Today’s Maxed Out features my chat with one of the most powerful women leading the creator space right now: Newpress co-founder and CEO Iz Harris. She and the team over there have been making some big moves these last few months. They hired former ‘60 Minutes’ executive producer Bill Owens to grow their creator roster and oversee editorial, and secured a cool $12 million worth of funding led by Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective. After the New York Times broke the news a couple weeks back, I caught up with Iz about what’s been going on behind the scenes at Newpress and how they’re pioneering a new kind of creator business model that’s showing plenty of early success and promise.  

Then: ‘The Daily’ makes a couple big leadership changes, Dianna Russini’s new show certainly did not go off without a hitch, and more media intel, in Seen and Heard. Plus, Disney is looking for someone to proofread Marvel comic books and Vox is on the hunt for a new podcast leader, in our Hot Jobs roundup. 

xoxo,

Stephanie

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The biggest gripe for many creators is how to make money sustainably without relying on the whims of Meta or YouTube’s monetization programs to fund what can add up to an expensive production process. That’s the challenge that Newpress co-founder and CEO Iz Harris and her husband, Johnny Harris, saw as an opportunity back in 2024, and they made a smart bet by doing so. Now, with $12 million in new funding and a big new hire to boot — former ‘60 Minutes’ executive producer Bill Owens — Newpress is starting to pave a bigger, bolder future for itself.

Newpress is a production company and community platform where creators produce video journalism for YouTube and more platforms, all with the shared ethos of helping people make sense of what’s going on in the world. The subjects are all over the map, from geopolitics with Max Fisher to internet mysteries with Christophe Haubursin. When Bill starts in March, he’ll be tasked with growing the roster and widening what it covers. A large part of Newpress’ revenue comes from sponsorships and advertising, but there’s also a $60-a-year membership program that comes with perks like ad-free videos at least a week before they drop on YouTube, live events and creator Q&As.   

Of all people to lead the charge on redefining the creator business model, Iz and Johnny were primed for this. Iz led her own YouTube channel before she was tapped by Vox to lead a show at Eater. Johnny, who also worked for Vox, left the outlet in 2020 to start a channel that snowballed to more than 8 million subscribers. Iz, feeling burnt out, decided to shut her own channel down and work with Johnny to grow his. They took what they learned from growing his channel and launched Newpress just two years ago, with Johnny among its roster of creators. The company already has some significant backing, including David Leavy, the former COO of CNN (who I also used to work with at Discovery back in the day).

For this week’s Maxed Out, Iz gets into how Newpress pays its creators, what she had to unlearn about being a woman in charge, why she's not interested in building 100 shows just for the sake of it, and, in Maxed Out tradition, her media diet.

Your husband had his own YouTube channel, and that grew pretty exponentially. What led you both to say, "We want to do more than just cultivate this channel. We want this to be an ecosystem with many different creators in the mix"?

Around the time that Johnny’s channel really started blowing up, I burnt out hard and decided that I wanted to live privately and shut my channel down, and all of that will come back to how I think about what we’re building. But the most important thing is, I was able to really shift my operation over to Johnny’s channel and have an understanding of what it is to have your face on the front lines of the internet, to create a show and to try to translate that to a team, and what it’s like to be audience-facing. And so after a few years of developing Johnny’s show, and it continuing to grow, and he was reaching millions, both of us thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to expand into different voices and to be able to do this again?”

And so the thing that we had built that was the most scalable was not Johnny. We could only scale him so far, and man, did we try! It was really the operation behind Johnny.

The first channel that we launched was by Sam Ellis. We approached Sam and just said, “Hey, I know you’re looking at your next step here from Vox, and why don’t we talk about what a show could look like? We think we could create something with you that would be really exciting.” And he came with so many ideas. We weren’t thinking we were growing a media company at that time. We really were like, let’s launch two channels, and then we were like, let’s launch three channels, and then I think by the third, we collectively looked at one another and were like, it’s getting hard to explain what we do to our parents and anyone else. We probably should give this a name, and that’s where Newpress came from.

