Good Call/Bad Call: Bari Weiss as CBS’s New Editor-in-Chief

Transcript

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Speaker 1 Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Panakova.
And I'm Nate Silver.

Speaker 1 Today on the show, Maria, I gotta be honest, this is gonna be a little bit of a media navel-gazing kind of episode. People love talking about this stuff.
Some of them do, some of them don't, right?

Speaker 1 But we're going to be talking about the recent acquisition by Paramount of the sub-stack publication, The Free Press, Barry Weiss's publication for $150 million.

Speaker 1 Barry Weiss, also now the editor-in-chief of CBS News. I kind of can't resist this topic because as you'll hear, like, I just know and you know this landscape pretty well.
I used to work for ABC News.

Speaker 1 I used to work for the New York Times, where Barry is. I have my own sub stack that doesn't compete quite with the free press, but like, I know this stuff really well.

Speaker 1 You know, it's too close to the bone for me not to have opinions about it. And there is some strategy work too, as far as what CBS wants to get out of this.

Speaker 1 How do you build a differentiated media brand? How do you know when you're hiring a good editor-in-chief and then we'll do a good call, bad call, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 To say, at the end of the day, is this a good decision for CBS? The acquisition of a free press, making Barry Weiss editor-in-chief, is this good for the brand? Is this good for the future of media?

Speaker 1 would you like to have 150 million dollars maria i would love to have 150 nate so let's uh let's dive in um and just talk about this decision it's heavily taxed you know what nate i will happily pay taxes you're just paying what taxes i will happily pay more taxes if someone were to offer me 150 million dollars why nate are you offering if i had 150 billion dollars i might offer you like a really nice birthday gift.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's so sweet.

Speaker 1 This is where, this is where friendships come to die right on this podcast, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 1 But let's talk about Barry Weiss's appointment.

Speaker 1 So, with that acquisition for $150 million,

Speaker 1 Barry Weiss has become the editor-in-chief of CBS News, which is now part of Paramount, right? Because there was just a big deal where Paramount, which is owned by David Ellison, who is,

Speaker 1 I don't know how many billions he has, but he has many of them. Not enough.
Not enough, clearly. Not enough, clearly.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, so now she will be running CBS News. Nate, you say everyone has opinions.
I certainly have opinions, but

Speaker 1 let's start with your opinions. What do you think about this decision? And then I will speak as someone who formerly worked in news.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and look, I should also say, like, you know, I don't understand the whole deal. I have a sub stack.
I'm an investor in substack, just disclosing all my conflicts of interest, right?

Speaker 1 I've met Barry once or twice, had nice interactions with her.

Speaker 1 I've talked about collaboration with the free press different times, but I don't think I have any like conflicts that make this awkward officially, or maybe awkward, but not more than awkward, which is kind of always how it is with this navel-gazing inside journalism stuff.

Speaker 1 So I have a few thoughts, right? Number one,

Speaker 1 the purchase price of $150 million

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 actually not ridiculous, right? And the reason I know this is because, like, I've spent a lot of time looking at multiples of based on the number of paid subscribers that you have, right?

Speaker 1 What does that tend to sell for in the market, for example?

Speaker 1 You know, the reason I'm interested in this is that from time to time, I get, you know, people want to have something to do with my sub stack, Silver Bulletin, invest capital in it.

Speaker 1 And it's weird because like when you accept money, there are a lot of strings attached, right?

Speaker 1 It's like not like you're just buying like annuity and whatever revenue that you have in the future, right? You're expected to give up some control.

Speaker 1 You're expected to work a certain amount of time, maybe harder. You're expected to, you know, give up some of the profit yourself.
But like, you know, they are the

Speaker 1 top selling substack on the platform, I believe by some margin. I do have some knowledge that I'm going try not to reveal, but like, you know, they have well over a million total subscribers, right?

Speaker 1 At typical rates, it translates probably into low six-figure paid subscribers. The growth has been solid.
They have been spending a lot of money on staff.

Speaker 1 It's not like, you know, I have two people I hire. They have dozens, right?

Speaker 1 But like, you know, depending on whether it's a time for like hot or cold kind of valuations in the market, I feel like there's got to be like a more scientific way to put that.

