The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) today announced Johnny and Iz Harris, co-founders of the creator-led media company Newpress, as recipients of the 2026 ICFJ Founders Award.
Johnny Harris is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker whose engaging, visually driven videos break down complex global issues for millions of viewers. Before going independent in 2020, he created and hosted Vox’s series "Vox Borders." Since then, Harris and his wife, Emmy-winning filmmaker and Newpress CEO Iz Harris, built his YouTube channel into a powerhouse with 7.5 million subscribers and over a billion total views. Their latest project, "The Human Element," is a cinematic docuseries that journeys to the heart of the world's most important issues, bringing the forces shaping our lives into focus through adventure, investigation and deeply human storytelling. It will premiere this fall.
Johnny and Iz Harris will be honored at the 2026 ICFJ Awards Dinner in November alongside Patricia Mercado Sánchez, winner of the ICFJ News Innovation Award, and ICFJ Knight International Journalism awardees José J. Nieves and Zeinab Mohammed Salih. Get tickets for the event here.
As their YouTube channel grew, the Harrises recognized that doing rigorous journalism at scale required infrastructure – editors, producers, fact-checking, sponsorship deals – that went beyond what they could sustain on their own. So they created Newpress, a production company and community that gives other creator-journalists the same editorial rigor and business capabilities that helped Johnny's channel succeed. Newpress handles the infrastructure behind each show it backs, and journalists retain full creative control over their storytelling. The organization now supports four channels with more than 13 million followers across platforms, covering everything from geopolitics and sports to internet culture and global affairs, and is actively developing new channels and formats.
The ICFJ Founders Award honors commitment to the highest standards of the profession, in tribute to the three visionaries who started ICFJ in 1984: Tom Winship, Jim Ewing and George Krimsky. Winship, Ewing and Krimsky shared a conviction that journalism’s role is to expose, investigate and articulate the issues that matter to all citizens, and they built ICFJ to help journalists everywhere live up to that standard. ICFJ honors that legacy now in a new way, presenting the award to those who have founded a new generation of news outlets working to serve the public interest.
"Johnny and Iz are doing exactly what our founders set out to do: investing in the people who bring information to audiences around the world," said ICFJ President Sharon Moshavi. "The landscape has shifted: Journalism doesn't only happen in traditional newsrooms anymore. Johnny and Iz have built the editorial scaffolding, the funding and the trust that lets creator-journalists do the kind of deep reporting ICFJ always supports."
The Harrises and Newpress embody one of the new kinds of journalism ICFJ is supporting through Plus, its venture with Code for Africa, the European Journalism Centre and PROTO to develop civic intelligence – information that helps people make sense of the world and act constructively to shape it. Public-interest reporting is increasingly happening outside traditional newsrooms, and news creators often build deeper trust, higher engagement and stronger community ties than legacy outlets, particularly with younger audiences. Rather than treat that shift as a threat to journalism, Plus is working to strengthen it, including supporting the growth and sustainability of news creators through our Plus Hub and mapping news creators to watch around the world.
The 2026 ICFJ Awards Dinner, on November 10 in Washington, D.C., will honor independent journalism and the achievements of colleagues around the world, and this year will also look ahead, spotlighting the innovators and ideas shaping where the field is headed next. The evening will be co-hosted by Dave Jorgenson, co-founder of creator-led media company Local News International and the former "Washington Post TikTok Guy," and Ayesha Rascoe, host of NPR's "Weekend Edition Sunday" and the weekend edition of "Up First." Learn more about the event and support our work here, and join ICFJ on November 10 to celebrate Johnny and Iz Harris and its other awardees.