Newpress, the media company the couple built out of Johnny’s 8M-subscriber YouTube channel, has closed a $12M fundraising round led by Emerson Collective and Glick Family Investments. The money will fund recruiting journalists and creators, expanding into new subjects and formats, and developing original programming. The stated ambition: Scale the network to 12 to 16 channels.
“Through those shows, we believe we can reach 100M people worldwide,” Iz told us.
Context: Newpress is made up of four different YouTube channels run by creator journalists, totalling 10M subscribers. Each creator under the Newpress umbrella earns a salary with revenue share and has access to Newpress’ network of editors, producers, and other operators. Beyond YouTube, Newpress has a subscription program that provides early access to their premium content—including Johnny’s upcoming travel show The Human Element.
But the bigger growth signal is the hire. Bill Owens, who ran 60 Minutes until resigning in April 2025 over a loss of editorial independence, will join as executive producer on March 1, 2027. He’ll work alongside Johnny and Iz to develop shows and scale reporting and production.
“As we plan to bring on more creators, more personalities, more editorial visions, keeping the vision of rigor and high standards [is] gonna be more difficult,” Johnny told us. “[Bill’s] gonna come with a lot of wisdom on how to do that, how to recruit the right people, and how to build a culture that pervades every additional show.”
Big picture: More and more, we’re seeing traditional media execs move to creator studios to build out their businesses. Scott Lewers left Lionsgate for Mark Rober’s CrunchLabs, Zach Miller went from Spotify to Jesser, and Cory Midgarden joined Smosh after years at Paramount.
