News

How V Spehar built a news business from under a desk

Audience & Social – Nieman Lab · Hanaa' Tameez · last updated April 6, 2026 – 12:19 PM

The data is in: News creators and influencers are a major source of news for Americans, especially people under 30. This is the third edition of Creators of Record, an occasional series of interviews with popular creators about how they do their jobs.

It was technology and culture reporter Taylor Lorenz who first told news creator Vitus “V” Spehar to think of themselves as a journalist.

It was 2022 and Spehar — the 43-year-old best known for their explainers as @UndertheDeskNews on social media — was two years into explaining the news online. They were interviewing Lorenz for their podcast and initially brushed it off. “No I’m not, I’m a TikToker,” Spehar said at the time.

“She was like, ‘No, and actually, that’s irresponsible for you to say. What you are doing is journalism and you need to understand the ethics and expectations. The public thinks you’re a journalist, so you need to be one,’” Spehar recalls Lorenz telling her.

Spehar’s videos — which cover U.S. politics, policy, and culture — are conversational and easy to watch. Donning their signature glasses and sometimes a suit, they don’t shy away from playing trending music, acting, or doing a little dance to help viewers understand news events (like the firing of Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem.)

Today, they’re one of the most successful news creators in the industry, with nearly five million followers between TikTok and Instagram. In addition to posting daily news recap videos, Spehar also streams a live newscast on YouTube, sends out a Substack newsletter to more than 184,000 subscribers (nearly 7,000 of whom are paid), interviews politicians, and appears on cable news like CNN and MSNOW. Spehar was also a 2025 fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy.

I chatted with Spehar in February about why they first started reporting from under their desk, how they stay on top of the news cycle, and the business of being a news creator. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Tameez: Why did you start creating news videos?

Spehar: Before I was a news creator, I worked for the James Beard Foundation as its director of impact and entrepreneurship. I was teaching people how to open small businesses, how to do branding, but also working on creating sustainable food systems, and discovering ways that food had been erased through the process of American colonialism and forced assimilation.

I’m really good at explaining stuff to people. The pandemic came and many people’s lives just stopped. A lot of my friends were chefs and they were making videos cooking. So I started making cooking videos for fun. That turned into making cooking videos while explaining how to apply for PPP loans and shuttered venue grants.

On January 6, [2021], I was wearing a suit from my hips up and Nike shorts on the bottom because I was meeting with the Veterans Affairs Department [on Zoom] about the food programs we were doing for them. I saw the insurrection happening on CNN in the background. I just got under my desk and I thought it was a funny way to approach a difficult situation, as if I was in the Capitol hiding under my desk trying to talk to Mike Pence about invoking the 25th Amendment to bring in the National Guard.

It went viral. My friend Randy was like, “Yo, you better get back under that desk and tell people what’s happening now.” And that’s how Under the Desk News started.

At that time, TikTok was real campy. Everything was silly and showy. I don’t know if it was my theater undergraduate degree kicking in, but I was like, “Let’s do this. This will be fun.”

Tameez: How did you transition into working as a full-time news creator? Did you have any prior journalism or media experience before this?

Spehar: I often worked as the spokesperson for the James Beard Foundation, so I was very media-trained, but I did not have any interest in journalism, and I’m really not even a good writer. I’m a good talker. I have dyslexia, so this was not something that I tried to spend a lot of time in.

I am a millennial and I did not know that this was a job. I would have never been like, “Oh yeah, I’m a full-time content creator.” That language didn’t even occur to me. I was still working my food job, [but] it just got to a point where I was starting to get opportunities and to make money [from my videos].

Tameez: Why is this work important now?

Spehar: Overall, people got very curious during the pandemic. That horrible experience changed us. People understood the implications of politics because they were living them.

Coming out of that, people are so much more interested in the news, civics, politics, and local government. That’s why I think this work is important from a new media and citizen journalist lens.

TikTok has raised more people out of a dead-end job than any other platform on Earth has. For a lot of folks, becoming “TikTok famous” or getting discoverability in this place has helped them get real serious jobs or start their own genuine businesses. I think that that’s really powerful.

