Well, well, well...2025 continues to be the Year of Things That I Didn't Have on My Bingo Card. What makes it even stranger is that the surprises have largely been interesting and/or pleasant, not the kind that make me want to see how much liver damage I can do in a short period of time.
The media landscape has been rapidly shifting in America for a while, but that shift has greatly accelerated in the last couple of years. I mean all media here, not just the political news and commentary portion. As I wrote more than once after the Colbert news hit, that's really what the cancellation was all about. Times change. Here in the 21st century, they change quickly.
Some news started floating around on X just as I'd finished dinner (herbed salmon and zucchini noodles) on Wednesday night. I was getting ready to plunge into the final phase of Thursday's Morning Briefing but tossed that aside to write about this.
Paramount is preparing to shell out as much as $200 million for Bari Weiss’ buzzy media venture, The Free Press — and hand her the keys to help steer CBS News — in a move that’s rattling an already shaken news division still reeling from the $8 billion Skydance-Paramount mega-merger.
Weiss, the former New York Times opinion page editor who launched The Free Press in 2022, is reportedly in line for a senior editorial role at CBS News as part of a deal that would fold her outlet into the new Paramount, according to the Puck newsletter.
Paramount declined to comment, but Puck media reporter Dylan Byers pegged the potential purchase price between $100 million and $200 million, with sources saying the talks are in their final stages.
As the internet kids like to say: Whoa, if true.
Media and entertainment site The Wrap corroborated the news, saying that "The Wrap's reporting suggests it's likely that Weiss will run CBS News."
If this plays out with Weiss being in charge of the thoroughly corrupt CBS News division it would be a seismic shift of massive proportions in the dinosaur mainstream media. Weiss was once a part of the MSM old guard, having been an Opinion writer for The New York Times from 2017-2020. Her breakup with the NYT was legendary. Weiss committed the leftist cardinal sin of deviating from the hive mind. She called out her leftist colleagues for being increasingly intolerant and writing for a very specific audience.
Conservatives praised her boldness, while the lefties reacted with their trademark venom. One of Weiss's biggest detractors then was the execrable Taylor Lorenz, who is struggling with this news:
Weiss is no rightwing propagandist. Despite being only 41, she's more like a Democrat from the 1970s. She is staunchly pro-Israel, however, which doesn't go over well with the increasingly antisemitic left. Also, Taylor Lorenz is bat guano crazy.
The Free Press has become a media juggernaut because Weiss is committed to having a space where people on both sides of the political aisle could have an exchange of ideas. It's one of the few things that I subscribe to on Substack, and there's something interesting to read there every day.
CBS News remains moribund and reflexively biased. This is from something that Matt wrote earlier in the week:
Two months ago, Paramount settled President Trump’s lawsuit for $16 million over a deceptively edited “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris, which was spliced to make her appear more coherent.
Yet, it seems CBS learned nothing from that debacle.
CBS News is once again up to its old tricks, heavily editing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s interview on “Face the Nation.” CBS cut critical information about illegal alien Kilmar Abrego Garcia to downplay the sheer scale of his criminal behavior, twisting the truth to sanitize a serious public safety threat.
They're never going to learn. Or maybe they are about to. Weiss may have begun her career in the legacy media, but it was clear that she was never a good fit there. She was immediately at home in new media, turning a Substack into a media company that might soon sell for a cool couple hundred million. If she returns to the MSM, it will be with a decidedly new media vibe.
It'll be a lefty head-exploding event I'll want to watch in IMAX.
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