Speaker 1 But like, it's not inherently ridiculous.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was actually that was one of the things that i was curious to hear your opinion on because i don't know anything about the financials and when i saw that amount i was like wow that seems like a lot yeah look i mean you know when i was talking with john skipper who was then the president of espn when he um when they purchased the 538 brand right you know he said my philosophy he's a north carolina guy my philosophy of negotiations is always that it's worth $1 more the next dollar is willing to pay for it, right?

Speaker 1 There's some of that, right? But the thing about subscription models, and it's nice to have myself, right, is that they are cash flow positive, right? You can get a big burst of subscribers up front.

Speaker 1 They're paying for the whole year or the whole month in advance, right?

Speaker 1 So it's like not some future, oh, we're going to build this brand up and then later on convert it to advertising revenues or make it a brand consultancy or something else, right?

Speaker 1 You know, if Free Press has

Speaker 1 north of 100,000 paid subscribers, right, and they're paying on average after after stripe fees and things like that, $80 a year or whatever, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, that is like, that's like actual freaking money, you know, whether it justifies $150 billion, you get into multiples and multiples can be

Speaker 1 a billion. 100 billion.
You can get to multiples. Multiples can be subjective, right?

Speaker 1 There's maybe some notion that like, although subscription businesses get off to a fast start,

Speaker 1 you know, in theory, they have some upside cap, right? Yeah, typically, there's like kind of an

Speaker 1 S-curve. Um, sign you at first, you have trouble finding anybody because they don't know about you, right? Then you develop brand awareness and you reach everybody in your potential audience.

Speaker 1 The people who are the most excited about your product subscribe first, right? And then probably you encounter some diminishing returns.

Speaker 1 And the point is that, like, where do you find yourself on that? You know, when do those inflection points hit potentially, right? You start to get more churn, it gets harder, right?

Speaker 1 One criticism that's been levied against the free press is that

Speaker 1 it focuses on some particular issues,

Speaker 1 some of which in various ways are becoming less relevant, right? You know, it focused a lot on woke excesses in the kind of the liberal sphere, right? I'm not going to put woke in quotation marks.

Speaker 1 I think it was a real thing.

Speaker 1 Barry Weiss quit the New York Times in 2020 at a time when there was a lot of peer pressure and groupthink and said, this place sucks, right?

Speaker 1 I'm not going to be here anymore, even though she'd been brought in to solicit conservative opinion pieces.

Speaker 1 And part of what happens with these substacks is when there is like a market inefficiency, when for whatever reason, because

Speaker 1 there's peer pressure in newsrooms, because corporate big wigs are

Speaker 1 kowtowing to a particular opinion, to Trump, maybe for example, you know, substack fills that void where there was a lot of people who were like, Yeah, I'm liberal, but I'm not woke.

Speaker 1 This shit seems ridiculous. And so here's a free press that, like, the free press, which I called Common Sense, that like speaks to those issues in a way that other publications don't, right?

Speaker 1 I think it's been more of a struggle for like, how does this audience feel about like covering the Trump administration, right?

Speaker 1 Trump is president, and therefore, you know, he makes most of the news if you're kind of covering, covering politics, right?

Speaker 1 I think probably you're going to see some. Well, I'm speaking my own book here, right? I think these blogs are interesting but partisan.

Speaker 1 I think they tend to suck when it comes to like actually covering elections. I think they tend to be extremely partisan and not good at like keeping their arm's length from polls.

Speaker 1 But no doubt, like if you kind of got in early, that like there's a lot of desire for it.

Speaker 1 And a lot of the best commentary about what's going on, right, is on Substack now and not in the Washington Post, for example, right? So, you know, this creates a market where you no longer have

Speaker 1 gatekeepers. And

Speaker 1 in some sense, like I admire anybody who says, fuck you, I don't care about the gatekeepers, right? I'm going to do my own thing.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to prove it with the fact that I've developed the largest audience on this very competitive platform. I've been talking for a while, Maria.

Speaker 1 What do you, I haven't even, I haven't let you have wood and itch wise.