Tameez: How do you define your niche?

Spehar: I’m always going to be interested in U.S. politics and culture. I’m always talking about it from the position of what the American policy at play is here. If we were to talk about Israel-Palestine, I don’t have a ton of experience in reporting on what the deal is between the two. But I can certainly explain to you what the American policy has been, for better and worse, as it relates to that particular issue. Same thing with the way we cover the war in Iran. That’s the part I know how to communicate. I’m trying to get people to stay curious and find the good in things.

Tameez: Walk me through your day and your workflow, from video ideation to posting.

Spehar: I don’t sleep that well. Typically I’ll go to bed at 9:00 p.m., then be up at 1:00 a.m. and again at 3:00 a.m. I’ll look at my phone, see if anything happened in Europe or elsewhere, and then usually at 6:00 a.m., I’ll [open] my notetaking app where I keep a [list] of what’s been happening.

Every night, I know I’m going to do the news. By 7:00 p.m. I’ll post a video like, “It’s Monday night, here’s what happened.” And I’ve just aggregated thoughts in my head all day, things that people have texted me that I think [are] interesting.

I do the Substack with a researcher named Jed Bookout who I was able to hire. I write the Monday editions on Sunday — typically just a weekend wrap. Tuesday is for our deep investigative work. On Thursdays we do a queer-only story, which is written by a freelancer named Lana Leonard. Other than that, I post notes as needed on Substack. Substack is pretty set-it-and-forget-it for me because I have help there.

YouTube is a lot harder than the stuff I do with TikTok and Instagram, where I can just fire off a video. We have a new YouTube show thatwe’re going to pick back up [this month]. For YouTube, we have to script, plan, get guests, book them. That can be a little bit more difficult.

Tameez: Do you script your videos?

Spehar: It’s all on the fly. I have a running list of stories that I want to talk about, and then I’ll write down specific facts about it that I need to know and memorize them. For YouTube, I use a teleprompter, but often, because of my dyslexia, it’s difficult for me to read it straight.

Tameez: I want to hear more about your original reporting.

Spehar: I struggled in the first two years of Under the Desk, questioning myself like, are you a journalist? Are you not? Are you a content creator?

I was very happy to say I was a TikToker for a long time, until it became irresponsible to hide behind that label when people were coming to me expecting journalism that had been fact-checked, that was true, and that the experience I brought to it came from somewhere. The Shorenstein fellowship was super helpful in terms of understanding original source material and being in the swirl with people who are real journalists and real media people and how they act and behave.

But prior to that, the first person who was like, “No, you’re a journalist,” was Taylor Lorenz.

It was early on and I was doing the V Interesting podcast, which also had original reporting in it. I interviewed Taylor about the internet, and she goes, “Well, you’re a journalist.” And I said, “No, I’m not. I’m a TikToker.”

And she was like, “No, and actually, that’s irresponsible for you to say because what you are doing is journalism and you need to understand the ethics and expectation. The public thinks you’re a journalist, so you need to be one.”

That was a really good confidence builder, but also a call-out.

I have such respect for the [news] industry and for the people who do this work, and I didn’t think I was qualified to be one of them. And she was like, “No, you are that.” [She told me that I need to] publish my ethics, my finances, and understand that what people expect of me is journalism. What that means is transparency in how I’m paid, who I work for, who my partners are, what my sources are. All that kind of stuff.

Tameez: How do you find information for your videos?

Spehar: I’m usually monitoring about a dozen different major media news organizations, everything from Rolling Stone and Teen Vogue to CNN, Politico, New York Times, The Washington Post, Axios. I also work with Ground News. I’m a partner of theirs so I do paid work for them promoting their app. I’m not just saying this because I get paid by them, but I genuinely find their Blindspot feature to be helpful; it knows my algorithm, so it’ll show me stories that I don’t [normally] see. Those are typically stories that are from the right wing, which oftentimes might be misinformation that I need to talk about.

