She Swore Off Legacy Media. Now She's Running CBS News.

0:05Joe, what do you think of when you think of CBS News? Well, I'm 60 years old. So when I think of CBS News, I still think of Uncle Walter. That's the way it is. Monday, November 25th, 1963. That would be Walter Cronkite, of course. I think about Eric Sevride and then, of course, Dan Rather. For the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather reporting. Good night. I think about these legendary CBS anchors. The greats. The greats. That's our colleague Joe Flint. He covers media and entertainment. Now that said, that's what I think of if you just caught me walking down the street. If you said, Joe Flint, what do you think of CBS as media business reporter for the last 35 or so years?

1:02My take would be very different, and I would talk about how CBS News, like all network newscasts, are struggling to remain relevant and vital in a country that now gets more and more of its news from opinionated websites, podcasts, cable news, and that it's a real challenge. It's been hard times for all of broadcast news. But Joe says there are also some reasons why CBS in particular has been down in the dumps. The network recently settled a major lawsuit from President Donald Trump. The parent company of CBS is agreeing to pay$16 million to settle a— After that legal fight, CBS's parent company, Paramount, merged with a production company called Skydance Media.

1:47The FCC approved Skydance Media's$8 billion bid to acquire CBS News' parent company—

1:56And now, as the dust is settling, Paramount is implementing a new strategy. The company bought a popular and controversial news and opinion website called The Free Press and hired its co-founder, Barry Weiss, as editor-in-chief of CBS News. Barry Weiss is a polarizing figure in journalism, known for her outspoken support of Israel and strong views on topics like gun rights and DEI. And now, she's shaping the editorial strategy for one of America's most storied broadcasters in the hopes of turning the network around. This is a wild sort of Hail Mary on the part of Paramount saying the status quo of network news is not working.

2:43We need to do something. We need to take a bold action.

2:50Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Wednesday, October 8th.

3:03Coming up on the show, how Barry Weiss landed the top job at CBS News.

3:23You interviewed Barry Weiss last week. Can you set the scene? What's she like? In terms of scene setting, I wish I could tell you we had croissants and we shared a cup of tea together. But I was on a Zoom and she was on a Zoom. And of course, there were about two or three different corporate communication executives on the Zoom as well. Welcome to my world. She's super smart, but she's also disarmingly charming. charming. Even her first day at CBS and talking to folks there, she was having meetings with top executives and producers. They said, well, she knows how to work a room. She's not hyperbolic.

4:06She's not screaming her views. And her thoughts land much more effectively. Barry Weiss worked at a number of Jewish-focused publications before joining The Wall Street Journal as an op-ed and book review editor. In 2017, she moved over to The New York Times as an editor and writer for its opinion section. I think it's safe to say that one reason they brought her in was to be a voice apart from the other voices on their editorial page. So that's what she was primarily brought in to do. And she was there till 2020. And it was at that point that that Barry Weiss sort of became the news? She exited the Times in what I like to say is sort of a spectacular fashion, very publicly, and by that I mean posted her resignation letter online.

5:04And she said that the Times, I'm reading from her letter right now, the paper of record is more and more the record of those living in a distant galaxy one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. Kind of a mic drop moment. Yes, it was very much a mic drop moment.

5:30After leaving The Times, Weiss launched a newsletter on Substack in 2021. That newsletter eventually turned into her website, The Free Press. I would say they are a news and opinion site. They are kind of where one might go as their second stop in the day's headlines to sort of get their take on it. You get the news from somewhere else and then you get some takes from the free press. Exactly. Whether it's covering police shootings of civilians, whether it's covering what's going on in Israel, That's, of course, what the free press has become most known for is that it has a very pro-Israel stance.

6:14She spent a lot of time at the free press or the free press has going after colleges and higher education that she feels have become more of indoctrination centers for the left. And how professors who aren't on board with all that become ostracized. So all those things are part of what the free press has become and what is making them stand out a little. And Weiss also did high profile interviews, right? Can you talk about the kinds of people she spoke with? She interviewed Amy Coney Barrett. Do you think it's fair to say that people, justices that are nominated by Republican presidents tend to get more scrutiny than Democratic ones?

6:57And if so, why? Let's see. I don't, I think that the hearings that you mentioned tend to be the ones that get talked about when brutal. She does entertainment interviews. She did a lengthy interview two weeks ago with Woody Allen. You have basically said that none of this has touched you. None of this has made an impact on you. It hasn't bothered me, no. How is that? Sorry, I'm. But how could that be true? Like, you're a human being. how can that amount of vitriol not impact you? I don't take it seriously because I... She's done an interview with the Teamsters president, Sean O 'Brien. What did the union mean to you and your family when you were growing up?

