CBS News was just taken over by a Substack

Bari Weiss started The Free Press (formerly Common Sense) connected Substack successful 2021.

Paramount is acquiring The Free Press, an autarkic media work started connected Substack. As portion of the deal, Paramount is installing The Free Press’s founder, Bari Weiss, arsenic the editor-in-chief of CBS News, according to an announcement connected Monday.

Before starting The Free Press, Weiss worked arsenic an op-ed and publication reappraisal exertion astatine The Wall Street Journal from 2013 to 2017 and aboriginal became an op-ed exertion and writer astatine The New York Times to grow the publication’s unchangeable of blimpish columnists during Trump’s archetypal term. She resigned from the NYT in 2020, citing an “illiberal environment.”

Weiss started a Substack newsletter successful 2021, called Common Sense, which aboriginal evolved into The Free Press, touting itself arsenic a media institution “built connected the ideals that were erstwhile the bedrock of large American journalism.” As noted successful the property release, The Free Press has grown its gross 82 percent implicit the past year, portion subscribers accrued 86 percent to 1.5 million, 170,000 of which see paid subscriptions.

Weiss’s assignment arsenic the caput of CBS News comes aft the Trump medication extracted a $16 cardinal ineligible settlement based connected an interrogation CBS aired with 2024 Democratic statesmanlike campaigner Kamala Harris, past approved a merger betwixt Skydance and Paramount on the condition that CBS aerial a greater “diversity of viewpoints from crossed the governmental and ideological spectrum” — efficaciously a authorities request to aerial much blimpish content, which Weiss’ assignment could plausibly satisfy.

President Donald Trump and his medication person besides gone aft ABC, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

Paramount didn’t disclose the presumption of the deal, but a report from The New York Times suggests that it paid $150 million successful currency and banal to get the publication. Weiss will support running The Free Press while serving arsenic editor-in-chief of CBS News, wherever she’ll proceed “amplifying voices from each corners of the spectrum,” according to a memo from Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison.