Nick Valencia‘s work is already having an impact.
After leaving CNN nearly two months ago, the Atlanta-based national correspondent decided to go the independent route, publishing his work via his Nick Valencia Live Substack page. And he’s seeing his early stories pay off.
Among the recent highlights, Valencia published a story about corruption allegations at the immigration detention facility in Florida, commonly referred to as “Alligator Alcatraz.” Valencia’s reporting led to one of the operation’s contractors losing their contract at the facility.
Already adept at using social media to elevate his journalistic profile further, Valencia is using his platforms to raise awareness about his newest venture.
He is also working with the History Channel on the Greatest Mysteries series, which is a one-hour documentary series examining the top theories surrounding unsolved mysteries.
“Things happen for us, not to us,” Valencia told TVNewser as he joined the growing ranks of TV journalists who have embraced the route of independent journalism. He says he is filled with youthful energy as he embarks on this new journey.
TVNewser: Why did you choose to go independent rather than join a competing news network?
Valencia: I spent 19 years there (at CNN). It was the longest first job in the history of jobs. I’ve never worked anywhere else. I started as a teleprompter operator there on March 6, 2006, and my last day was June 1, 2025. Media is changing not just every year, it’s changing every day. For people to understand, you have to be in it. That’s what I’ve learned in the last seven weeks: how the landscape was changing. The audience in the market has already told us what it wants. It’s already dictated to us the demands, and we’ve got to meet the moment as journalists. That perspective of using journalism as an ultimate act of service, seeing what was happening starting in June, with the targeting of my community, the Latino community. I never wanted to be the Brown reporter covering Brown people. I don’t want that stereotype of being a Latino journalist. I’m a journalist who happens to be Latino, and so I’ve been very deliberate throughout my reporting career—even though I have an expertise in an area, I wanted to be seen as a journalist who can cover everything, and I did that.
But the fact is, these stories are personal, and I’m very drawn to this. So, talking about meeting the moment, I saw an opportunity to meet the moment in a way that I don’t think reporters can on a mainstream level. A lot of the stuff I was able to do in L.A. was done because I was independent. I saw how disarming it was to the people whom I talked to, and I ended up interviewing at length when I told them I was on my own. I’m not a media critic. So, I saw an opportunity for myself to meet the moment and to use my platform to offer people a microphone.