Paramount is buying The Free Press, an impartial media publication began on Substack. As a part of the deal, Paramount is putting in The Free Press’s founder, Bari Weiss, because the editor-in-chief of CBS Information, based on an announcement on Monday.
Earlier than beginning The Free Press, Weiss labored as an op-ed and e book evaluate editor at The Wall Road Journal from 2013 to 2017 and later grew to become an op-ed editor and author at The New York Instances to develop the publication’s secure of conservative columnists throughout Trump’s first time period. She resigned from the NYT in 2020, citing an “intolerant surroundings.”
Weiss began a Substack publication in 2021, known as Frequent Sense, which later developed into The Free Press, touting itself as a media firm “constructed on the beliefs that have been as soon as the bedrock of nice American journalism.” As famous within the press launch, The Free Press has grown its income 82 % over the previous yr, whereas subscribers elevated 86 % to 1.5 million, 170,000 of which embrace paid subscriptions.
Weiss’s appointment as the pinnacle of CBS Information comes after the Trump administration extracted a $16 million legal settlement primarily based on an interview CBS aired with 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, then accepted a merger between Skydance and Paramount on the condition that CBS air a better “range of viewpoints from throughout the political and ideological spectrum” — successfully a authorities demand to air extra conservative content material, which Weiss’ appointment might plausibly fulfill.