Some News Influencers Have Already Lost Ad Revenue As TikTok Ban Nears

Back in the 2010s, journalists and the legacy media outlets that employed them famously pivoted to video on digital platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In 2020, they pivoted to TikTok. As the world went into lockdown amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the platform saw its audience skyrocket. And those incoming viewers proved particularly hungry for news—a hunger that news organizations and independent journalists alike were ready to feed.

But that feast appears ready to give way to famine. On Jan. 19, TikTok will likely go dark due to a bipartisan law passed by Congress mandating its sale from the China-owned ByteDance company. The Supreme Court issued a ruling on Friday upholding that law, which effectively bans TikTok in the U.S.

While news organizations themselves are likely to respond to the loss of TikTok by simply finding the next social media platform to share their content, the ban’s impact will be keenly felt among the writers and reporters who have integrated the platform—and its audience—into their storytelling. TVNewser spoke with three journalists about how they’ve used TikTok to build their audience and how they’re preparing for a post-TikTok media landscape.

Dave Jorgenson, senior video reporter for The Washington Post

As The Washington Post’s self-styled “Tik Tok Guy” (a label he proudly includes in his Bluesky bio), Dave Jorgensen remembers when he had to almost forcibly persuade his newsroom colleagues to join him on-camera back in 2020. “They had no idea what TikTok was,” he recalls with a laugh. “Maybe their reference was their nephew, but that was it.”

Nowadays, though, he has more booking requests than he can handle. “I can’t say yes to everyone,” he sighs, adding that he’s the go-to sounding board for Post journalists looking to experiment with social video on their own. “I do the best I can while still getting sleep!”

Being an early TikTok adopter helped Jorgenson build a dedicated audience that tune in for his humor-laden takes on news, as well as ongoing in-jokes and storylines involving expense reports and his resemblance to Vice President-elect JD Vance. (For the record, he’s not the Hillbilly Elegy author.) As the overseer of the so-called “Washington Post TikTok cinematic universe,” Jorgenson has seen his own TikTok account grow to over 52,000 followers, while the Washington Post boasts 1.8 million.

Now, as he waits to see what Jan. 19 might bring, Jorgenson says that he’s “at peace” with the idea that all those followers may scatter should the ban go forward. “It’s completely out of my control. But I’m excited as a reporter to cover it—this has actually been one of our highest-traffic weeks ever.”

Jorgenson and his video team at the post had already been seeding their content on other platforms long before the TikTok ban became a tangible reality. In fact, YouTube Shorts has emerged as a more reliable performer for the Post than TikTok in the past few months. But Jorgenson says that they’re playing to a different audience on that platform.

“In terms of age demographics, it’s similar,” he notes, referring to the younger audiences that news organizations are eager to reach. “But if a story takes off on TikTok, it becomes a thing of its own, whereas YouTube doesn’t necessarily have that kind of culture.”

Another thing that eases Jorgenson’s mind is that even if TikTok goes away, journalism’s vertical video era is here to stay—at least for now. “There are options out there, and other apps that desperately want to be the next TikTok. My main worry is to figure out where the audience ends up because I don’t want to miss out on the fun.”

Heather Gardner, HeatherGTV and The American Resolution podcast

As an independent journalist who depends on a steady revenue stream from TikTok, Heather Gardner has already felt the impact of TikTok’s looming ban on her bank account.

“I got my first paid advertisement with a client this week for $6,000,” she says candidly. “But then they came back before we signed the contract and said, ‘Oh wait, TikTok’s being banned—we can offer $3,000.’ This has already affected my bottom line.”   

Gardner built her TikTok news business from the ground up in 2020 after stints at such legacy media brands as Entertainment Weekly and HuffPost, where she co-created and hosted the ICYMI video series. Her own brand of independent digital journalism is punchy, impassioned, and informed—a recipe that plays well on TikTok, where she has nearly 400,000 followers who followed her when she attended the Democratic National Convention last summer.

For the record, HeatherGTV also has a presence on Instagram, YouTube, and X, and Gardner has been directing her TikTok audience to follow those accounts after Jan. 19. So far, though, the metrics aren’t suggesting that viewers are listening.

“I’ve had a really hard time pushing people over,” she confesses, adding that Instagram—where she has 113,000 followers—is her preferred platform. “The algorithms are so different, too. If it was the same across all the platforms, I would have the same following on every platform.”

Being hostage to an algorithm or an act of Congress—and the financial strain that entails—is one of the reasons why Gardner is making it a priority in 2025 to build her own news platform that she can monetize. That would free her from relying on platforms owned by self-interested billionaires or international companies that may fall out of favor with whichever administration is currently occupying the Oval Office.

“One of my big focuses this year is growing my podcast, take my content off of social media, and doing more in-person events,” she says. “Basically, I just want to become CNN, but in a very small way! That’s what those of us content creators in the news space are trying to build.”

V Spehar, Under the Desk News

To borrow a line from ABC News, more TikTok-enabled Americans get their news from V Spehar than from any other source. The founder of Under the Desk News has amassed an audience of 3.3 million followers since joining the platform in 2020, and they are certain to be a familiar face to anyone with an active Instagram or YouTube news feed. (Spehar identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.)

Their success has provided them with the resources to expand the Under the Desk News staff in recent months. “I started making long-form YouTube content, so I invested in an editor and better video editing equipment,” Spehar says, noting that the Bytedance-owned Capcut video editing app preferred by TikTokers could also be banned. “I understood that to survive this, you would have to be stronger.”

At the same time, they admit to being pessimistic that Instagram or YouTube will make up for the potential loss of TikTok, both financially and in terms of audience reach.

“YouTube is a whole new skill to learn in terms of how to scroll through it—the algorithm doesn’t as quickly adapt to your preferences as TikTok’s did,” Spehar explains. “We are essentially cutting out peoples’ means of communicating and also their economic opportunities. And that’s the thing that gets me choked up.”

Spehar initially launched Under the Desk News, hoping to “professionalize” what a citizen journalist can accomplish in the digital media age. Their coverage includes both national and international news, as well as local stories that might otherwise slip through the cracks. And they pride themselves on being a trusted source of information for viewers who don’t have the time or the means to keep up with the news via “trad media” outlets on cable or in print.

Spehar worries about where those viewers will go—and who they’ll listen to—should TikTok go dark on Jan. 19. “Facebook just got rid of all their fact-checkers,” they note. “X hasn’t been a reliable narrator for some years. TikTok gave them the news they needed.”

Not for nothing, but legacy media outlets may end up missing TikTok as well. “They also rely on the platform for trends, stories, and first-person narratives,” Spehar says. “I’m hoping this helps them recognize that we need each other.”