7:43Oh, it was an icon. It was like, you know, growing up in Boston, you know, you always hear the great sport teams like the Boston Celtics. And how has the free press done over the past few years? I think for a new online news site, very well. It has over a million subscribers. Over 175 ,000 of those are paid. So a lot of people are reading free content. But nonetheless, they are building. The last 12 months, they've had a lot of growth. They have revenue figures approaching$20 million. They've definitely built a business. While Barry Weiss was building up her brand, CBS News was tangled up in a big lawsuit and a bigger merger.

8:29Skydance CEO David Ellison had been wanting to buy CBS's parent company, Paramount, for well over a year. But there were some major obstacles in his way, like that lawsuit from Trump. President Trump, when he was still candidate Trump, had sued 60 Minutes over an interview it had done with Kamala Harris that Trump argued had unfair editing in it. When the president sues you, you tend to feel a bigger microscope on yourself. So there was a lot of concern about this lawsuit and whether it would impede their ability to close their sale to Skydance. So everything became entangled in this much bigger drama of trying to get a sale through.

9:18Ultimately, after CBS settled the lawsuit with Trump, that sale did go through, and David Ellison became CEO of Paramount. With him came some new ideas about what CBS News needed to do to fix its problems. And what's Ellison's vision for CBS? His vision is a newscast that speaks more to people in the middle of the political spectrum. And the person Ellison thought could pull it off was Barry Weiss. That's after the break.

10:06Joe, can you talk about how David Ellison and Barry Weiss joined forces? Ellison was a fan of the free press. Even before he closed the Paramount deal, Barry told me that he just reached out to her out of the blue, sent an email, basically. I won't call him a fanboy, but it sounded like he sent an email just to say, I like what you're doing. I like what you're reading. We should talk. The turning point in the relationship where talks became more of a serious nature was probably around this past July in Sun Valley. Every year, the Allen & Company Investment Bank holds a big conference in Sun Valley full of leaders of industry, media, tech.

10:54And Barry was there. And, of course, Ellison was there. and they met there and began chatting about doing a deal. This Monday, Ellison announced that Paramount had acquired the free press. Joe reported that the deal was valued at$150 million. $150 million. Is that a lot in the grand scheme of startup acquisitions and media? I mean, I think in terms of a startup news site that's a few years old, that's a pretty good piece of money. it got a lot more attention, not so much because of the money, not that the money is insignificant, but because of what they're buying and what Barry will be doing at CBS News.

11:40After the acquisition, David Ellison sent a memo to his employees at Paramount. He said, quote, The space ones reserved for thoughtful dialogue has been consumed by partisan division and hostile disputes. And he added that, quote, This challenge extends to the media. broadcast news, the perception is they lean to the left. And then you go on cable news. And of course, you've got Fox News that leans to the right and MSNBC that leans to the left. David Ellison, he doesn't want news speaking to one extreme either side, left or right. He believes that Barry Weiss can help guide the network to that place.

12:19And as editor-in-chief, she will basically determine the vision for CBS News. Has she shared her own ideas about how she plans to run it? Well, what she said to me is basically, the news business is simple. Tell me something I don't know. Help me make sense of a strange, upside down, and inverted world. So that's kind of what her mantra is. And in terms of doing the job, She said, you know, it'll be questioning our priorities, our discernment, our judgment, and that she's there to, in her words, you know, make CBS News the most trusted news organization in America. Well, it's interesting that she says, you know, tell people something that they don't know.

13:07Tell me something I don't know. I feel like that's something that we learn in J School 101. It's like what the news is about. So what do you think she means by that? How is that different? I think what she's trying to say without saying it is stop telling me how I'm supposed to think. Stop telling me what I'm supposed to be outraged at. You just tell me what happened without working your opinion in there. And that's what I think she's after. Now, mind you, there are plenty of folks who would tell you, really? because the free press makes no secret about where they stand on issues. So, yeah, that is the rub.

13:51According to Joe's reporting, Weiss's appointment has caused some concern inside CBS News. Some employees are wary of an outsider coming in to shape editorial coverage. Others are worried that Weiss spent so much of her career in opinions rather than reporting. So she's going to have a learning curve there. When I interviewed Weiss, she said she has a very tough skin and isn't scared off by that and can handle whatever is thrown at her.

14:21You said that Barry Weiss's goal is to make CBS News the most trusted news source in America. Big goal? Maybe in the shorter term, what might success look like for her? Well, ultimately, success in the TV world is the ratings. And CBS News has been struggling a long time for lots of different reasons. It's not all just tied to how their newscast may be viewed. There's so many other factors that go into it. But that said, any uptick in the ratings, even one point, like if the ratings went up one point, they would probably bring out the champagne. But I think the other thing will be if she can change just a little the perception of all network news, that it just leans heavily to one side and bring it bring the perception back to the middle.

15:17That would be a big deal. We'll see.

15:32That's all for today, Wednesday, October 8th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Alexandra Bruel.

15:46Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.