I also go to local newspapers and I see what they’re writing about, what’s on their front pages. That’s how we end up making people feel really seen. Even though I have a national audience, I might pick up something from some random-ass place in Oklahoma that’s really interesting, and then that can become a bigger story.

I also get tips from people. I get hundreds of DMs a day. Sometimes there’s something useful in there. I also look at Google Trends right before we do the news and see if there is something that people are talking about that I missed. Sometimes people are talking about, like, this crazy thing that happened at the Olympics with the curler poking the stone. I’m going to throw that in because it’s something fun. I know people will talk about it in the comments. It’s good to have stories that are not always so hard.

Tameez: How do you fact-check?

Spehar: Sometimes I can directly talk to people. Over the last five years, I’ve built strong relationships with certain members of Congress. If I need to fact-check something about the Epstein stuff, I can probably get in touch with the offices of [California congressman] Ro Khanna or [Pennsylvania congresswoman] Summer Lee fairly quickly. Same thing when it comes to New York politics.

Other than that, I’m looking for the original source. If it was a Supreme Court docket, their opinions, I could look at that. I can look at stuff from the White House. I’ll usually try to have stories from two or three major media outlets that have written about it, and then try to see what I think the story is between their different framings.

We don’t do breaking news. I think that’s a great benefit to me unless I really [understand the subject], because then I have the time to watch it develop as opposed to trying to start [reporting] from scratch. When we do start from scratch, it’s typically only for the Tuesday Substack or YouTube, and that takes weeks or months…that involves your normal journalist stuff of calling people, waiting for them to call you back, verifying it, looking up the original documents, making sure that’s what it says, quoting from books.

I don’t have a problem saying that the mainstream media reported on something. Some other news creators don’t want to do that because their whole brand is built on the idea that mainstream media is lying to you and they’re not, even though a lot of their information comes from the mainstream.

Tameez: Do you use AI at all in your workflow?

Spehar: I don’t, because I’m old. I’m an elder millennial and I have never made a ChatGPT account. The only time AI shows up in my life is on Substack. When I go live on Substack, it automatically clips the videos and posts them to YouTube. It’s automated for me in the Substack platform, so it’s forced upon me. I sometimes look at Google’s AI summary to see how wrong it is.

Because of my dyslexia, I learned how to speed read. [Growing up in Connecticut], I was part of a program that pulled some kids out of regular class to go to another place and do more experiential learning…the system basically has you guess what the words are instead of reading them letter by letter, and in that way you can get the gist of what is going on.

It’s permission to receive the letters on the page, and then let your brain fill it in — which, turns out, is not great for reading comprehension. Later in life, I had to learn how to read normally to deal with reading out loud and teleprompter=type things. But i will “turn on” speed reading when i want to get through something super fast.

Tameez: How do you make corrections if you get something wrong?

Spehar I just straight up say, “Yo, we fucked this up.” I delete the video and it’s as clear as that.

Some folks have a hard time with that. They don’t want to do that, or they made a lot of money on the first video and maybe just one little thing was wrong in it. That’s expensive, but it’s going to cost you more if you don’t just address it quickly.

Tameez: Do you remember the first time you had to do that?

Spehar: Yes. There was a guy in Chicago who was reporting about men who were going missing after going out to bars. They were ending up in the river, and he was reporting about it. The guy reporting was very transparent and he had a lot of good sources that you were able to check, and then I don’t know what happened. He got a little weird and he started saying things that weren’t as trustworthy anymore.

But I had told people to follow him as he was talking about these boys going missing because I thought it was interesting and he was really keeping up on it. He said [an investigator] met with him…and then it turned out that he was lying. He had gotten ahead of the story.

I was like, “Look, I know I told you to follow this guy and I think what he was doing at the beginning was really great. I’m really worried about the victims, these men, and their families for what they’ve gone through. But I think he’s obviously lost in the sauce and I no longer endorse his reporting.” I took a little shit for it, but it was fine in the end.