It was born out of this idea of being able to bring really in-depth, rigorous information to people through a human that they connect with and trust, and being able to pull on both of our experiences from Vox Media, but also as creators ourselves, to protect the journalists that we bring on board and really try to shape something in their voice and vision.

You come from that world of being a creator yourself, and you mentioned that it was a very intense job to have. How did you apply your own experience to working with the creators who are currently in your orbit right now?

There are a lot of things about being a CEO that I'm learning as I go. I don't come from a formal business background. I'm an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur for, I don't know, however long I've been working: launching things and growing things. But the thing that I was able to bring to this is my ability to merge the business and the realities of what it is to be a creator. So a lot of the ways that we built the business — to avoid it becoming a volume business, to protect the creators so that they're able to do their best work — come from exactly those learnings. It's knowing that it's very important that the people around creators and journalists, and anyone who has a vision and voice that they want to share with the world, that that's mirrored back to them and heard and supported.

A lot of our work with the journalists that we work with is doing our best to really listen to them and listen to what it is they want to say to the world, the impact that they want to have, and then shaping that so that we can create shows that help people better understand this increasingly complex world, right? But our focus with them as individuals is how to do that sustainably, how to do that with care for their voice, and how to do that in a way that helps them maintain that vision when there are a lot of voices — millions — coming back at them each and every time they publish.

Yeah, the reactions and the comments part is really interesting. What sort of advice do you give to the people who you work with when it comes to receiving all of the reactions that they get? 

We're pretty lucky because our audience comes to us to learn about the world. So they come to us with a purpose, and they spend a lot of time with us. We have an average view duration of 15 minutes across our videos, which is pretty unheard of in video. Typically, when it is someone who's been a sustaining audience member of our community, the comments are really useful. They help us do better work. They help us navigate and understand our blind spots. They call us out if and when we get things wrong, so that we can issue corrections. It's a pretty reciprocal relationship.

What I tell them is, within the first 24 hours, that's when you're going to hear from your sphere of people. Those are going to be your subscribers. Those are going to be the people who understand what it is you're trying to convey to the world. After those first 24 hours, it then goes out into the ether. It goes out to millions and millions more people, some of whom might be interested in engaging in the work, and some of whom might not. And they might be participating a little bit more in that secondary attention ecosystem that has become the comment section. And so I try as much as I possibly can to encourage them to pay attention within the first 24 hours and tune out after the first 24 hours.

All of us are deeply imperfect in adhering to that advice. I've had to learn it over the years. It's this delicate balance of knowing there's a lot we can learn from the people who watch our stuff. There are these incredible, multiple-paragraph-long analyses of what it is we're saying, and you don't want those to get lost in the, you know, "Boo, go away." 

What do you look for when you decide who to work with? And then, related to that question, where do you think there are opportunities to grow in certain areas? 

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things we're very focused on is expanding the diversity of the creator set, and really making that an urgent priority. That's both going to be in bringing on a broader variety of voices, but it's also going to be in subject matter and format, like you said.

All of the shows start with the creator and their voice and vision. So they come to Newpress — either we recruit them or they come and pitch us — and we develop a show that we believe helps people feel more anchored in the world. We kind of see it as expanding into maybe what you would have found in a newspaper. We're looking to expand into technology and economics and finance and science, and as we do that, we are committed to that being a broader variety of voices.

I read in the New York Times article that Newpress plans to expand to newsletters and podcasts. Is there anything that you can say about that, as far as what you're thinking is the next step to shepherd those two areas specifically?

We're at this really exciting moment of growth with Newpress and a lot of possibility. The way that we've gotten to where we are has been adhering to a mantra that my team is now so tired of hearing me say, which is, "Don't get distracted by the shiny thing." And the shiny thing can be all kinds of things, but often it can be expanding your focus immediately when the opportunity presents itself.