Speaker 1 What do you think?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 you know, I

Speaker 1 frankly

Speaker 1 probably find the choice more concerning

Speaker 1 than

Speaker 1 you do for, you know, I think that

Speaker 1 the free press has changed a lot since it was since its inception, right? I actually, I was much more sympathetic to a lot of Barry Weiss's pieces earlier on.

Speaker 1 And I feel like it has gone from like actually wanting to be free press to being

Speaker 1 a little bit too much on the other side, so to speak, right? And now actually being quite biased.

Speaker 1 Like whenever Trump is suddenly singing your praises, you should probably be just a little bit worried that maybe you're not the champion of free speech that

Speaker 1 you once were.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there's that. And then

Speaker 1 This is CBS News, right? And that's.

Speaker 1 I mean, that part is.

Speaker 1 And so, so let's talk about that, right? Let's talk about the fact that Barry Weiss has zero experience running a newsroom.

Speaker 1 See, now you're making, now you're making the bad lib argument. But that's true, but it's true.
It's not a bad lib. It's

Speaker 1 hold on, hold on. I've, so she's never worked in television, right?

Speaker 1 And let me just say one of the first things she did when she started was send out a memo telling everyone to take time to write a memo to her detailing how they spend their entire day so that she could read that.

Speaker 1 And to me, that's like, that's not even a red flag. That's like flaming red fires.
If someone asked me to do that, I would probably be like,

Speaker 1 I'm very sorry, but with all due respect, fuck you.

Speaker 1 Like, as someone who actually worked on a daily news show and who has worked in a magazine, you know, corporate world,

Speaker 1 which she, by the way, didn't do on the editorial side she was just an opinion columnist um and then she started her own thing it is very very different right running cbs news is not running the free press on substack and being put in charge of that it's you know imagine if all of a sudden like

Speaker 1 Let's imagine I'm still at the New Yorker and we're told that, hey, David Remneck is leaving and instead we're going to get, I don't even know who, Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 He's very smart and he's going to be your editor-in-chief. Oh, no.
But Maria, this is getting more libby. But it doesn't have to be Elon Musk.
It could be Bill Gates.

Speaker 1 I don't care who it is, but someone who has zero experience running a magazine. But now, even if David Remnick were to go to CBS News, that would be a little bit weird.

Speaker 1 And he probably still isn't particularly qualified for that because even though he's run something that's much more similar to that kind of organization, it's still incredibly different.

Speaker 1 I mean, first of all, if you want to talk about qualified, like a lot of the presidents of these network news organizations. This isn't president.

Speaker 1 She's not the president, though, right? This is someone who is in charge of the content. Those are very, very...
She's a de facto. But those are different roles.
She reports to Ellison, right?

Speaker 1 Right, but those are different roles.

Speaker 1 The role of editor can mean a lot of different things. Right now, I'm not talking about politics.
I'm just talking about like...

Speaker 1 Who are you putting in charge of a news organization?

Speaker 1 Are you putting someone who actually understands how to run a newsroom? And the answer is. Yeah,

Speaker 1 she has run a newsroom with like

Speaker 1 several dozen people. That is one of the few successful businesses.

Speaker 1 But it's not television. It's a very different medium.
Podcasts are different from newsletters, are different from daily TV shows, are different from screenwriting, are different from.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you want more superficiality? No, I want someone who I think is qualified. If you look at her resume, just pretend you don't even see her name, right? And you see resumes of people.

Speaker 1 This is not someone who would ever get that job, right? Like she just lacks some basic qualification, some basic stepping stone.

Speaker 1 Go ahead and look at like who is hired to these senior level positions at ABC, CBS, NBC, right? Sometimes it's longtime TV executives. Sometimes it's people with a journalism background.

Speaker 1 Sometimes it's somebody who's a big name brought in from the outside, right? Sometimes it's somebody who

Speaker 1 was a star producing in a different type of television, right? Producing sports or something

Speaker 1 like that. Sometimes it's somebody who kind of came up the corporate lengths and is kind of like a bureaucrat.

Speaker 1 The range of things that you do as like an editor, including bureaucratic tasks, editorial tasks, and most of these people have not been very successful or good.

