BARIBUCKS:

Paramount Skydance C.E.O. David Ellison’s courtship of Bari is now coming to its conclusion. According to sources familiar, the deal is expected to close in about two weeks. The final number is around $150 million, a mix of cash and stock.

Bari, who will also be installed into an editorial leadership role at CBS News, has been portrayed as both a bogeyman for American journalism and a bellwether for a broader rightward shift in the news industry. Ellison’s pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery, which could extend her jurisdiction to CNN, has only amplified the anxiety. Indeed, her impending deal is often framed as yet another data point in the accelerating erosion of the fourth estate—you know, alongside, say, Jeff Bezos’s overhaul of Washington Post Opinions, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, or Trump’s myriad media lawsuits.

The sturm und drang surrounding Bari’s encroachment on these storied, if sorely diminished, journalistic institutions often coalesces around two issues: first, that she is reliably pro-Israel, and second, that she is a prominent critic of identity politics and woke orthodoxy. These views put her at odds with newsroom institutionalists who reject the notion of editors taking sides in any conflict*, and especially with the Slack-griping proletariat who might embrace diametrically opposite positions. Meanwhile, her popularity with libertarian members of the Sun Valley mogul set—some of whom are among her investors—only seems to reiterate the divide. Her politics, and that of The Free Press, are thus often cast as “center-right,” or “conservative”—reductive categorizations that fail to reckon with the available body of work.

*Tony Dokoupil chuckles.