Our focus is really going to be committing to doing the thing over and over that got us here and getting better at that, and that is bringing on creators and developing shows around them that help people navigate a complex world in multiple subjects and formats. And then over time, if we start to see that there is audience appetite, and we believe that we're at a point of scaling where we can really maintain the rigor and the depth that our audience knows us for, we're very open to what those expansions might be. I think newsletter, podcast, potentially daily output — all of those things may make sense, but it's really going to come down to who the Newpress consumer is, what they say to us in terms of what's going to be most useful to them, what creator might be best suited for that, and what they want to do. So there are a lot of question marks that will lead us to those decisions, and I plan to be very judicious as we navigate each of those.

From that same article, Bill Owens said that editorial independence was one of the reasons why he went to Newpress. How do you protect that editorial independence while managing advertisers and sponsors?

Yeah, it's a great question, and I think it's one that all of media is navigating right now in really new ways, with there being new revenue sources and opportunities. That being said, every single media company has been built off of some combination of subscription revenue and advertising revenue, and we adhere to a lot of the same principles. Our advertisers never have any editorial say or influence over what it is we make or how we make it. Their input is limited to their ad spot, which is always marked for the audience to see when they watch our pieces, and that's incredibly important to us. As we navigate those relationships, it's knowing where the journalism is and where the ad is, and keeping those two as separate as possible.

And Bill — he stands for rigor and independence. Full stop. That is his anthem. And so when he came to us, and we had our first conversation, and we started talking about what it might look like to work together, I think what really excited me about that was — scaling an organization is hard, and scaling an editorial arm is hard. We've done it for four shows, but we've never done it for 12 or 16 shows. And so the possibility and the expertise that he would bring to Newpress in terms of how we could build that out, and how we could remain responsible for our viewers, was something that really drew me to that partnership. He had all of his reasons for coming over, but that was very core: him filling a gap that we would increasingly have as we grew.

And I know that you also just raised some more funding on top of that, too. You’ve gone from being on camera to running your own business. What's been the biggest lesson you've learned throughout this that you didn't really expect, and that fundamentally changed how you operate as a businessperson?

Oh, I have learned so many lessons as I built this. One of the approaches we have at Newpress, and it's one of our principles, is that not knowing is a superpower. There's this whole idea that I raise my kids with, and I try to rear my team with, which is that being able to acknowledge and be very honest about the things that you don't know is actually what opens up the access path to growth, or opportunity for learning. It applies to the journalism and the work that we do, but also to running a business.

One of the things that I think was a key growth area for me — that was actually brought to me by one of my team members, Jon Laurence, who's our VP of production — was that clarity is kindness. For a long time, I tried to find the kindest, most amiable way to communicate something to my team, and I was doing that because I wanted them to feel seen as humans, and I wanted them to feel supported in their roles, and I wanted them to feel excitement about what it is we're building. But I was de-emphasizing clarity in that process, and didn't really recognize that by doing that, it could leave the people on the other side of the conversation feeling unsure or confused about what it was we were doing, or what it was they were supposed to be doing. And so I would say, in the raise, in the building, in my interactions with our team members and with our journalists, operating as much as possible from a point of clarity has dramatically changed the outcomes I can expect from my leadership. It's really turned up the dial in terms of being able to convey my vision in a way that is actualized by the team.

That's something that I hear from a lot of women in leadership roles. Why was it important for you? Did you feel like that directness was difficult because you didn't want to come across a certain way?

I think it's no secret to anyone who's followed our journey that both Johnny and I grew up Mormon. That was a big part of our upbringing, and leaving that has been a big part of our journey. And I think that part of my upbringing really created this idea that communicating directly was wrong — that, yes, it could be perceived as rude, or it could be perceived as abrasive, but more so that it was outside of the way that a woman should behave in any social dynamic. And so my experience of unlearning has happened to exist in the role of CEO, but it didn't exclude these things that were pervasive across my whole life.

