'Same values, same mission, same ethics': How the Houston Chronicle chooses creators to work with

“We are thinking of creators almost as, like, freelancers for the digital age.”

Earlier this month, the Knight Foundation held its annual Media Forum in Miami. Videos of many of the sessions are on YouTube and we’re publishing transcripts of some of the most interesting conversations. Transcripts are lightly edited for clarity, and any errors are ours.

Here, Amalie Nash, VP of journalism at the Knight Foundation, speaks with Houston Chronicle managing editor of news and strategy Alejandra Matos, Chronicle senior director of digital experimentation and innovation Jennifer Chang, and Houston creator Shawn Singh (“Shawn the Food Sheep”) about the Chronicle’s recent partnerships with creators.

Amalie Nash: I’m going to tell you a little bit about Shawn, show you a little video, and then we’re going to dive into the partnership that was created with the Houston Chronicle.

So you see on the screen, this is Shawn, Shawn the Food Sheep. In 2020, he started these accounts while working on his master’s degree with a goal of posting every single day, at least once a day for a year. Today, he has 258,000 followers on TikTok, 239,000 on Instagram, and 40,000 on YouTube. So let’s take a look at what his content is like. [clip]

All right, we’ll stop it there. I’ll show you a little bit about some of the results from that food video. Obviously, that was produced in partnership with the Chronicle. So in 2024 the Houston Chronicle noticed a spike in traffic to some of their food content. It wasn’t from Shawn, it was from another creator, but it got them thinking: What if we partnered with some sort of creators, and really thought about how we might collaborate and do something differently here?