Speaker 1 It's a kind of high turnover, at least in the current environment. You used to have like long-standing.

Speaker 1 people who would have this job for years, right? But the turnover is very high. And like, why wouldn't you want to pick somebody who has like actually built a successful news product before?

Speaker 1 Well, I would want someone who at least understands how my medium works, someone who has worked in screen and who understands that writing for the screen is very different from writing for the page, who understands that what it takes to succeed in television is not what it takes to succeed in print journalism, who understands how all of these different media products work together.

Speaker 1 I want someone with a demonstrated capacity to make that sort of a transition.

Speaker 1 And she, I would at least have wanted her in a more junior position to demonstrate that she's capable of creating 60 minutes, right, of producing a show like that.

Speaker 1 And let me tell you from having actually worked as a television producer, it is not anything like what I do as a print journalism.

Speaker 1 The things that you write for it are vast, like it's just a completely different skill set.

Speaker 1 And to think that it's the same skill set just is basically ignorant, to be perfectly honest. Like it's, it's like Saints News is not

Speaker 1 a television, it doesn't want to be a television company. It wouldn't have the valuation.

Speaker 1 And yet, and yet so much of it is television. And to bring in someone who does not understand television and has no background in it, I think is just a jaw-dropping decision.

Speaker 1 I'm just

Speaker 1 dealt with enough corporate suits at these companies specifically where the bar is pretty low. Somebody who's bright and hardworking and has built a successful editorial brand, brand, right?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 understands video, you know, I mean, their content is pretty tech-savvy, right? But like, it's not an easy thing to like build a brand when you kind of start out.

Speaker 1 I'm not trying to, I'm not trying, I'm not trying to say that Barry Weiss does not,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 is not good at what she does.

Speaker 1 I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to say that, but I'm saying that what she does is not necessarily what I'd be looking for in the editor-in-chief, not the president of CBS News, someone who's in charge of the editorial decisions of this brand and the editorial decisions across the board.

Speaker 1 So potentially, like, what is CBS News saying? Are we saying we don't want to be a television company at all? Are we going to shut down 60 Minutes? Are we going to shut down all of our flagship shows?

Speaker 1 And we're not going to do TV. We're going to do, we're just going to become the free press or whatever it is.
If that's what they're saying, okay, well, that's one thing.

Speaker 1 But I don't think that's what they're saying. I mean, I think they still want to produce some of the best quality television that is.

Speaker 1 some of the best quality news television. That's what they're known for.
I keep saying 60 Minutes because it's one of the most respected brands, not just in the United States, but in the world.

Speaker 1 And a lot of the people in 60 Minutes quit right over the last year because there's been a lot of turmoil and CBS has shown that it doesn't have a backbone in terms of protecting the quality of

Speaker 1 its editorial content and the independence of its journalists. And so this is, to me, just another

Speaker 1 reason to be skeptical and alarmed. Now, I would be so thrilled, Nate, if Barry Weiss were to prove me wrong and were to come in there and prove that like, you know what?

Speaker 1 She's the best editor-in-chief CBS has seen. She revolutionizes it.

Speaker 1 She ends up being a free, independent voice who, you know, speaks truth to the Trump administration just as much as she spoke truth to the woke left and who ends up making really good decisions, great hiring decisions, and makes CBS News vibrant and relevant.

Speaker 1 I would love for that to be the case. Is CBS News vibrant and relevant now? No, but we need someone good.
And it has become much less vibrant.

Speaker 1 We need someone. Hold on.

Speaker 1 You're not even, you're not engaging with what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 You're picking one little thing. And you need someone.
As I said, CBS News has been falling for the last year. And this is actually more of the same, right?

Speaker 1 It has lost some of its most prominent voices who have left or been forced out and now they've hired Barry Weiss which kind of doubles down on that and I don't think Ellison has any desire to do anything other than make sure he gets a lot of money and gets the deals that he wants to go through and be approved by the Trump administration.

Speaker 1 Now Once again, as someone who has worked in television, I've worked for good producers, bad producers. Like there's a huge difference, right? The shows don't just make themselves.