So I think, yes, when I would have those interactions, it wasn't the people on the other side that were creating the dynamic. It was my own way of seeing the world, and my patterns of avoidance, and learnings of how to be and exist, that I had to work past and understand weren't actually serving the mission of what we're trying to do. And you know this, but when you really care about the mission, you're willing to unlearn pretty fucking fast what it is that's holding you back. Because ultimately, that's the thing on the other side. So you're like, well, goddamn it, I'm gonna speak more clearly now, because if I don't, it's existential for what it is we're trying to bring into the world. So in a way, it became this incredible catalyst and accelerator, because I cared so much. Similar to parenthood: you care so much that you're like, all right, I'll figure it out and I'll do better.

What's the sweet spot for you as far as the number of people who you ultimately would like to see be a part of the Newpress world? And is there anything on your wish list that you're hoping comes out of this in the next few months or year? 

Over the next year, we're going to be focused on expanding into a few more shows, building out the team to really scale the editorial arm of the operation, and then continuing to diversify revenue. Those are going to be our three focuses. A question we get asked a lot is, well, why not 100 creator-led shows? And as much as, of course, I would love for that to be out in the world, what I'm really focused on is doing what we do well. And so that's going to be making sure that we scale in a way that is intentional and careful, and allows us to retain that rigor and that depth and that nuance that our audience knows us for, and hopefully more people will come to know and trust us for. Right now, knowing that I don't know exactly what the future holds, that's going to be around 12 to 16 creator-led shows, and I see those filling the primary areas and subjects that all of us need to understand better to be able to navigate the onslaught of information that we're faced with today.

I don't think we're able to fully comprehend the degree of information crisis that we're existing in — not in terms of how it's happening, but how much of it is happening at us. Our access to information has never been greater, and our filters for that information, habitual or otherwise, have never been lower.

My goal with Newpress is to build a slate of shows that help ground people, that say, "Hey, you know what? I know you just got 18 articles or newsletters or podcasts or videos thrown your way, but here's the one. Here's the one on what's happening right now with this thing in the world, and we're going to zoom out, and we're going to connect the dots for you." And hopefully, after you've spent 20, 30 or 40 minutes with us, you're able to go out and navigate that very overwhelming — and I think sometimes debilitating — experience that it is to be human today with what is coming our way. So that's the vision. Insofar as we can do that really well, with a lot of intention and care, adhering to the ethics and the perspectives that have shaped what we've been able to create thus far, that's what we will do. It's all going to come back to those first principles of producing really excellent work that builds trust, that hits a bar and caliber of both storytelling and journalism that we feel is essential.

And each creator has their own distinct deal — is that right? Is there a blanket expectation for the amount of content each person has to produce, or is it individual, depending on their format and the person?

What's really cool about the way we work with our creators is they come on board and they're given a salary, and then they get in on the financial upside of their channel as it becomes profitable. And so the incentives are already built in. The creators want to make that show successful and reach a big audience and produce a really high caliber of work, and we want to support them in doing all of those things, and also bring a lot of value to that relationship. And so what I find is that's a very mutual discussion, and it comes down to the creator's show: what's appropriate for it, what would make sense, how we can stick to that standard without diluting the work or the vision. So for each of them, that means something different.

And it's a conversation we have every year: What should we try to do? What do we think is possible? Was it too much? Was it enough? Was it not enough? We try to follow their ambitions in terms of frequency of output, and the style of storytelling and journalism that they might want to move into. It really is this incredible round-the-clock conversation that is happening between myself and our team and each of the creators to make sure it grows in the way that they would want it to.

Is there anything that you've noticed about the way that traditional media works with creators that you think they're missing as an opportunity? You see all of these legacy outlets who are trying to create their own network, a creator lab, so to speak. What do you think is that missing opportunity that they don't see?

