Bari Weiss is barely a month into her tenure running CBS News, and the challenges she faces are already clear: applying her experience building a digital news startup to turning around a legacy broadcaster. Overcoming doubts that she’s qualified for the job. Luring talent and bringing along a skeptical staff that disagrees with her right-leaning views.
In a story published in the latest issue of Fortune, my colleague Jeff John Roberts dives into all of this. “Bari Weiss wants to save America. First she has to save CBS News,” his headline reads.
“Saving America” is what the Free Press, which sold to Paramount through billionaire scion David Ellison for $150 million, promised to do—as an alternative to “mindless partisanship” in the news. It’s on track for about $20 million in revenue this year—minuscule compared to the broadcaster.
Weiss wouldn’t talk to Jeff for his story; CBS said she was too new in the role for an interview. Instead, his piece analyzes the many challenges Weiss is up against and whether she has a chance of overcoming them.
The attention on Weiss has focused on the angle the 41-year-old takes with her journalism—whether it’s a fit for CBS News as we’ve known it and what it portends about the news outlet’s future. But the biggest challenges facing CBS are core business ones. What the broadcaster needs are new revenue and distribution strategies, not just to siphon off from viewers from Fox News, as former Time president Keith Grossman explains in this story.
Yet having the ear of the billionaire boss and the powers-that-be in Washington can go a long way—further than some doubters might think.
Read Jeff’s full story here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Subscribe here.
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ON MY RADAR
Tina Brown thinks the uber-rich have it coming New York Times
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This Black-owned clean makeup startup bootstrapped its way to becoming a $10 million brand Fast Company
PARTING WORDS
"We played the long game. Culture caught up.”
— Sprout Pharmaceuticals founder Cindy Eckert on her drug Addyi, a pill for women's libido
