GOOD LUCK TRANSFORMING THE TITANIC INTO AN F-22 RAPTOR: Bari Weiss Unveils Sweeping Vision: “I Am Here to Make CBS News Fit for Purpose in the 21st Century.”
CBS News will undergo a radical transformation in the coming months, with editor-in-chief Bari Weiss outlining her vision at an all-hands meeting Tuesday morning.
Weiss delivered a PowerPoint presentation that outlined her view on the state of media and how CBS can remain relevant in a challenging time for broadcast news. She also noted the barrage of interest and press in her arrival.
“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 told staff. “What I can give you is what I’ve always tried to give my readers a a journalist: transparency. Clarity. Straight talk. So here it is as plan as I can say it: I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century. Our industry has changed more in the last decade than in the last 150 years, and the transformation isn’t over yet. Far from it. It’s almost impossible to conceive of how fast things will move from here.”
Related: CBS News Hires New Contributors As Part Of Bari Weiss’ New Strategy For News Division.
CBS News unveiled a slate of contributors who are joining the network as part of Bari Weiss‘ new strategy for the news division.
The list of new contributors includes conservative historian Niall Ferguson and Patrick McGee, who specializes in tech and China and is a contributor to Weiss’ The Free Press, which CBS-parent Paramount acquired when she was tapped to lead the news division, according to a source familiar with the plans.
Also on the list are podcasters Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia, chef Clare de Boer, physician Mark Hyman, author Caroline Chambers and Casey Lewis, who has a Substack about emerging trends in youth culture.
During her meeting, Weiss reminded CBS staffers that she knows “there’s a lot of nostalgia” for the Cronkite era:
Back then, 30 million people watched Walter Cronkite every night. Some were on the left, some were on the right. But they trusted him*. Through Cronkite they inhabited a shared world with shared facts and a shared sense of reality.
We can’t reverse time’s arrow. He had two competitors. We have two billion, give or take.
What we can do is what journalists do best: look at the world as it actually is.
We have to start by looking honestly at ourselves.
That sounds like excellent advice for CBS – if only they were thinking that way back in September of 2004.
*Far too much in retrospect, but to make another awkward Titanic analogy, why quibble when someone is at least making an effort to steer the ship away from the icebergs?