Bari Weiss Reportedly Set To Take Over CBS News In New Deal

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It’s probably the biggest media ecosystem cancel culture fail of all time, and if this deal goes though, Bari Weiss will be laughing all the way to the bank.

The report is out from Puck News that Bari Weiss is close to selling her online news site, “The Free Press,” to Paramount. Now the new Paramount Skydance company, after Paramount Global’s merger with Skydance, is under the control of CEO David Ellison (who was Skydance’s CEO, but after the merger, took over Paramount from the Redstone family to become head of the whole new kit and caboodle). Ellison apparently has plans to “remake” CBS as a network and a news station, and to that end, should the sale of “The Free Press” go through, Bari Weiss will end up at CBS News with a reported “senior editorial role” in the news division. According to Dylan Byers at Puck News, Ellison is more than happy to put Bari Weiss in charge and let the chips fall where they may.

As part of the deal, I am told David plans to give Bari a role at CBS News that would, among other things, task his fellow Millennial with guiding the editorial direction of the division. Bari’s avowedly pro-Israel and anti-woke worldview—not to mention her broadly shit-kicking anti-establishment disposition—would inevitably inspire blowback from various corners of the newsroom, and could dramatically change the editorial posture and reputation of one of the most storied, and certainly self-important, institutions in American journalism. For David, that’s likely part of the point.

On some level, David’s pursuit of The Free Press seems driven by a desire to align his news network with his own politics. How else to explain why the guy who just bought his way into Hollywood moguldom, NFL rights, and the streaming wars would want to endure the thankless chore of integrating a politically charged digital news business that, despite its relative success in the Substack economy, would account for a modest eight-figure revenue line in his $18 billion entertainment business? If the lifers at CNN threatened to burn the place down when Chris Licht moved his office to a different floor, imagine the looming hysteria that will transfix CBS News. Assumedly, for Ellison, employee migration is also part of the point.

David probably looks at CBS News as a bit of a blank canvas. It’s a declining business, a cost burden, and, as recent history has made abundantly clear, a potentially massive P.R. headache. But the fact that it is losing money also opens a lot of opportunities for reinvention: Why continue to operate a declining asset that also bleeds cash at status quo? If you have to have it, why not try something unconventional? Without getting philosophical, he’s planning on owning this asset interminably and his shareholders have already suffered through years of Shari-inflicted cash incineration. Why not take a flier on a format that’s economically inconsequential and eroding regardless? And if this maneuver gives David Rhodes second thoughts about moving back from London to manage the division, he can entrust it to existing newsroom leader Tom Cibrowski.

Therein lies the intrigue behind the Bari deal. Even as he is poised to scale down the business, reduce talent salaries, and make it a leaner, trimmer operation, David is also poised to bring on a politically divisive marquee talent who might infuse the brand with a bold new identity and, frankly, at least make the network interesting again.

This deal would also be a triumphant win for Bari Weiss. She resigned from the New York Times in July 2020 with a barn-burner of a resignation letter that had kept receipts and slapped the leftist orthodoxy in the mouth. At the time, those left at the Times were probably proud of themselves for getting her to quit.

Weiss launched “The Free Press” in 2021 as a newsletter and made it a full-fledged media organization in December 2022. The site now boasts articles from a wide variety of writers, professional journalists to “ordinary people,” all with interesting things to say, and no conformity to a pre-set narrative, and hosts a handful of podcast offerings, including one from Weiss herself. While not quite a media empire, Bari Weiss has carved out quite a large niche for her company – and will make a handsome profit from the purported deal.

David’s offer for The Free Press is expected to be well above the site’s most recent $100 million valuation, but well below the $200 million figure that was recently floated in the Financial Times. (That was an absurd ask; The Free Press does $15 million in annual subscription revenue, and Bari’s politically charged content makes it hard to scale the advertising business. Plus, there’s no tech stack—it’s all on Substack.) Either way, it will land Weiss a king’s ransom just a little over five years after her dramatic departure from the Times. The deal is not done yet, of course, but, as a source with knowledge of the negotiations told me this afternoon, it is “on the 1-yard line.”

Cash in her pocket AND some editorial control at CBS News?

Cue the jealousy!

Aww, Taylor Lorenz has a sad. The former New York Times and Washington Post “journalist,” who now writes a Substack for herself, is likely green with envy right now. Her former colleagues at the Times are probably a similar hue.

The hysteria has ranged from accusations that Bari Weiss is Mossad (classy, right?) to the completely unhinged to those on Bluesky not coping very well at all. And that’s just from random people on social media. Imagine, as others have, how those in the CBS newsroom are reacting. Imagine Bari Weiss with editorial direction and control over “60 Minutes.” After all, it can’t get much worse.

The question then becomes, will Bari Weiss truly be “independent” if she is at CBS News? This is when we should all remember that Weiss is much more of a classical liberal than anything else. However, she does value different points of view and freedom of expression. If she took control of a show like “60 Minutes,” there could be a really interesting explosion of stories that aren’t automatically anti-free speech and anti-Israel. If Dylan Byers’s sources are to be believed, David Ellison is looking to shake things up because CBS News is losing money, so if Bari Weiss comes in and people quit, well… I guess the trash is taking itself out.

Ellison has nothing to lose by bringing Weiss into CBS News and trying something completely different. If this deal goes through, expect to see a whole lot of wailing and a whole lot of new Substacks being created, but just maybe CBS News becomes slightly watchable again. Grab the popcorn, because if it happens, it could signal a huge course correction that is massively overdue for the mainstream media.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click

The post Bari Weiss Reportedly Set To Take Over CBS News In New Deal appeared first on Victory Girls Blog.



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