Paramount Officially Acquiring The Free Press and Making Bari Weiss CBS News Editor in Chief: Report

Gilberto Tadday / TED

Paramount Skydance will be officially acquiring The Free Press and hiring its founder Bari Weiss as editor in chief of its CBS News division, with the deal to be announced this coming Monday, according to a report by Puck’s Dylan Byers.

Prior to the merger with Paramount, Skydance CEO and founder David Ellison “quietly courted” Weiss to bring her on board for a potential high-profile gig with CBS, according to a report by Oliver Darcy.

Weiss was an editor and writer at The New York Times, covering political and culture topics, until she left in 2020 and launched a Substack newsletter, later renamed as The Free Press. Earlier in her career, Weiss was viewed as being aligned with the center-left but has moved rightward on certain issues, garnering praise in conservative circles for her critiques of “woke” liberal excesses at the Times, other media outlets, universities, and prominent progressive institutions.

The merger took on larger political implications in the wake of President Donald Trump’s re-election, due to his vociferous criticism of 60 Minutes and CBS News programs and reporters — not to mention the lawsuit he filed regarding an interview of then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which Paramount settled shortly before the merger went through.

The reporting about Weiss possibly joining CBS has long speculated she would be offered a top management position as part of the deal to be a part of reshaping the network; while she is not a dogmatic conservative, she is generally viewed with more respect and less hostility on the right than other media figures. The owners of The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have also made substantial efforts to recruit right-leaning voices to appeal to audiences in this second Trump presidential term.

Bringing Weiss on board is not without controversy. As Byers reported last month, she has been “portrayed as both a bogeyman for American journalism and a bellwether for a broader rightward shift in the news industry,” and chatter about her being hired for a top position has “amplified the anxiety” in the CBS newsroom.

According to Byers, the deal for Paramount Skydance to acquire The Free Press was “expected to close in about two weeks,” and would involve a price tag of “around $150 million, a mix of cash and stock” — plus Weiss would be “installed into an editorial leadership role at CBS News.

Thursday, Byers posted an update to his reporting that Paramount’s deal to acquire The Free Press and hire Weiss would be announced on Monday.

Weiss’ “title will be Editor in Chief,” he added. “I’m told she will report directly to David Ellison.”