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When Dave Jorgenson, the Washington Post’s social media savant, left the paper to start his own company, the New York Times profiled him. The headline: “Can the Washington Post’s TikTok Guy Make It Without the Post?” A year later, the answer is pretty clear: he’s doing just fine.

Today, Local News International, which he cofounded with two former Post colleagues, is profitable. With an audience of more than four hundred and twenty-five thousand subscribers on YouTube, and nearly three hundred and fifty thousand followers on TikTok, Jorgenson and his partners are developing a long-form show exploring partnerships that could broaden their reach. 

Much of Jorgenson’s work rests on a simple premise: in an increasingly crowded news environment, humor can help journalists break through. It’s a strategy he employed last week, in a video unpacking the conspiracy theories surrounding Dr. Anthony Fauci. “Misinformation is rampant,” he told me. “Often, within the videos that I’m making, I sort of position myself as the butt of the joke, like the person that fell for it or is confused.” His approach is to meet the audience with empathy rather than judgment. “Humor makes people feel less stupid, and no one wants to feel dumb,” he said.

We also talked about the realities of running a business, the sometimes blurry line between journalist and influencer, and his best advice for Jeff Bezos. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve said that what kept you from going out on your own sooner was a fear of failure. I’m curious if that fear is gone yet. 

I’d be a psychopath if there wasn’t some fear. But it’s a healthy amount, and it certainly hasn’t expanded. It flares up when we’re about to try something new. We’re about to launch this long-form series soon, which I’m really excited about, but it’s not a known entity. So I’m like, how’s this going to work? But even at the Washington Post, there was still kind of that fear. What’s nice now is that we’ve established ourselves. We also got a grant from MediaWise, who we are collaborating with to launch a teen creator network. So now there’s a safety cushion. 

How has it been to be a business owner? 

I brought people along that I can trust and can handle the parts that are either my weak areas or just complete blind spots. How do I set up a C corp? Do we hire an accountant for all those things? That’s why we have Micah Gelman and Lauren Saks. They were my two bosses at the Post. They also run the consulting side of our company, which is another form of revenue.

At the Post, a lot of times when you do well, they want to promote you to an editor or manager role, which makes sense because they’re trying to find a way to pay you more. But I was always like, I would love you to pay me more, but I want to keep making things. I don’t want to manage people, necessarily, at least in that capacity. So it’s cool that I get to continue to do that and spend most of my time on the creative process while still having this company that we own. 

What is the consulting side of the business? 

That is with both individuals and newsrooms. They’re all in different stages. Sometimes they have an existing video department, but they don’t know how to make social video. Sometimes they just want to figure out where to start and who to hire. 

Early in your career, you were an intern for The Colbert Report, and so much of what you do is rooted in humor. You did a TED Talk about how humor is actually one of the most effective ways to fight misinformation. Can you explain that? 

Misinformation is rampant; we all fall for it one time or the other. What follows when you find out it’s not real, or that you’re told it’s not real, is embarrassment. And I feel that humor is the easiest way to be like, Listen, I get it, but let’s make a joke about it. And often within the videos that I’m making, I sort of position myself as the butt of the joke, like the person that fell for it or is confused.

It’s both that empathetic approach, but also humor makes people feel less stupid, and no one wants to feel dumb.

But unlike a Colbert or a John Oliver, you very much consider yourself to be a journalist. So how do you draw that distinction and make it clear to the audience?

We make sure everything’s fact-checked and rigorous, and, if we do mess up, we correct it. So there is a give-and-take there. But I do think, especially for our audience, it’s more valuable that they know Yeah, there’s jokes, but I’m a journalist. 

I find ways to say I’m an independent journalist and, if you see that, it’s completely intentional. In our specific news-creator world, especially in short vertical videos, there’s a lot of creators that became sort of news aggregators or news explainers, which is totally fine—but there is a difference where I’m coming at it from a traditional journalism education background. I don’t have any problem with that, but I do think there’s a distinction, and it’s good for people to know that if they want to make decisions about who they trust or watch. 

Can you tell me what the long-form show will be about? 

It’s about misinformation, which is kind of my favorite topic and probably in the DNA of most of our videos. It starts with a topic that people are currently talking about and a piece of misinformation about it. We untangle that and then just explain the topic more broadly—a this has been going on for like a week and now I’m too afraid to ask situation. We’re hoping there’s an element of it where we have people call in, maybe even a voicemail with their thoughts on something—I saw this. Is it real?—and let that be the opening of the episode and go from there. 

Is the idea that you might want to distribute that on non–social media platforms, like streaming? 

Absolutely. We just hit four hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube, which is awesome. That’s a good potential starting place for the long-form series, but we’re very open. For lack of a better comparison, it’s how you see Hot Ones on Netflix. They’ve sold off different potential rights so you have the ability to stream it elsewhere. So we’re very open to that long-term, and I think best-case scenario it’s a little bit of both, because YouTube, YouTube TV in particular, that’s where a majority of our younger audience is watching things anyway. So we wouldn’t want to go away from that, but we also want to broaden our audience. 

In the year since you left the Washington Post, they have laid off a third of the newsroom and there’s been a talent exodus. When you announced you were leaving the Post, you did it in the form of a video letter to Jeff Bezos. If you were going to write him a letter now, what would it say? 

Oh my God. I’ll start by saying that I’ve never really had a conversation with him—that was kind of the joke of the video. We never really met. I’m not a vindictive person. I would start once again with “thank you” because, honestly, we wouldn’t have what we have if I hadn’t had the chance to experiment while at the Washington Post. But if I’m totally seriously writing the letter, I would say what we’re doing right now is exactly what we could have done at the Post, but that opportunity is fading quickly because of the current mandates. I think what we’re doing is really a reflection of what the Post was a decade ago. So that’s the serious part, and then I would say, “Your beard looks okay, but I’m not sure about it yet.” 

Speaking of the Post, there are a lot of people who have gone independent and are still trying to figure it out. Is there any advice you have for those people?

I would say reaching out to others, including myself, independent reporters, or people who have done this, is way more helpful than you’d expect. There’s a lot of people that understand exactly what you’re going through and will give you as much advice as you need. So reach out to people who have already done it, and not just people you know. 

We’re a year in, and I think we’ve accomplished our goals. I’m just really happy about that, and I hope that, by this time next year, we’re doing another Q-and-A, and I hope that Jeff Bezos has a longer beard.

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