Speaker 1 Like you, need good people there, otherwise, you're going to get absolute shit. And if you want a good CBS news, if that's the goal, then,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 was this the correct hire? And what is the future of a news organization

Speaker 1 where it seems like those values are being put aside for something that looks like, instead of editorial freedom, editorial oversight?

Speaker 1 We'll be back right after this.

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Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line.

Speaker 1 But first.

Speaker 1 There, the last one.

Speaker 1 Enjoy a Coca-Cola for a pause that

Speaker 1 refreshes.

Speaker 1 The one that really got my goat was like

Speaker 1 John Oliver. I'm sure some of the readers like John Oliver.
Maybe some don't find him to their taste. I'm in the latter camp, even though I probably agree with him on some stuff, right?

Speaker 1 I find him kind of hectoring and luxury.

Speaker 1 So, John Oliver was making the

Speaker 1 same complaint you were that like, she's never walked an editorial or excuse an editorial journalist, right? And like, sometimes the facts are wrong.

Speaker 1 And it's like, okay, like, you know, John Oliver takes predictable opinions from one side of a spectrum, mixes them with facts to a degree where it's sometimes ambiguous, kind of like, what's an opinion and what's a fact, right?

Speaker 1 And then states them very confidently. And like, like, you know, for you to criticize Barry Weiss of that, which I think might be a good characterization of some of what they do, right?

Speaker 1 It just seems like kind of hypocritical. And all these opinion journalists are like, all these opinion journalists, like, why does the New York Times have an opinion page?

Speaker 1 I write sometimes the New York Times opinion page, right?

Speaker 1 You know, I don't know, right?

Speaker 1 Opinion is actually a vertical that sells pretty well for the most part. And like, but it just seems to me like

Speaker 1 a lot of publications, including the big three networks pre-Trump, I think a lot of things have changed now in the Trump era, right? But like there is

Speaker 1 an implicit, sometimes explicit, but an implicit left-leaning bias, not far left, not Bernie Sanders Zoran bias left, they're corporate right, maybe not quite my kind of center left either, but like on cultural issues, they're very progressive.

Speaker 1 And like what Barry does is kind of like

Speaker 1 give the progressive left, not the Zoran left, the progressive kind of center left, I call it the indigo blob, this merger between on the one hand, nonpartisan media and then kind of like partisan institutions of the Democratic Party and the left, right?

Speaker 1 She is taking that formula to produce on average, center right leaning opinions with high production values, meaning, you know, the stories are edited well in a sense of like, they have a good lead paragraph, they have a good headline, they get promoted well on social media, they have attractive art to the extent that's possible, depending on the type of story, and so forth, right?

Speaker 1 Um, and like that's kind of what like a lot of these brands do on the left. And is there some implicit, or I would say, in some cases, fairly explicit bias?

Speaker 1 Yes, but like it's the same game that you've been seeing on in the progressive left for like for a long time now, right? Um, I wouldn't want John Oliver to head CBS News either, right?

Speaker 1 I don't think that an opinion, someone who's an opinion columnist/slash opinion show host, you know, whatever it is, should be heading a news organization. That's just me, right?

Speaker 1 I wouldn't want Stephen Colbert running CBS News, like, and I, and I love him.

Speaker 1 I don't think that that's that we should, you know, if you're saying that what you're, I'm not saying you personally, Nate, if what one is saying is that one wants to be a bastion of free speech and try to kind of protect that and be

Speaker 1 an organization that espouses the values of editorial integrity, then at least you should try to hire someone who's not an op-ed columnist with a left or a right-leaning viewpoint. You should

Speaker 1 try to,

Speaker 1 but she was, right? So, but you're just saying that the way, hold on, you were just saying that the way that her formula was the same, right? That you, that's what you were just talking about.

Speaker 1 You were saying that the formula is to have an opinion with some facts presented leaning some direction. It's more complicated than that, right? That creating

Speaker 1 ambiguity. If you listen to John Oliver, right? Like every eight out of 10 things he does are true, says are true, but they're cherry-picked and spun.
And it's kind of the same thing, right?

Speaker 1 We're like, it's taking...

Speaker 1 Right, which is why we don't want either one of them. A lot of the work that Free Press does.
We don't want either one of them as head of CBS News. You think you're not getting out CBS News now?

