How V Spehar built a news business from under a desk

The data is in: News creators and influencers are a major source of news for Americans, especially people under 30. This is the fourth 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. Tameez: How did you transition into working as a full-time news creator? Did you have any prior journalism or media experience before this?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.” 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 that we’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 rea…