not exist when I started at CNN, and [neither did] all of these things that we now take for granted… Things have changed, and we’re very much more creator focused, which is why I was hired at Snapchat.”
Hamby mentioned that his former coworkers at CNN are seeing the change firsthand. Legacy media is now trying to “think about the small screen instead of the big screen,” as broadcasting cable makes way for social media and streaming.
Scanlon, an online economic commentator, seeks to teach social media audiences about economic concepts. Scanlon majored in economics, financial management and business data analytics at Western Kentucky University, using her background to help people understand issues today.
However, Scanlon recognizes that there are lots of other content creators that share misinformation and harmful advice, especially in the field of economics. She also thinks that influencers who scare people with lies get more engagement on social media.
“I think if you’re acting in good faith, it is really useful to have some sort of expertise in whatever you’re talking about,” Scanlon said. “I have a background in economics and finance, and so I’m able to leverage that knowledge into my videos. There are definitely bad actors out there, and that’s why things like media literacy are so important.”
Zacharia noted that social media algorithms do not factor in a “credibility score,” only engagement.
Hamby lauded Scanlon for aiming to create credible content on platforms that can be full of misinformation and disinformation. “But you know, I feel like for every Kyla, there are 10 people who are fudging the facts,” Hamby said.
The Pew Research Center survey also found that 77% of the influencers have no prior affiliation or background with a news organization. Regardless, in this time of millions of posts and different content creators, Kiser finds that he “loves the chaos.”
“It feels like the internet has this new blood, and there are more voices,” he said. “I just love that anyone can just start something, publish something and practice.” Quoting the lead singer from a San Francisco band, the Dead Kennedys, Kiser said, “don’t hate the media, become the media.”
In regard to the rise of artificial intelligence, the panelists’ reactions ranged from hopefulness to fear, but Kiser believes that the human aspect will win out in the end.
“My news product could very easily be replaced with ChatGPT. But the difference is that ChatGPT is a bunch of servers somewhere, and I’m a person, and people have connected with me,” Kiser said.
The panelists agreed that mainstream media is not going away, but needs to adapt to the times and learn new business models.
“I think like a creator, but behave like a journalist,” Hamby said.