Speaker 1 I remember watching

Speaker 1 in the pandemic, we had a friend up to our house and they had a story about like how Ron DeSantis, the evil governor of Florida, was distributing a vaccine at Publix, which is a giant supermarket chain throughout Florida and the South, which to me seems like a fucking fantastic idea, right?

Speaker 1 You know, everywhere you turn in Florida, there is

Speaker 1 an alligator and a Publix, basically. And like, you know, like to me, like, I mean, that was an example of like, you know, were things narrowly facts.

Speaker 1 fact checkupually that's not a word wrong probably some things the desantis people were mad about that story and believe me i'm no fan of ron desantis at all but like that was a story that was a it was a biased fucking story right no of course you're misunderstanding me I'm saying that that's not a good that's not a good thing right we're we're not we're not saying that those that cherry-picking to the left or to the right is is a good thing and so why would you pick someone whose entire MO was to create a publication like that that has become much more right-leaning?

Speaker 1 Don't you want to at least start off with, you know, okay, fine, maybe there will end up being some bias because there always is, there's no such thing as an unbiased piece of storytelling ever, because even the most factually correct story is going to have a point of view on which order to present the facts.

Speaker 1 You know, we can get all philosophical about this, but there's no such thing as an objective piece of writing. Like it just does not exist.
And we can, you can, I will, I will die on that hill.

Speaker 1 True objectivity is impossible. Okay.

Speaker 1 Now, if we are saying that we still want to be a place that is open to all viewpoints, et cetera, et cetera, don't you at least want to start with someone in charge of that organization whose whole MO wasn't something different?

Speaker 1 And we'll be right back after this break.

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Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line.

Speaker 1 But first. first.

Speaker 1 There,

Speaker 1 the last one.

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Speaker 1 By the way, if CBS was like, hey, Maria, you should be our editor-in-chief, I'd be like, absolutely not. I have no idea what I'm doing

Speaker 1 when it comes to something like that.

Speaker 1 You know, I know some specific parts of the business from having worked on them, but like, I'm not that person, right? That's not my world.

Speaker 1 This is the weird part, right? If, if.

Speaker 1 CBS Paramount came to me and said, we'll offer to buy Silver Bulletin for $150 million. I'm like, how much of that is mine? What are the terms? Etc.

Speaker 1 But I'd be very pleased to have that, very pleased to have that offer, Marie. I'd be playing some high rollers in the World Series next summer.

Speaker 1 If they then said, you have to be editor-in-chief of CBS News, I'd be like, no fucking way, right? It's a really bad job.

Speaker 1 You have, these are big bureaucratic news organizations that like have a lot of people. They were once highly secure jobs and now they're becoming less so, right? And so you have kind of like

Speaker 1 the old guard journalists who are terrified for their livelihood. You have the kind of younger progressive woke staff.
You have ownership who's trying to please Trump.

Speaker 1 You have a perpetually declining, although these networks still give more audience than you might think for their, for their Sunday shows, right? And their evening shows, right?

Speaker 1 In perpetual decline, right? And you kind of come into a job where a lot of people, probably not all the staff, maybe not most of the staff, but a lot of people kind of publicly hate your guts.

Speaker 1 I mean, that sounds like a fucking terrible job. For $150 million, I'd do it.
But like, I wouldn't do that job for $2 million a year. I'm not fucking kidding, right?

Speaker 1 Like, I mean, that job is like, it's a terrible fucking job, which makes me wonder, is that, does Barry want that to reshape

Speaker 1 the newsroom? Or does Ellison want that for her? Or, or, I mean, she's very ambitious, right?

Speaker 1 And one, you know, I'm a little bit older than her, not that much older, I don't think, but like a little bit older.

Speaker 1 And like, one thing that's nice, it's like, I got my phase where I wanted to like dominate and take over the media landscape out of the way with 538 at a big corporate news organization called ABC, right?

Speaker 1 And also, you know, she is used to being in an environment where like she is the equity holder, and therefore, when you grow, then you capture those proceeds.

