Bari Weiss is now CBS News editor-in-chief after Paramount acquires The Free Press
By Brian Stelter, CNN
(CNN) — Journalist and entrepreneur Bari Weiss is taking charge at CBS News and her startup, The Free Press, is being acquired by CBS parent company Paramount.
Starting today, Weiss is the editor-in-chief of CBS News, a new position that has stirred anxieties within the storied news division.
Weiss said in a memo to staffers that she wants to help make CBS “the most trusted news organization in America and the world.”
She will continue to run The Free Press as a standalone brand within its new owner, Paramount. The company did not release details about the transaction, but the Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount is paying about $150 million for the startup.
It’s a buzzy and risky move — the editor of a digital magazine with a clear editorial POV collaborating with one of the country’s oldest broadcasters — that reflects Paramount CEO David Ellison’s desire to shake up CBS News.
Ellison recently took control of Paramount through a merger with his own smaller company, Skydance Media, and he has been talking with Weiss about joining forces for months.
Sources previously told CNN that Ellison was interested in infusing her editorial perspective into CBS News.
The Free Press has won fans, and created plenty of fodder for critics, with heterodox columns and features. Since the site launched as a newsletter in 2021, its volume of so-called anti-woke content has stood out in a crowded media landscape; so have its opinion pieces conveying strong support for Israel, a view that Ellison outspokenly shares.
In a letter to all Paramount staffers on Monday morning, Ellison bemoaned “partisan division and hostile disputes” in America and said the media “amplifies the very partisanship tearing our society apart.”
At Paramount, he said, “We aim to do our part in helping rebuild a society where our shared humanity unites us, and where our differences become a source of strength rather than division.”
In a sign that he is prioritizing this project, he said Weiss would report directly to him, outside the existing organizational chart for CBS News.
Tom Cibrowski will remain president of CBS News and will continue to report to Paramount TV boss George Cheeks. Paramount said, “Cibrowski’s decades of journalistic, operational, and broadcast experience provide essential continuity and expertise.”
What Weiss brings to CBS
Weiss lacks experience managing a newsroom the size of CBS or overseeing a stable of TV shows like “60 Minutes.”
But she brings a news sensibility and attitude that Ellison wants to elevate.
Paramount described the editor-in-chief role this way: “Weiss will shape editorial priorities, champion core values across platforms, and lead innovation in how the organization reports and delivers the news.”
In a letter to The Free Press subscribers, Weiss said the site will continue to publish stories, podcasts, and other content.
The acquisition “gives The Free Press a chance to help reshape a storied media organization — to help guide CBS News into a future that honors those great values that underpin The Free Press and the best of American journalism,” she said.
Weiss asserted in the letter that “the illiberalism of our institutions,” a primary topic of The Free Press in its first years, was “the story of the last decade,” but said “we now face a different form of illiberalism emanating from our fringes.”
“On the one hand,” she said, “an America-loathing far left. On the other, a history-erasing far right. These extremes do not represent the majority of the country, but they have increasing power in our politics, our culture, and our media ecosystem.”
There is an opportunity, she argued, to serve “the enormous numbers of smart, politically mixed, pragmatic Americans” who are the “actual mainstream” in America.
Ellison has made similar comments about wanting CBS News to appeal to “70%” of Americans ranging “from center left to center right,” pointedly excluding hyperpartisan extremes.
In a Monday statement, he said, “We believe the majority of the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based, and we want CBS to be their home.”
Weiss is expected to meet with CBS News staffers later on Monday.
In her letter to subscribers, she said of Ellison and the Paramount leadership team, “They understand, as we do, that America cannot thrive without common facts, common truths, and a common reality.”
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