There was another time that I said, “For the first time in history, we’re losing rights instead of gaining them” when Roe v. Wade got overturned. I was very quickly corrected by Black historians, the folks who were like, “No, Dred Scott will tell you that this is not the first time that Americans have lost rights.”

I just wasn’t thinking. I apologized, I corrected it, I said this was an ignorant moment based on my own grief over Roe v. Wade and my perspective as a woman. I should have been more thoughtful with my words and I’m sorry.

Tameez: Who is your audience?

Spehar: My fastest-growing demographic is definitely millennials and older people who maybe never voted before or were never involved in politics before. But at this point in American history, we are feeling the effects of thinking somebody else would deal with it. I’m called News Auntie by a lot of Gen Z; they’re not in my age group, but they still trust me and feel like I can hang out.

The audience is about 70% female, 30% male. I used to have a much bigger conservative audience. I do not anymore and I think that’s directly related to some conservative people leaving conservatism because they consider themselves independent or centrists now, and some people who are conservative going full MAGA.

We’ve surveyed the audience a lot. I actually have a pretty decent-sized military family following, which I appreciate and is interesting. I try to keep them and things that might affect them in mind in a lot of the work that we do.

I was embedded with the Department of Defense for a period of time, and I think that led to it because I was making a lot of DoD content. I hear from them that when I was doing my embed, [my videos were helpful] because a lot of their service members are on deployment, they don’t have access to their phones that much. So they can get caught up without being overwhelmed, or the content being overly partisan or false.

Tameez: How did that embed with the DoD [under the Biden administration] come about?

Spehar: My dad was an engineer for Sikorsky Aircraft and he worked in a special capacity for the DoD. Almost every boy I knew signed up for the military right after September 11. I have a lot of friends and family that are military members or veterans. It’s something that’s interesting to me and I grew up with. I think there are very few people in the mainstream media and in new media that communicate well when it comes to the military.

[The embed is] called the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference where you get embedded with the military for about a week. You go to several different bases, you talk to active service members, you learn about what the military’s priorities are. Because we have a civilian-led military, we also require that civilians have oversight of the military to ensure transparency…In my audience, some of them were extremely turned off that I did this because they thought I was going to be making military propaganda, but then I didn’t. So they were like, “okay, fine.”

Tameez: So you told the audience beforehand that you were going to do this?

Spehar: Yes! We did a countdown. I did a Get Ready With Me packing all the shit I had to bring with me. I did videos while I was in the field. I did videos about what was going on.

The things I cared about were the social services and programs that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was planning. I wasn’t necessarily interested in how many guns we bought or what we’re doing with ships. It’s not propaganda if you’re talking about how we treat military families, what the plan is, and where it needs to improve. I don’t think it made that big of a difference to folks. They did not like that I shot guns and all that. But you know, when in Rome.

Tameez: Do you think you would do it again if that opportunity came about under the Department of War?

Spehar: I won’t sign a paper saying that I’ll only report what [U.S. defense secretary Pete Hegseth] says. I don’t trust this Department of War to keep me safe the way that I did under Austin. I felt very there was a lot of transparency with where I was going, what I was doing, and what was going to happen. I knew those expectations would be met, if not exceeded. I don’t feel that way with Hegseth. For those reasons, I would not do it. I have no reservations about the professionalism of our United States military. I just do not trust Pete.

I don’t think that Pete Hegseth has proven that he in any way cares for anyone other than his ideals. I don’t think that the transparency that I was able to have in meetings that I had with active duty members would be there. So it’s kind of like, what’s the point? I don’t want to get anybody in trouble for talking to me, either. I don’t think he values journalism, women, let alone non-binary people. Right now, I do not think that’s a good choice and I’m not going to waste my time .

I also didn’t do the creator thing that they were trying to do with the White House press corps, because you’re not coming in as an independent journalist or creator. You’re coming in as a guest of the press secretary, and that’s loaded.

Tameez: How do you engage with your audience?