Speaker 1 You can choose to reinvest those proceeds, you can choose to take a nice, you know, vacation somewhere, you can choose to hire more staff or whatever else, right? Um,

Speaker 1 and my advice to her would be like when you go from kind of being the owner to being kind of the patron, then

Speaker 1 that changes the incentives quite a bit. Absolutely.
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, one of the things, you know, this is something that we haven't really talked about, but from her perspective, it's actually a really interesting question because she's someone who left the New York Times.

Speaker 1 She wasn't fired. She chose to quit because she felt like she, at least the way that she phrased it, obviously I have zero insider information.
I've never met Barry Weiss.

Speaker 1 But the way that she publicly framed it is you know i want to be

Speaker 1 even though like no one's forcing me out i and i was hired for kind of express it to express more conservative opinions like i want to be even more free right like i want to be in an environment where i feel like i can do like my my own thing and like really frame the conversation.

Speaker 1 So, you know, so she left the New York Times to be, you know, free to be even more herself. She founds the Free Press, which is her own publication, right? Where she makes the editorial decisions.

Speaker 1 She chooses what they cover. She chooses how they cover it.
You know, when they host presidential debates, she chooses, you know, exactly how she wants to do it. And,

Speaker 1 you know, being, being someone who was always so vocal about needing to be fiercely independent, you then get on Ellison's payroll, right?

Speaker 1 And there's no other way of putting it, right? Like you, that, that is it, that is actually literally

Speaker 1 what is happening. I I hate to say, like, Barry, are you selling out? Like, hell, for $150 million, I'd sell out and go and probably

Speaker 1 go do something like that. It's a lot of money.
No judgment in terms of people taking life-changing money. Maybe a little bit of judgment, we'll see.
But,

Speaker 1 you know, it's in terms of her own goals, in terms of like,

Speaker 1 what are you going to be able to do, you're being put in a position where maybe what you said, you know, five years ago that was the thing that you stood for is not compatible necessarily with the role that you chose and the way that you will now have to be answering to kind of corporate powers that be and political forces that are

Speaker 1 strong and that hired you for a very specific reason.

Speaker 1 Yeah, look, she is the number one publication at Free Press, which has a lot of people on Substack, right? Number two is Heather Cox Richardson, who just sends out a newsletter at 1 a.m.

Speaker 1 every day, lives in Maine, has no real staff as far as I can tell, has no real formatting, right?

Speaker 1 Occasionally does media appearances, right? And she's making,

Speaker 1 I know how much she's making, but I can't say, right? But like, she's just making all that money and like apparently keeping it.

Speaker 1 For her and her, I think she's like a hot like lobster man husband in Maine or something, right?

Speaker 1 Not the one running for that sounds pretty awesome. Yeah.
And like, yeah, no, I mean, not a bad life, right? But the point is that like,

Speaker 1 no, and look, I guess it's like a little bit personal because like, you know, and I'm kind of in this in-between zone, right?

Speaker 1 Where I, I, you know, I hired, uh, you know, um, Eli, my politics analyst, became full-time. We hired a sports analyst.
I'm probably looking to, looking ahead to next year and like,

Speaker 1 probably gonna have to hire another person, right?

Speaker 1 But I don't want to recreate 538 where I had like 30 people because, yeah, look, even if you're nominally the editor-in-chief, and I have been an editor-in-chief, right?

Speaker 1 Then between corporate ownership and the staff, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, the point: if I had 30 people, then it becomes, you know, all of a sudden the work I do is representative of them, and like you kind of lose control over the hiring process, right?

Speaker 1 So, like, my objective, not that people should necessarily care, is like, you know, I want to keep things kind of more close-knit, right? Whereas, as Barry is kind of like, um,

Speaker 1 let's take a big shot, right? Let's, I mean, she's got maybe more of the

Speaker 1 high-risk entrepreneurial spirit, I guess it is, right?

Speaker 1 But, you know, the juxtaposition of like that with like these stodgy old media companies that I know a lot, a lot about in my own way too, having worked for ABC is just like, I predict

Speaker 1 that she is going to become extremely frustrated, right?

Speaker 1 And like the other thing that bugs me too is, you know, I kind of hate the fact that like, why can't things just be medium-sized and good and profitable?

