In her seven months as editor in chief and
the de facto head of CBS News, Bari Weiss installed a traditional anchorman on “CBS Evening News” and engineered the total shutdown of CBS Radio News.
When 10-year CBS News veteran Tony Dokoupil, 45, was named anchor of the newscast, Weiss praised his “old-school journalistic values” in a press release.
“We live in a time in which many people have lost trust in the media,” she said in what was likely a prepared statement.
“Tony Dokoupil is the person to
win it back. That’s because he believes in old-school journalistic values: asking the hard questions, following the facts wherever they lead and holding power to account,” Weiss said.
She said some of the same things in a press release last Thursday announcing a new executive producer of “60 Minutes,” a news show steeped in old-school
journalistic values.
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And yet, while “CBS Evening News” has been largely unchanged in the Weiss era, she is now leading an effort to remake
“60 Minutes.”
Some of the verbiage in the Dokoupil and “60 Minutes” announcements were similar.
In the Dokoupil announcement,
his old-school journalistic values included “holding power to account.”
In the “60 Minutes” press release, she said the new “60
Minutes” under the leadership of its new executive producer will “force accountability from every institution and every center of power,” which is essentially the same thing. Plus,
as noted in last Friday’s “60 Minutes” TV Blog, the venerable show does that already.
When she directed the abrupt closing of
99-year-old CBS Radio News in March, Weiss told the staff in a memo that “we did everything we could” to save it.
But it is reasonable to assume
that she just thought that the radio news unit was simply too old-fashioned to continue.
She may have even been correct on the decision to close CBS Radio
News, but at the same time, “CBS Evening News,” which traces its origins to 1941, remains essentially the same as it ever was.
Where the evening
newscast is concerned, Weiss, 42, has hired mainstream, traditional journalists while also recruiting contributors from the worlds of internet commentary, book publishing and podcasts.
This is the world she came from. The site she founded, Free Press, encompasses all those things. Paramount now
owns it.
On “old school” side, Weiss last month hired Shayndi Raice, 44, a 16-year veteran of The Wall Street Journal covering the Middle
East from Israel, for “Evening News.”
“Shayndi Raice has it all,” raved Weiss about this traditional journalist in another prepared
statement in a press release.
“She’s a scoophound reporter, a clear-eyed editor and a brilliant leader. She’s also
curious, dogged, exacting and tireless,” Weiss said. The word “scoophound” is new to me.
Last December, Weiss hired another correspondent with
old-school abilities, reporter Matt Gutman, who came from ABC News.
In another prepared statement at the time, Weiss said Gutman, 48, has all “the
qualities we look for in all our journalists: fearlessness, energy and relentlessness.”
When she announced the hirings, Weiss said she
“can’t wait” to work with either of them.
“I cannot wait for him to get started,” she said of Gutman. “I cannot wait for all of us to get
to work with her,” she said of Raice.
Thus, CBS Radio News must go, “CBS Evening News” stays more or less the same and “60 Minutes” is
going to be remade.
I cannot wait to hear what happens next.