Spehar: Through DMs, through comments. I also watch a lot of people’s content and comment on theirs. I am just as much a community member and viewer as I am a creator. I also enjoy when people come up to me in person. If I’m out, people just talk to me about what they’re seeing and learning and hearing. I think that’s a really cool part of being recognized; when people are like, “I don’t want to bother you,” but like, you’re never bothering me. I always love that.

Tameez: What does that feel like?

Spehar: It feels cool in Rochester, N.Y. [where I live] because I’m just your friend and neighbor and everybody here is really proud of that. That’s why I like living here and why we stay here. When I’m in New York or D.C., it’s a little bit more of a spectacle, like, “Can I take a picture with you?” Which is fine, but I wouldn’t love that if I had that at home all the time. But when I’m home, you’re just shopping for cheese at Wegmans and so are other people, and they’re like, “Yo, Prince Andrew got arrested!” You just feel a part of the world. It’s nice.

Tameez: How has the sale of TikTok changed your work and business?

Spehar: The TikTok mess has been a problem for years and I think overall I’m less worried about that. I think through this process, TikTok became not fun and not trusted as much. People don’t know if it will be there the next day. In all the times it got banned or almost banned or went dark or did weird shit, I think people left and they just put more of their time into YouTube and Instagram and other platforms. I think that’s where we’re at with TikTok. I’ll make TikToks until the day I die, just because that’s where I started and it’s where my people still are. As long as people are there, I will make sure that they get the content that they want and are educated.

Tameez: How has your relationship to social media and information consumption changed since you started making videos?

Spehar: I used to be a lot more concerned with trying to control the information that people got and didn’t get, and trying to call out specific accounts that were doing bad. I had to give that up because people are going to view what they want and all I can do is focus on my corner being consistent and stable and truthful. There was a period of time where I felt responsible for the whole internet, and I don’t anymore.

Tameez: Who are your favorite news creators?

Spehar: I really like the work that SCOTUSBlog does. I think that they are phenomenal when it comes to all things SCOTUS. I just go to them and I know I’m going to get everything. I really like Alicia the Luncheon Lawyer. She’s an attorney in Atlanta and communicates really well.

Monty Mader is another one that is new to me that I’ve been following. Daniella the Knitting Cult Lady is another one I like. She’s a former military member.

@popsmartmedia covers how film and television is influencing American politics. The Tennessee Holler is a great one. Betches. Amanda’s Mild Takes is a great one. Sharon Says So does civics and history. I don’t watch a lot of news aggregators as much as I watch a lot of experts in certain fields.

Tameez: What news subscriptions do you pay for?

Spehar: I still like reading magazines. I get the print edition of Rolling Stone to my house, and I like to sit and read the whole thing. I get Vanity Fair, Variety, The New Yorker. I get the local newspaper and I like to not be on my phone and just read through that. Plus Newspapers.com because you can look back at old issues of anything. Sometimes we’ll do that for the Substack — we’ll want to look at old reporting from Palm Beach on Epstein or something. I pay for The Daily Beast. I don’t necessarily take their point of view, but I’m sometimes challenged and entertained by their work. We also subscribe to The Atlantic.

I subscribe to a lot of local newspapers, because they’re, like, $4 for the year for digital-only. I couldn’t even name them all right now. I subscribe to a lot of Substacks, too. It’s like death by a million paper cuts, $4 here, $7 there.It doesn’t seem a lot until I get my bills at the end of the year and I’m like, “Shit, I spent a lot of money.”

Tameez: How much money do you make?

Spehar: A lot.

I make a lot and it costs a lot. That’s how it works. We bring in a lot of money through YouTube AdSense on monetized videos. TikTok, for a period of time, was heavily monetized. Now they pay like shit. Then brand deals and partnerships. I have extremely high clickthrough rates and very high trust. I don’t do a lot of ads, but we get paid well when we do them.

Tameez: What is your largest revenue stream?

