‘The Hottest Thing in Journalism’: Bari Weiss’s The Free Press Poaches Veteran Washington Post Editor
Bari Weiss, the editor of the upstart The Free Press, announced on Friday that she had hired veteran Washington Post deputy opinion editor Chuck Lane.
Weiss made the announcement on X, writing, “The brilliant Chuck Lane will be joining us as deputy editor in the new year. He joins us from The Washington Post, where he has worked for the past 25 years. We could not be more excited.”
Weiss is a former New York Times staffer who made headlines in 2020 by publishing a scathing resignation letter accusing the Times of fostering a “hostile work environment” for writers with differing opinions. She went on to found The Free Press with her wife Nellie Bowles in 2022. The Free Press hiring Lane is undoubtedly another major sign of alternative media’s ever-growing audience share, and comes at a time when the Washington Post has been shedding readers and subscribers.
Weiss also shared her note to her staff on Lane’s hiring. “I’m so delighted to announce that Charles Lane will be joining the Free Press as deputy editor on January 6,” she wrote, adding:
Chuck comes to us from the Washington Post where he served in a variety of positions on both the news and editorial side of the paper, most recently as deputy opinions editor. For much of the last decade he contributed weekly columns marked by their independence, intellectual integrity, and range.
Those are exactly the qualities we aspire to at The Free Press—and why we know Chuck is going to be such a perfect fit. He will be a newsroom leader, working alongside me to dramatically expand the scope of our report, pushing us into new coverage areas, enticing new writers to join our merry band, and helping us go from one million subscribers to many, many more.
Chuck was a 2009 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing. Over his long journalistic career he’s reported from countries around the world including Germany, Japan, El Salvador, South Africa and Israel. (You might also remember him as the guy who busted a journalistic fraudster in the classic film Shattered Glass.) He is also the author of three critically acclaimed books.
Chuck has degrees from Harvard and Yale Law School, but please don’t hold that against him. He’s also a husband (to Catarina Bannier), a dad (of three), an adult Lego-builder and an aficionado of Japanese sports cars. You can find Chuck knocking a tennis ball around when he’s not operating the manual transmission of his Honda S2000.
Chuck told us that he’s joining the Free Press because “it’s the hottest thing in journalism” since the heyday of the New Republic—where he got his start—and because he shares our vision of new media guided by old values: curiosity, independence and honesty. “I’m eager to help take this fast-growing company to the next level.”
“Chuck will be working from our growing D.C. bureau. He has already purchased his and hers Free Press ball caps from the online merch shop,” she concluded.
Earlier in the month, The Free Press announced it had hired a publisher and president to help with its rapid expansion. “To usher in its next era of growth, the company has hired former Wall Street Journal editor-turned-banker Dennis K. Berman as its first publisher and president. It’s also brought on Hearst and Bloomberg product veteran Daniel Hallac as its first chief growth officer,” reported Axios’s Sarah Fischer this week.
The site now has some 136,000 subscribers who pay $8 a month, which means the company takes in well over a million dollars ever month just in subscription revenue. The Free Press has become a go-to read for anti-woke Americans and pro-Israel readers concerned with issues like on-campus anti-Semitism and media bias.