It's a good question. This is going to sound really trite and cliché. It just will. But it really comes down to authenticity, and allowing journalists to create shows in their authentic voice and their authentic vision. I say it over and over again because it is the critical piece of at least how we've been able to do this successfully. And I think where traditional outlets and companies may struggle is that there is a fear and a reticence around what giving over that trust might risk.

The advice that I would give is: There are a lot of incredible journalists out there who are capable of creating something truly special in the form of video, and there are a lot of incredible creators out there who are already doing that, who could easily be brought in and trusted to be responsible with the way that they report on and share information. And I think overcoming that gap of trust is going to be critical for them to participate in the space.

I can tell that a lot of traditional media is still grappling with that: how that authenticity stays intact while also working within the confines of a huge company.

And I should say, that is the push and pull that we find ourselves in with Newpress, right? For me, I've always said that the future of media — whatever we're building, which we believe is the future of media — is going to be some combination of this scrappy, beautiful, authentic creator experience that is internet-y and in the format that people actually watch today, and the learnings and the expertise and the years of hard-earned understanding of consumer behavior and how to create responsible journalism that traditional media knows so well.

And I think that's why we're so excited about this step with Bill, and bringing him on in the spring. It's exactly that strange marriage that I've talked about, where we're able to really, truly, in one room, in one company, bring those worlds together and see what that produces. What is possible when you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but you say, "No, no, no, I have something to learn from you, and maybe you have something to learn from me"? Bill certainly feels that he does, and I feel that towards him. What's possible when we really start talking and building together? That's this next step, and that's why we're so excited about it.

For the last part of this, it's open-ended, if there are any corners of the internet you want to shout out! And we also like to ask people how much time they're spending on their phone per day — screen time. The average we get is about eight hours with people we've spoken to.

So my daily average is three hours and 14 minutes. And let me tell you why it is so low. I do not have social media on my phone, and I do not consume social media regularly. I also deleted the browser from my phone, so I have really tried to reduce my interactions with my phone as much as possible, because I found it to be a distraction, and I found it to wear on my mind in ways that weren't fruitful for the work that I'm trying to do.

But I do consume a bunch of things on the internet. I have an incredible network of creators that I watch and admire so much. I'll list a few. One is an incredible show by our friends Adam [Cole] and Joss [Fong] called ‘Howtown.’ It is beautiful and filled with this earnest curiosity that is just lovely to watch. One of my dearest friends, Cleo Abram, makes a show called ‘Huge If True.’ She is as excited about what she's talking about as she comes across on her videos — and that's very excited. Which is a beautiful thing, when you meet someone and you're like, oh, you love this as much as it appears that you love this. Another one of our close friends, who invested in the company, is Mark Rober, and he makes these science videos that I watch with my kids, and we better understand how this world works, and things like physics and science and space. And then I've been really enjoying Trevor Noah's comedy specials, and I'm going on a deep dive through all of those.

Besides that, I spend most of my time reading. I love fiction, love historical fiction. I read a book a week, at least, and that is my recharge place. That's my quiet place. It's how I get back to myself amidst all of this.

Is there a book that you'd highly recommend people read?

Yes, I read two books that really blew me away. One is called ‘The Covenant of Water’ [by Abraham Verghese], and it's about India as they were colonized by the British, and then post-colonization. It's this gorgeous account of this family through multiple generations, and you follow these characters, and there's an incredible twist. I've been recommending it to anyone and everyone that I come across, because it was a part of history that I really didn't understand very deeply, but it also is conveyed in this really heart-wrenching but beautifully human way that really touched me.

And then I read another book recently — I'm terrible at knowing authors — called ‘Pachinko’ [by Min Jin Lee], and this was about Korea and Japan leading up to World War II. It talked a lot about how these Korean communities started settling in Japan, and it tells, again, a multigenerational story over time of what that meant for them, and what that was like, being other in a place that was going through a lot of enormous change. And it was fantastic. I could not put it down. It was an incredible read, and I told Johnny that someday, if we ever make movies, those are the types of books that I'd love to look at and recreate those worlds, and do justice to those lived human experiences.