Spehar: I make my living on our Substack funds. The Substack makes the most consistent, predictable, reliable money because you’ve sold [the subscription] for the year or month-to-month. It stays fairly steady. I’m in a good situation where as many people as I lose, I gain more. Everything from there kind of wiggles around. I think for news creators starting off, I would encourage them to figure out how you do this while you keep a W-2 real job. That’s what I did for years, and I still make a lot of my money in consulting and speaking gigs and in-person events. It’s not like you just make money doing the TikToks. That’s not a thing.

Tameez: What is your lifestyle like?

Spehar: Rochester is a very affordable place to live. I own a home. I paid $330,000 for it, which is crazy for a five-bedroom home in the suburbs with a nice yard in a nice school district. I do not have children yet. I have three dogs, which is very exciting. They’re costly.

Because I choose to live in Rochester, I’m self-funding flights and hotels frequently to D.C., New York, and everywhere else to do the work that I do. If I lived in New York City, my cost of living would be much higher. I find the balance to be much more in my favor to live in Rochester and go to cities when I have to.

Tameez: Is this work profitable?

Spehar: I think I know how to run a strong small business. We run it as lean as we can while treating people as great as we can. The folks who work for me are probably overpaid, but I value them. Everybody eats. If I’m doing well, you should do really well too.

Jed, who works with me on Substack, gets a percentage of Substack [revenue]. As it grows, he’s growing with me too. I think that’s fair.

If you’re coming into this world, don’t expect that the money is what it used to be at all. That goes for beauty influencers, news influencers, everyone. I think on TikTok there was a period of time where you could make a decent living, you could do very well on TikTok Shop. I don’t know how saturated it is now for folks just coming in.

When we were fighting the TikTok ban, I was spending so much time in Congress talking about folks who make $200 to $1,000 a month on TikTok. It makes a difference because that’s like the registration fee for a kid to play soccer. I could live in a slightly nicer apartment. I can do a little something even if I make a little money at this. If it brings you joy, do it. But if you think it’ll make you rich, it won’t. If you get lucky and you get an anchor spot at CNN someday, great. But that’s probably not going to happen for everybody.

Tameez: What are some of the unexpected costs of being a news creator?

Spehar: Lawyers, accountants, and business liability insurance. Where I am now, if I were to say something defamatory or false, I probably would have somebody try to sue me. That’s $5,000 or $10,000 a year in media liability insurance and you get $1 million in insurance. That sucks. Nobody wants to pay for that. But if you have to.

Lawyers are super important, especially for the amount of contracts that I do that are one-off events or partnerships. Those are expensive. Your accounting gets very tricky especially if you’re working in multiple cities.

Admin. If you want to get somebody to answer your phones, do your brand deals, manage your calendar. It’s super valuable, and that could be costly. Editing is extremely expensive if you don’t know how to edit yourself. It is $250 to $1,000 for a video to be fully professionally edited, depending on how long it is, how many clips you want, how many people were on the stream, subscription services.

Tameez: How has your view about legacy and mainstream journalism changed since you started this work?

Spehar: I have always had great respect for the danger of on-the-ground reporting, and the patience reporters have to follow a lead and a story sometimes for years before getting the satisfaction of publishing. Since being in the industry more directly, now I find many of the frustrations I have as a “new media” creator with the gatekeepers and billionaire media bosses conglomerating our information spaces are shared with traditional media anchors, journalists, reporters, and photojournalists. We are much more alike in our vision for the future of this industry than different.

Tameez: What lessons do you think legacy journalism can learn from news creators and vice versa?

Spehar: I think that’s for each of us to decide and create “third places” to build something new together. Traditional media doesn’t need to be more TikTok-y. Digital influencers don’t need to be more traditional. There’s room enough for all of us and together we get the job of telling the truth and holding power accountable done together.

Tameez: What challenges lie ahead in 2026 for news creators?

Spehar: Funding. Same as everyone. Being able to recognize misinformation and AI, establishing and keeping a stable mental health while experiencing firsthand the atrocities being committed by our government on our economy, community spaces, and friends and neighbors. It’s a lot to hold. The challenge will be in making time for joy, whimsy, and self preservation to fight another day.

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