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Nick Shirley never planned to become one of the nation’s best known independent journalists, making videos that would dominate the national conversation and be retweeted by vice presidents and CEOs.
Yet in the wake of his Minnesota fraud investigation, Shirley has exploded onto the national scene as a one-man journalism machine.
Recently, he sat down with Fox News Digital at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas to discuss his unconventional rise, his reporting philosophy, and the stories the mainstream media is still ignoring.
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Independent journalist Nick Shirley speaks during a roundtable discussion in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images, File)
“Well, when I was younger, I’d make vlog pranks, and then I started to get a little bit older and wanted to see what was happening in the world. And it turned into journalism,” Shirley said about his start in reporting. “I didn’t know it was journalism at the time. I thought I was just making YouTube videos on more interesting topics.
“And now I’m one of the biggest and most well-known journalists in America, in the world, actually.”
Shirley conceded that his particular style is hard to define.
“I think that’s a good mix, like an…independent YouTube journalist, like it’s journalism with a bit of documentary style as well, so it’s kind of different than what anyone has ever done before as far as this new realm of YouTube journalism,” he said.
Shirley said he realized that he had an explosive story as the Minnesota fraud video “Feeding Our Future” scandal cracked nine-digit views on X.
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NIck Shirley’s brand of independent reporting has caught the eye of Vice President JD Vance, among other luminaries. (Urs Flueeler, Pool Photo via AP, File)
“When I saw it hit 100 million views, I had never seen a video get to 100 million views on X before. And then it became shared by some of the biggest voices in the world as well,” said Shirley, who boasts 1.7 million followers on the platform, and nearly 2 million subscribers on YouTube.
Among them were Vice President J.D. Vance, Elon Musk and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Shirley said he believes in zeroing in his investigation on primary sources when he is devoting time and resources to new stories.
“I take all the information that’s public from the government and I go straight to the source,” he said.
Despite the massive success Shirley has seen, he still comes across stories that do not get the exposure he feels is warranted.
“On a national level, I think the fentanyl crisis in the United States is really bad,” Shirley said. “I’ve done a few videos on that, but people seem to not want to stop the fentanyl crisis from happening.”
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Unsurprisingly, from time to time, Shirley said his journalistic work takes him to the limits of his comfort zone.
“In the favelas of Brazil, I thought I was going to die. That was a little scary,” he said. “In Kenya and Philadelphia as well, that was pretty dangerous.”
Shirley cited his Spanish language skills as a motivating factor in his coverage of the Biden administration border crisis, which he witnessed firsthand.
“I had heard about what was happening. I was living in Chile at the time. And I started to see what was happening with Venezuelan migrants coming into Chile,” Shirley said. “When I came back to the United States, I started looking into what was going on at the southern border.
“And since I could speak Spanish, I started to reveal what was actually happening. And people didn’t know that children were being smuggled. 17-year-old girls were coming over all by themselves. 12-year-old girls were all coming over all by themselves. And I kind of started to showcase what was happening from the border all the way to the shelters in New York City.”
Nick Shirley upended the news cycle last month with a 42-minute video investigating Minnesota daycare centers that appeared inactive despite receiving millions of dollars in government funding. (Nick Shirley)
Shirley did a two-year mission with the LDS Church, and credits his faith as a motivation for his work.
“Well, I think our faith invites us to look for the truth and expose evil,” he said. “Like, the scriptures, the Bible, everything, it’s a bunch of strong men exposing what’s happening as well, and I think that’s kind of lost.”
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Shirley said the recent guilty plea of Fahima Egeh Mahamud — the woman tied to Minnesota’s massive “Feeding Our Future” scandal and daycare fraud scheme — as evidence of the veracity of his work, as the mainstream media and Democratic establishment have worked hard to discredit his investigations.
“Well, numbers don’t lie, and convictions don’t lie either,” he said. “The largest daycare in Minnesota, government funded, just pleaded guilty today.”