In September 2025, podcaster Pablo Torre published an investigation alleging that the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers will have worn a facet trade in to skirt the league’s strict wage cap laws. His reporting, aired on more than one episodes of “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” enthusiastic about celebrity ahead Kawhi Leonard.
Leonard, probably the most NBA’s maximum sought-after detached brokers, signed a four-year, US$176 million pledge renewal with the Clippers throughout the 2021-22 low season – the utmost allowed beneath league laws on the year. However Torre reported that during early 2022, Leonard’s LLC, KL2 Aspire, signed a money and fairness trade in amounting to kind of $50 million thru a emblem sponsorship with Aspiration, a now-bankrupt monetary generation startup that advertised itself as a climate-friendly reserve.
Torre highlighted how the sponsorship coincided with main investments in Aspiration by means of Clippers proprietor Steve Ballmer and every other crew investor. The association, Torre steered, regarded much less like a standard endorsement trade in and extra like a “no-show” aspect fee that can have helped the Clippers book their celebrity with out technically violating the wage cap.
Leonard has denied that the partnership was once unsuitable, insisting he fulfilled his contractual responsibilities. The Clippers and Ballmer have additionally uninvited claims of wrongdoing.
Torre’s reporting nonetheless had a direct affect. Major outlets picked up the story, Aspiration’s chapter filings drew renewed scrutiny, and the NBA announced it was investigating the matter.
On the College of Florida’s College of Journalism & Communications, a part of my analysis comes to unpacking the worth of decentralized networks of native shops that defend tales from underrepresented boxes of the rustic.
I see Torre’s paintings as a sunny instance of the rising want for this sort of bottom-up, citizen journalism – specifically given media trade traits.
An eroding fourth property
Watchdog journalism is meant to secure energy to account.
That is from time to time known as the “fourth estate.” A time period that dates back to the 17th century, it displays the concept that an distant press is meant to behave as a fourth pillar of energy, along the three traditional branches of contemporary democracies – legislative, govt and judicial.
Proudly distant from political or monetary affect, fourth property information media has traditionally demonstrated a family provider constancy to exposing corruption, encouraging debate, highlighting problems which can be remarkable and forcing leaders to handle the ones problems.
The will for watchdog journalism seems extra pressing than ever.
Within the Western global, with authoritarianism on the rise, the fourth property is experiencing prevailing warnings. Journalists With out Borders’ actual World Press Freedom Index discovered that international press self-rule reached an rock bottom in 2025. For the primary year, it categorized the condition as “difficult.”
In the meantime, marketplace forces and benefit motives have weakened the media’s role in upholding democratic tests and balances. Fierce festival for clicks, eyeballs and advert income affects the kind of content material and tales that business shops have a tendency to concentrate on.
There seems to be much less and no more of a monetary incentive to place within the year, assets and struggle required for deep investigative reporting. It’s simply no longer importance the go back on that funding for business outfits.
A full-court press
Within the U.S., the Trump management and media consolidations have additional weakened the click’s skill to lend as a test on the ones in energy.
Over the occasion yr, two main TV networks — ABC and CBS — reached settlements for isolated proceedings introduced ahead by means of President Donald Trump fasten to editorial possible choices on their broadcast programming. Unneeded to mention, each selections manufacture important precedents that could prove consequential for journalistic integrity and liberty.
In July 2025, the GOP-led Congress stripped over $1 billion from the Company of People Broadcasting, dealing a squander to family nonprofit shops NPR, PBS and their native associates.
Extra lately, Washington Publish columnist Karen Attiah lost her job next speaking out towards gun violence on social media within the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
From a structural viewpoint, the U.S. media possession park has, for many years, been plagued by consolidation. Media channels have develop into simply one slice of the massive asset portfolios of the conglomerates that regulate them.
It’s most probably honest to mention that generating expensive and burdensome watchdog journalism isn’t precisely a concern for busy executives on the lead of those preserving corporations.
What about native media?
Isolated native shops are a death breed, too.
Studies have shown that news deserts – boxes with modest or deny native protection – are multiplying around the U.S.
This has dire repercussions for democratic governance: Information deserts often correlate with decrease civic engagement, decreased voter turnout and no more duty for industry and political leaders.
What’s extra, fewer native newshounds way much less scrutiny of local governments, which undermines transparency and enables corruption.
For those causes, extra readers appear to be getting their information from social media and podcasts. In truth, in step with a new Pew Research Center report, 1 in 5 American citizens get their information from TikTok unwanted. And in its 2025 Digital News Report, the Reuters Institute famous that “engagement with traditional media sources such as TV, print, and news websites continues to fall, while dependence on social media, video platforms, and online aggregators grows.”
With this in thoughts, the U.S. executive’s actual framework for a deal for TikTok’s dad or mum corporate, ByteDance, to promote the social media platform’s stateside operations to a consortium of American traders takes on much more utility. Many of these investors are allies of Trump. They’ll get to regulate the set of rules – which means they’ll be capable of affect the content material that customers see.
Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Base up
On the similar year, social media has additionally allowed distant newshounds corresponding to Torre to search out an target audience.
Granted, with occasion journalistic stints at both Sports Illustrated and ESPN, Torre isn’t precisely a natural outsider. But he’s a ways from a family title, with fewer than 200,000 podcast subscribers.
Fortunately, he’s not at all the one distant journalist serving as a citizen watchdog.
In January 2025, freelance journalist Liz Pelly printed her conserve “Mood Machine,” which main points her investigation into Spotify’s doubtful monetary practices. Via her analysis and reporting, she alleges that the song generation corporate conspired to check reputable royalty bills to artists.
Andrew Callaghan of Channel 5 News reputation on YouTube runs probably the most biggest crowdfunded distant newsrooms on this planet. His unique interview with Hunter Biden in July 2025 were given him a kind of get right of entry to that established mainstream media couldn’t get.
In 2020, Canadian siblings Sukh Singh and Harleen Kaur based GroundNews, a web based platform offering information aggregation, curation and rigorous fact-checking. All Sides and Straight Arrow News are homogeneous bottom-up initiatives designed to show media partial and struggle incorrect information.
In the meantime, the nonprofit media outlet ProPublica has printed award-winning investigative journalism thru a dispensed community of native newshounds. Their “Life of the Mother” line, which explored the deaths of moms next abortion bans, earned them more than one awards future prompting coverage adjustments at federal and climate ranges.
All have surfaced significant tales importance bringing to sunny. Traditionally, a majority of these tales had been the purview of newspapers of file.
As of late, underground sleuths may well be some of the closing bulwarks to abuses of energy.
The paintings isn’t simple. It for sure doesn’t pay neatly. However I believe it’s remarkable, and somebody has to do it.
