The biggest media story in years has unfolded at breakneck speed.
On Oct. 6, billionaire Larry Ellison and his Skydance/Paramount media empire unveiled a $150 million deal to buy The Free Press.
One-time New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss had launched The Free Press as a Substack newsletter barely five years before, in January 2021.
And Weiss had built the scrappy, anti-woke digital news and opinion outlet into a significant media player, with 1.5 million subscribers and dozens of employees.
Along with buying The Free Press for a handsome sum, Ellison also appointed Weiss, its charismatic, outspoken, and controversial founder, to be head of CBS News.
In her first few weeks on the job, Weiss has turned CBS News upside down with a frenzy of hiring and firing, while helping “60 Minutes” land major interviews with Trump and members of his inner circle.
Contrarian Boston sat down the other day with Emily Rooney, long-time creator and founder of Beat the Press, to talk about Bari Weiss’ dramatic ascent to the top of the media pile and the rapid-fire changes she’s been making.
We also asked Emily about the fallout locally from the changes at the broadcast news network, with long-time political analyst Jon Keller being laid off by WBZ-TV, a CBS News affiliate.
Emily writes regularly for Contrarian Boston - check out her columns on Boston’s bike lanes, strange Boston mayoral race ads, and the futility of newsroom resignations.
Below are some highlights from our conversation:
Bari Weiss has been making some big changes at CBS. What has she been up to?
Emily Rooney: I don’t think anybody could have predicted the breakneck pace that this is traveling on.
So the merger took place in August between Paramount and Skydance. Larry Ellison is in charge, and, in early October, he put Barry Weiss in charge of CBS News, having bought her Substack website/newsletter (The Free Press) for $150 million.
She has gone in there full steam ahead and is making major, major changes at the network.
She’s already fired two people on the morning show. There are rumors that Gayle King might be out, although Gayle King is denying that.
She’s definitely going to make a move on the CBS Evening News - John Dickerson has already said he’s leaving. Who knows what’s going to happen to Maurice DuBois, his co-host there.
Something needs to happen there because that show is doing really, really poorly.
But a lot of other things are taking place, too.
And people have lobbied her to keep their jobs. She’s pro-Israel. People are trying to convince her that they’re pro-Israel so they can keep their jobs.
I mean, this is nutty stuff.
Bari Weiss is both one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in the media today. She certainly has a media success story to tell with The Free Press, and it’s hard to argue that CBS, a perennial third in the ratings wars, didn’t need some shaking up.
But Weiss is disliked - even despised - by the mainstream media. What accounts for this animosity?
Emily Rooney: I have to say I totally identified with her when she wrote that op-ed piece about what happened to her at the New York Times.
That was happening to a lot of journalists, myself included.
I mean, if you didn’t go along with sort of this illiberal intolerance, then you were just on the outside.
It was all groupthink. You had to think one way. And if you didn’t think that way, you’re out.
You know, some of the pieces she wrote – at The New York Times - weren’t appreciated inside. People were making fun of her. You know, they were making fun of her Judaism as well.
I mean, that rang true to me.
But now this seems to be almost going too far the other way.
She’s called together the staff at “60 Minutes” and looked them all in the eye and said, “Why is it that the general public thinks you’re all biased?”
Well, first of all, there’s no proof of that. I mean, you know, I don’t. I don’t know Scott Pelley’s politics or Leslie Stahl’s. I mean, I think they are left-leaning, but there’s no indication by their reporting that they had been biased.
And there was that whole thing, you know, when CBS settled when Shari Redstone was negotiating the Paramount deal. CBS settled for $16 million with Donald Trump over an interview with Kamala Harris.
What happened with Kamala Harris was standard practice. It’s just that they don’t do live interviews. They did an interview, and they edited it.
What is happening now with all the job cuts at Paramount and CBS News, and what impact has it had locally? Jon Keller has been let go?
I mean she (Bari Weiss) is wasting no time… she’s like a swordsman going in there like whacking people’s heads. Unfortunately, as we’ve noted, it’s trickling down locally, too, because Paramount is determined to cut 2,000 jobs, and that affects the local stations as well.
Our friend Jon Keller at CBS had been there (at WBZ-TV) for over 25 years, and he had a long history in journalism. He happens to be the most heterodox person that you could possibly have on a radio or television show.
He’s a real tough interviewer. He’s a great debate moderator. He doesn’t wear his politics on his sleeve. He’s a fabulous journalist. He’s funny. He talks, speaks really clearly. He’s just terrific.
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