CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss unveiled her strategy for the network’s news division, putting a heavy emphasis on restoring trust in the news media, while urging a shift to streaming and building brands around talent.
“Our strategy until now has been to cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television. If we stick to that strategy, we’re toast,” she told staffers in the town hall on Tuesday, according to her prepared remarks.
Among other things, Weiss announced a new slate of contributors, a new masthead of newsroom leaders, and shifting to a “streaming mentality,” with CBS News 24/7 being “a lab for new formats and shows.”
She also said that the network would invest in brands like 60 Minutes, 48 Hours and Sunday Morning with podcasts, newsletters and live journalism.
She also talked about building brands around talent, what she called “Sorkin-ing,” a reference to Andrew Ross Sorkin, who is a New York Times print reporter, CNBC host and live event producer, among other things.
“Starting now, we all must focus on what we’re building, not on what we’re maintaining, on how we’re going to reach an audience exponentially bigger than the one we have now by marrying the journalistic principles that will never change — seeking the truth, serving the public, and ferociously guarding our independence, with the tools that are constantly are,” Weiss said.
She added that “if we are able to create a shared source of trust for the majority of people in America, I don’t think it’s too grandiose to say that we’ll be doing our part to fix this country we all love.”
Weiss also addressed ideological direction of the network, telling staffers that “our job is to present people with the fullest picture — and the strongest voices on all sides of an issue — and then trust them to make up their own minds.”
Weiss said that with the low trust in mainstream news organizations, “many people have retreated to news sources that protect them from conflicting narratives.”
She said that independents — a number “large and growing” — would be those who “have a home at CBS News.”
“That’s already our core audience,” she said, adding that the network is for the “mixed multitudes.”
She said that “to cover America as it actually is, we in this building need to reflect more of the political friction that animates our national conversation. That means recruiting and hiring editors, reporters, producer and correspondents about whom our viewers will say, ‘They understand me. They will give me a fair shake. They respect me.'”
“We need to commission and greenlight stories that will surprise and provoke — including inside our own newsroom.”
More to come.
English (US) ·