So, a possible future of Newpress getting into films and becoming a studio?

I think it all comes back to doing the work we do really well, and then seeing what's possible. But I'm very open to a big future for Newpress, and open to a future that would be a media arm and a studio arm.

What we’re seeing and hearing around the industry.

‘The Daily’ announces new leadership. Fresh off the press! A few minutes ago, the New York Times made a couple big leadership announcements for its hit show, ‘The Daily.’ Paige Cowett, who’s been an editor on ‘The Daily’ since 2017, has been upped to editor in chief. And joining the fold is Nazanin Rafsanjani, who is coming on board as a managing editor. Her pedigree spans NPR, MSNBC, WNYC and Gimlet Media, where she held several leadership roles. Congratulations!

Dianna’s dilemma: part II. Dianna Russini made her anticipated comeback to sports media yesterday with her new show, ‘The Russini Report,’ on BetUS. The first episode was marred by a bunch of technical hiccups that one would expect from hosting your show on an overseas sportsbook that has the processing speed of an AOL dial-up connection from 1997. Like her interview with People magazine, she didn’t address her scandal with Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel directly. Rather, she briefly touched on how hard the last few months have been for her and her family. 

I’ve seen people complain about her not addressing the situation outright and how it’s become a barrier for her to rebuild trust with an audience. Like I said before, there’s really no way for her to address what happened without getting shit for it. Even if she gave her most vocal critics what they wanted, to simply keep it real, it wouldn’t be enough to win over people who were never going to watch this show anyway. And on that note: who is even the target audience for this show? The barrier to re-entry is high for Russini in this case — maybe a little higher than she realized. 

Poor sportsmanship. SportsNet New York laid off a large chunk of its editorial team last week, including sports broadcaster Julie Stewart-Binks, who revealed in an Instagram post that she learned about her layoff after her former agent forwarded her a New York Times article about it. Making matters worse, she got laid off just a month after her skin cancer diagnosis. I feel like the worst part about losing a high-viz media job, besides actually losing the job itself, is having the news blasted all over the internet where you have no control over the narrative. 

Have a tip for me? Send it to stephanie@la-fronde.com or my Signal if you want to keep things confidential (itsstephwill.94).

The Atlantic’s bankroll. The Atlantic’s hiring spree keeps trucking along. The newsroom announced a new wave of hires yesterday, including Annalisa Quinn, who’s joining as a staff writer from the Boston Globe (she was the author of that spectacularly wild story on Massachusetts lesbian bar Last Ditch). The Atlantic’s editorial bankroll leash is long — they are always posting staff writer jobs, and they all are pretty well paid (the ones that are open on its career page have a starting salary of $120,000). This year alone, The Atlantic has made 32 new hires to its editorial team, based on past press releases I’ve dug up. And that doesn’t include any internal promotions. With all this hiring going on, I wonder: is it translating to any meaningful audience spikes? I’ll be digging into those numbers in Tuesday’s newsletter. 

Another newsroom that’s been hitting the gas pedal on hiring: ProPublica. I don’t think many people are noticing how well they’re doing right now. They’ve brought on board at least 42 new hires just this year alone (I should caveat that it’s across all departments, not just editorial), and announced five new people joining its California team today. 

Schneps Media in the hot seat. A few months ago I reported on Schneps Media’s newsroom forming a union to advocate for, among other important things, a living wage in the large cities these reporters are covering. Schneps’ portfolio includes local news outlets like amNewYork Metro, Bronx Times and QNS, where reporter Renee DeLorenzo says that she was fired from her job after helping organize the union. Schneps Union has filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging retaliation.

And lastly, longtime ‘Face the Nation’ producer Mary Hager announced she's retiring from CBS News after 35 years at the network. Meanwhile, the show's executive producer, Anne Hsu, is leaving for a role at CBS News' Hong Kong bureau. Status first reported the changes.