Bari Weiss, still new to her role as editor in chief of CBS News, spent time at a Tuesday-morning town hall to tell staffers they need to focus more intently on a growing audience flocking to digital and social media outlets, rather than trying to keep the viewers who flock to the company’s popular programs on broadcast TV.
Walter Cronkite “had two competitors,” she told staffers gathered an “all-hands” meeting either in person or via digital connection. “We have two billion, give or take.”
Weiss told staffers she intended to make CBS News a must-see for the broader community of news aficionados around the globe, saying, “I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century,” according to a transcript of her remarks provided by the Paramount Skydance unit.
Weiss has been under a microscope since her arrival in October, after Paramount bought her conservative-opinion site The Free Press for $150 million. Since taking the reins, she has pressed programs such as “CBS Evening News” and “60 Minutes” to give more time to Trump administration officials and other leaders. The nascent tenure of anchor Tony Dokoupil on “CBS Evening News” has been marred by awkward segments such as one that celebrated U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio or others that downplayed the severity of changes in vaccine protocol, the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol and the fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis by an ICE agent.
And she has generated unwanted publicity by ordering held a “60 Minutes” segment originally scheduled for broadcast December 21. The story, by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, was built around on-screen accounts of Venezuelan men deported by the U.S. to a harsh prison in El Salvador, but Weiss at the time insisted that Trump officials appear in the report to comment on camera, even though Alfonsi’s team had made good-faith efforts to secure response ahead of filing the report for legal review. The segment aired about a month later, on January 18, with three minutes’ worth of remarks by Alfonsi taped before and after the segment — but with no on screen appearance by Trump representatives.
During the call, she acknowledged that “there’s been a lot of noise around me taking this job.”
And while the executive put a hard sell on her new vision for the news division, she put a lighter touch on the disruption that has swirled around CBS News since her arrival. People familiar with the news division describe it as a place that is veering toward dysfunction, with trust between Weiss’ managers and rank and file journalists at a nadir.
She said she understood “why, in the face of all this tumult, you might feel uncertain or skeptical about me or what I’m aiming to do here. I’m not going to stand up here today and ask you for your trust. I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers.”
Weiss isn’t the only senior news executive grappling with how to reach modern audiences. CNN has unveiled a subscription-based streaming service that is supposed to give mobile viewers more choice in how they watch the Warner Bros. Discovery outlet’s newsgathering. NBC News has launched several streaming products built around flagship properties such as “Today” and “Dateline,” as well as a daily live-streamed outlet that relies on anchors such as Tom Llamas and Hallie Jackson, among others. Fox News has put new emphasis on audio and its Fox Nation subscription service that relies more heavily on lifestyle programming.
Like some of these news rivals, Weiss said she would press to update internal processes. When considering stories, staffers should stop thinking “about which show will pick it up” or “what hour it will air on linear television,” said Weiss, but rather about :”how can we produce the most revelatory stories for an audience that expects the news immediately and on demand. And for younger generations for whom ‘streaming’ and ‘social” are simply: TV and the news.”
CBS News unveiled new hires Tuesday that suggest where the news division may be headed. Some of these new contributors are Free Press columnists. Others are podcasters with solid followings. Among those named to these roles were Lauren Sherman, the fashion reporter for Puck; Casey Lewis, a trend researcher focused on GenZ; and Mark Hyman, a physician who has been active in trying to reform food and agriculture policy.
And the executive told staffers they needed to start “looking honestly at ourselves. We are not producing a product that enough people want. We can blame demographics or technology or fractured attention spans or ‘news avoidance’ — but these are all copes.”
She restated a mantra she has used since her arrival at CBS News that mainstream media is no longer trusted, and stressed that CBS News had to be a place where viewers could come to hear all sides of a debate, even if doing so made them uncomfortable. Independent Americans “want to equip themselves with all the facts,” she said, “and are curious to hear what is actually going on, even if it offends their sensibilities.”
She indicated that traditional measures of success might no longer apply. “Winning isn’t about ratings. It’s about making things that people can’t live without. It’s about creating content captivating enough to ultimately make Paramount+ a necessity for every home,” she said. CBS News “will continue to make great broadcast television. Where our shows are lagging, we will reimagine them, as we’re doing with the Evening News. Where they are winning, we’ll expand their reach dramatically.”
Weiss characterized CBS News’ ability to move forward as critical. “Our strategy until now has been t cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television,” she said. “If we stick to that strategy, we’re toast.”
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