Johnny Harris just launched New Press, a creator-led journalism collective designed to become the home of the best visual journalism on the internet. The announcement came alongside the debut of Tunnel Vision, a new investigative YouTube channel hosted by journalist Christophe Haubursin. New Press is built on a simple but ambitious idea: independent journalists, united by a commitment to rigorous yet accessible storytelling, can fill a gap that legacy media has left wide open.
What Is New Press and Why Did Johnny Harris Build It?
New Press is not a media company in the traditional sense. It is a collective — a growing network of creator-led journalism channels that share a common editorial philosophy. According to Harris, that philosophy centers on depth over speed, nuance over noise, and genuine curiosity over clickbait.
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Johnny Harris reflecting on four years of global storytelling before announcing New Press
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Harris has spent four years building his own channel around those values, taking audiences to Swiss bunkers, Japanese military training grounds, classified document archives, and even the surprisingly controversial world of broken McDonald's ice cream machines. Along the way, he realized something important: the kind of journalism he loves to make is also the kind audiences are hungry for — and it is largely missing from today's media landscape.
New Press is his answer to that gap. Rather than scaling his own channel alone, Harris is betting on a collective model — finding other talented journalists who share his values, helping them launch their own channels, and building a network where creators collaborate, cross-pollinate audiences, and hold each other to a high editorial standard.
The collective is still in its earliest days. Harris openly admitted during the announcement that they are still working on a logo. But the vision is clear: New Press aims to grow into a significant force in independent, visual journalism.
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Christophe Haubursin introduced as the host of Tunnel Vision
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What Is Tunnel Vision and Who Is Christophe Haubursin?
The first channel to launch under the New Press banner is Tunnel Vision, hosted by Christophe Haubursin. Harris describes Haubursin as one of the most talented visual storytellers he knows — a journalist driven by endless curiosity who does not just present conclusions, but invites the audience into his entire process of discovery.
That approach is central to what makes Tunnel Vision distinctive. Most journalism shows you the answer. Tunnel Vision shows you the journey — the dead ends, the rabbit holes, the moments where the story shifts unexpectedly. Haubursin pulls back the curtain on how investigative journalism actually works, including the parts where he is not sure what he is looking for yet.
The first episode of Tunnel Vision is already live, and it tackles one of the most urgent and underreported phenomena spreading across private messaging apps right now: crypto scams on WhatsApp.
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Clip from Tunnel Vision Episode 1 showing the WhatsApp crypto scam investigation in progress
Watch at 03:30 →
What Are the Crypto Scams Taking Over WhatsApp?
Crypto scams have migrated from public platforms to private messaging apps like WhatsApp, making them harder to track, report, and shut down. These scams often begin with a seemingly innocent misdirected message — a stranger who claims to have texted the wrong number — and slowly build into an elaborate scheme designed to convince victims to invest in fake cryptocurrency platforms.
The first episode of Tunnel Vision documents Haubursin's investigation into this phenomenon. He follows the digital trail, speaks with people involved, and tries to understand not just how the scams work mechanically, but who is behind them and why they are so effective at fooling smart, skeptical people.
It is exactly the kind of story that falls through the cracks of traditional news coverage — too slow-moving for a headline, too complex for a brief explainer, but enormously important for anyone trying to understand the internet in 2024. Harris and Haubursin will also appear on each other's channels, collaborating on stories and bringing their respective audiences together around shared questions.
What Makes Creator-Led Journalism Different From Legacy Media?
Harris was direct about what he sees as the failure of contemporary media: a relentless stream of updates, headlines, and algorithmically optimized alarm designed to grab attention rather than build understanding. He argues that this model produces anxiety and confusion, not insight.
Creator-led journalism, as Harris defines it, operates on different incentives. When a creator's audience shows up because they trust that creator's voice and judgment — not because a headline scared them into clicking — the relationship between journalist and audience changes fundamentally. There is more room for nuance, more tolerance for gray area, more appetite for the kind of long-form investigation that actually changes how you see the world.
- Depth over speed: Creator journalism prioritizes thorough understanding over breaking news.
- Transparency: Creators like Haubursin show their work, including the uncertainty and wrong turns.
- Accessibility: Visual storytelling makes complex topics approachable without dumbing them down.
- Community: Audiences actively shape the work through feedback, critique, and dialogue.
Harris pointed to his own community as proof of concept. His audience has consistently pushed him toward harder, more complex stories, and has rewarded rigor with loyalty. New Press is built on the belief that this dynamic can scale across multiple creators and topics.
What Is Search Party and How Does It Fit Into New Press?
Tunnel Vision is not the first channel to launch under what is now being called New Press. Last year, Harris partnered with journalist Sam Ellis to launch Search Party, a channel focused on geopolitics and global sports. That collaboration established the template New Press is now following: find a talented journalist, help them build a channel that fits their unique voice and expertise, and create a network where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Search Party and Tunnel Vision will coexist under the New Press umbrella, and Harris has confirmed that more channels are already in development. The collective is actively in talks with other journalists, exploring new topics and formats that fit the broader mission.
How Does Johnny Harris Approach Visual Storytelling?
One of the recurring themes in Harris's announcement is his commitment to visual journalism — the belief that how a story looks and feels is inseparable from what it means. His own videos are known for their distinctive aesthetic: careful pacing, custom maps and graphics, a tone that is earnest and curious without being naive.
That visual sensibility is a deliberate editorial choice. Harris believes that the experience of understanding something — truly grasping it, not just being told it — is a physical and emotional event, not just an intellectual one. Good visual journalism creates that experience. It does not just inform; it transforms how you see a topic.
This is why Harris was drawn to Haubursin as a collaborator. Haubursin shares that commitment to visual craft, and his approach of bringing the audience into his process adds a layer of authenticity that is rare in any medium.
Is Independent Journalism the Future of News Online?
Harris framed New Press as more than a business venture. It is a bet on a particular vision of what journalism can be — and a response to a media environment that he believes is failing audiences in fundamental ways. The appetite for depth, for context, for stories that treat viewers as intelligent adults capable of handling complexity, is real and growing.
New Press is still being built in public, logo and all. But the foundation is already there: a proven model with Harris's own channel, a successful first collaboration with Search Party, and now a second launch with Tunnel Vision. The invitation is open — to watch, to subscribe, to give feedback, and to help shape what this collective becomes.
If you want to see where it starts, the first episode of Tunnel Vision is live now. Go watch Christophe follow a crypto scam down a WhatsApp rabbit hole. It might be exactly the kind of journalism you did not know you were missing.
