The Creator Competency Question

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Every time a creator fumbles on a red carpet, the comments fill up with the same voice — journalists and media traditionalists reminding everyone why trained professionals should be the ones getting hired for these moments. And on the surface, it's hard to argue with. Traditional journalism is a real craft. It requires preparation, accountability, and the willingness to ask the uncomfortable question without needing the guest to like you after. But in this episode of While I've Got You, Gabby Turner sits with both sides of the journalist versus creator debate and starts pulling on a thread that changes the whole conversation.

Because creators are clearly offering something too. When guests have editorial control — when they know that if something doesn't feel right it gets cut, no questions asked — they show up differently. More human, more unfiltered, more vulnerable in ways that audiences are responding to. The creator brings connection where journalism brings clarity, and depending on what you're looking for, that distinction matters.

What really shifts the conversation is the third example Gabby brings up. Not a creator fumbling on a carpet — a credentialed Associated Press journalist interrupting BabyFace mid-sentence to call out for Chappell Roan. She had the training. She had the credentials. And in that moment, she didn't do the job she was hired to do. Which raises the question this episode keeps coming back to: if traditional journalism training were the guarantee, how does that moment happen? And if it's not actually about training — what is it about?

Gabby also gets into who is getting the institutional co-sign in this industry and who is absorbing the consequences when things go wrong. Hannah Berner and Jake Shane were both hired to host Vanity Fair's Oscar after-party coverage. Drew Afualo — a creator who has never had a moment like the ones being used as ammunition in this debate — has never been given that room. And when Jake Shane's miss with Julia Fox dominated the conversation, his co-host Quenlin Blackwell, a Black creator who did her job, watched her entire moment get swallowed by someone else's fumble.

This episode doesn't resolve the debate. It asks whether the debate is even about what we think it's about. The real question might not be training versus no training. It might be competency — and those are not the same thing.

While I've Got You is a short-form podcast about culture, identity, and the moments worth noticing, hosted by Gabby Turner. New episodes monthly.

Transcript

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I'm Gabby and you're listening to While I've Got You. Let's start the show. Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. I want to talk about the thing that I've been noticing, which is this journalist versus creator conversation. I've been seeing it come up a lot. It seems like every time a creator sort of fumbles on the red carpet or in an interview, the comments fill up with the same voice of either very specifically like journalists and media traditionalists or people or big-brained thinkers that are reminding everyone why trained professionals should be the ones being hired on a carpet or doing interviews, that they should be the ones getting the job. And not only the importance of hiring traditional journalists, but also noting that the creators that are fumbling are the people that are taking away jobs from people who are trained to do the job. And I can see both sides of this conversation, and I want to actually unpack it with you all, and then I have questions for you all to consider and help me with. Let this be a conversation and a dialogue between us. What really finalized this as a topic for me is that Jeanette Reyes, a former news anchor and co-host of the podcast Off the Record, shared in an Instagram reel recently that her and her co-host approach interviews with their guests on the podcast as journalists, as traditional journalists. Which means three things. Just according to her, I am not a traditionally trained journalist. I am not a journalist. And so I want to be clear that I'm not minimizing the job and the experience, the education that journalists have. This is just three of the ways that she pointed out that they approach interviewing their guests. And that's that they don't give guests any editorial control, which is the first difference that I noted between traditional journalists and what we're seeing with creators more often. And then they research past interviews, which I would also say that I don't really see a lot of creators doing either. They research past interviews to learn the talking points with the intention of moving guests off their talking points, like getting them out of their PR training a little bit and more into clarifying things. So they might say something like, I noted in a 2014 interview that you said X, Y, and Z, do you still think that? And if that person responds with the talking points that these journalists have seen historically, they will prepare follow-up questions that take them away from that talking point and hopefully get a little bit more into the nitty-gritty and the clarity. And they approach these interviews with the idea that as journalists, their opinions on the topic or the opinions of that guest are irrelevant. They're there to narrow things down and get clarity. She mentions in this reel that they received a little bit of pushback from listeners who said that they were being mean to a guest for asking for that clarity. The guest didn't feel that way. But as listeners, the listeners felt like they were being a little bit of bullies for doing their job and really trying to get their guest off of those talking points in a way that offers an opportunity for clarity and also demands it. And how telling that is. So again, that's what journalists are actually bringing to the conversation. It's where we get more nuance and the opportunity for clarity, and there's something else that I think gets really dismissed with creators and what creators, podcasters, influencers that don't necessarily have that traditional training, what they are offering. Of course, with so much respect to those things that traditional journalists have. We're getting to see creators say, if you want something cut, we cut it. No questions asked. And it allows guests to show up differently because of it. They get to be a little bit more infiltered, more human, more vulnerable. And the creator side of things brings a different kind of access. Not always with crazy clarity, but with connection. And depending on what you're looking for, that might be exactly why you would go to a creator and watch a creator's interview versus the interview of a journalist. It also is important to notice the both and of this conversation. Journalists are giving us the information and the clarity, and basically saying if you're gonna say it, we want you to be clear on what you're saying, and you have to be accountable to what you're saying too, because you don't have that editorial control, and because it's my intention to get you off those talking points. That's important. That's how we get a lot of information, and it's how we hold these notable people accountable to what they've said and to say what they mean with their chest, and with such an increasing likelihood that saying the wrong words can get you canceled. Going and having an interview with a creator, probably a lot easier and more refreshing. We could probably get into the conversation of unfortunately, one of the taxes you have to pay of being a notable person is being held accountable and not always getting to be in a fun, cozy, cushy seat of we're just here to have fun, and if you say something and you think it might land wrong to the masses, we'll cut it. And instead of being like, Yeah, unfortunately, you have a platform and you have to stand on that platform and take ownership of it, sadly, whether you like it or not. So that could be a different conversation, but I just wanted to acknowledge both of those. Really, this conversation is interesting to me because I think it's actually doing something a little bit different. There are three examples that come to mind when I think about the way we've seen this journalist versus creator conversation come up. The first one is last year at the Vanity Fair Oscars after party. Post-after party? Some post-Oscars after party? Y'all know what I'm trying to say. Where Hannah Berner and Paige DeSorbo are interviewing Megan the Stallion, and Hannah Berner says that Megan the Stallion's music makes her want to fight. And Megan's response is like, not fight, girl, don't do that. We don't fight. Just that miss was so interesting and was ultimately like pushed up as a microaggression, which I agree that it was. And Hannah Berner, as far as I know, is not a traditionally trained journalist. She's a comedian. So she's going for the comedic release in the bid in that moment. On the other side, we saw this year with Jake Shane telling Julia Fox that he thought the kid, like getting her to agree, kind of pushing her to agree that the kid in If I had legs, I'd kick you was annoying. Shout out to Quinlan Blackwell, who was there with Jake Shane. And we don't get to see what she did well. If she did well, I couldn't find really anything on what that experience was like for her, how she held her own. People talking about her being there, if she had those same sort of comments, like this is why we need to give traditional journalists jobs and not creators, with others directed at her as well, when she seemingly had no misses, or was her experience completely swallowed up by Jake Shane's miss with Julia Fox? These are the kind of moments that we so repeatedly see again that same narrative. This is why we should stop giving journalists jobs to creators. I went to school for this, and this would have never happened, that type of energy. But here is where things get interesting. When I was researching into this, the third example that I thought of was what I thought was a creator, this host, interviewing Babyface, and in the middle of Babyface's sentence, like he's in the middle of speaking, she starts looking around him and goes, Chapel round, come here, we want to talk to you. Like while the man is talking. The host that did that, the on the carpet correspondent that did that was an associated press journalist. She's traditionally trained. So she has the training, she has the credentials, and in that moment, she didn't do the job she was trained for or hired to do well. So it made me start to wonder if training, if the educational background was a guarantee that the moment doesn't happen, this moment wouldn't have happened. This moment with Associated Press wouldn't have happened. So the conversation might not be about the training at all. It might be about the competency of the individuals that are getting hired for the job. And boy, if that ain't a whole new conversation. But you know, training and competency, those are not the same thing. Hannah Berner and Jake Shane were both hired to host Vanity Fair's Oscar After Party. Whereas creators that are on my timeline, like Drew Afualo, I'm probably saying that wrong and I'm so sorry, but Drew A-F-U-A-L-O, a creator who I've never seen have a moment like this one, has never really been given that chance on a level like the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. She has done a lot of correspondence for different media outlets, but not as big as Vanity Fair yet. And Jake Shane didn't host alone. Like I mentioned, he was paired with the black creator who did her job, and the conversation that followed that opportunity wasn't about her and her ability and her competency. It was about her co-host, lack of education and responsibility in that space. Now I'm not saying that this is the whole story, but I do think it's worth noticing that if this is a conversation about standards and competency, the people that are getting the like industry cosign versus the people absorbing the consequences doesn't necessarily seem to be distributed all that evenly. Now, with all that being said, obviously journalism is a real craft, it requires preparation and not only accountability and integrity and responsibility of the journalist, but also demands that of the guests they have as well. And the willingness to ask the uncomfortable questions without needing to be a mutual fan. I think I saw a lot of comments today saying, like, so many journalists now just want to be fans. They show up in the space as fans. And true journalism is a craft that requires you to like leave that on the sidelines. I also think that the creator side of things has something real too, and potentially a representation of where the industry is going to a place that prioritizes connection and safety and access to a version of notable people that we don't usually get to see. I think both sides have something that they can learn from each other. Creators taking the time to put in the work, to do the research, to really show up and ask questions, and the journalists' side to curate more open and safe spaces that prioritize connection, maybe a little bit over whatever clarity looks like it needs to be in that moment. Obviously, there's nuance to that conversation. And on the flip side, when there are creators on a red carpet, yeah, I want to see a fun, playful conversation that hopefully doesn't have misses, that hopefully doesn't feel dismissive to the people that they are interviewing, like this Shane and Julia Fox miss. There's nuance to that. Because of that nuance, I'm wondering if there's anyone doing both well. If you have anybody, please leave it in the comments. DM me whatever. Is there anyone doing both well? So not a journalist who's like learn to be charming, and not a creator who got lucky and asked a couple decent questions. Someone who like genuinely creates safety without sacrificing integrity. Yeah. That's all I've got for you today. I hope you enjoyed, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.