Speaker 1 Why does everything have to blow up so much, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Why not say, okay, the free press, we're doing very well, right? We'll continue to expand the user base and then we're going to kind of generate a lot of income.

Speaker 1 We can do with that income what we want. We can invest in the business, another business, just keep the money.
It's capitalism.

Speaker 1 I have no problem with like people having money at any point whatsoever, right?

Speaker 1 But like, but why do we have have to like fucking always like take over everything and take over the world and not just say like we are at one of the, you know, we have over a hundred thousand subscribers.

Speaker 1 We're bigger already than like paid subscribers, right? We're bigger already than like in terms of the print circulation, all but like

Speaker 1 one or two newspapers, right, and digital circulation, you know, getting pretty far up there.

Speaker 1 And instead, it's like, okay, why do, you know, it's just a little bit baffling to me that like there's so much emphasis and a lot of these entrepreneurs and media don't run a shit about like either trust Barry Weiss before Ellison, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 A million times over.

Speaker 1 That's not saying much, but yes.

Speaker 1 So, so, okay, let's uh

Speaker 1 let's wrap up here then. So, um, if we're gonna frame this, you know, with what we sometimes do on the show, like good call, bad call, um, the hiring of Barry Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News.

Speaker 1 And Nate, you can't hedge, it has to be good call or bad call. Is it a good call or is it a bad call?

Speaker 1 What are his objectives?

Speaker 1 To, well, his objective is to make lots of money for himself personally,

Speaker 1 I think. But

Speaker 1 let's say to have a vibrant news organization,

Speaker 1 let's

Speaker 1 take him at his word, that the objective is to make CBS a vibrant news organization and a bastion of true free speech that protects free speech on all sides of the political spectrum and is a relevant voice in media and a respected voice in media.

Speaker 1 Good call, bad call.

Speaker 1 Those are like different objectives, right?

Speaker 1 Like I, I, you know, they'll probably get better at avoiding a certain type of progressive bias, sometimes involves shutting down speech and substituting with it their own various kinds of biases, right?

Speaker 1 No, look, I think it's, if they are doing this for purely journalistic reasons,

Speaker 1 then it's high risk, probably leaning bad, right? For financial reasons, I think the valuation is quite reasonable, right?

Speaker 1 if it's for political reasons then then who knows right i mean trump i mean it's a weird model because like trump certainly does rather explicitly play favorites yeah so so give me give me a final give me a final judgment night i started off by saying no caveats and that was one big caveat

Speaker 1 is the buying the free press good call having her be editor-in-chief

Speaker 1 bad call all right that's a that's a

Speaker 1 are you bad call bad call? I'm bad call bad call yes.

Speaker 1 I think for for reasons that I've already

Speaker 1 that I've already made quite clear. And like I said, this is not a dig on barrier what she accomplished at Free Press.

Speaker 1 I just think it's it's a bad sign for the types of lofty goals of editorial integrity, free speech, et cetera, et cetera, that CBS was once known for and hopes to be known for.

Speaker 1 Known for what, 20 years ago? Hopes to be, yeah, yeah, hopes to be known for once again. So yeah, I think, I think bad call, bad call.

Speaker 1 But I would love, love, love to be wrong. Like, I really would, because I want journalism to thrive and I want the people at CBS to thrive and I want good people to be hired.

Speaker 1 And so I really, I really hope that Barry Weiss will pleasantly surprise me and will end up being a much better editor-in-chief than I think she's going to be.

Speaker 1 And if so, I will happily, you know, come on Risky Business and say, I was wrong. Yay, I'm very happy that I was wrong.

Speaker 1 Let us know what you think of the show. Reach out to us at riskybusiness at pushkin.fm.

Speaker 1 Risky Business is hosted by me, Maria Kanakova. And by me, Nate Silver.
The show is a co-production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isaac Carter.

Speaker 1 Our associate producer is Sonia Gerwit. Lydia Jean Cott and Daphne Chen are our editors.
And our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.

Speaker 1 If you like the show, please rate and review us so other people can find us too. But once again, only if you like us, we don't want those bad reviews out there.
Thanks for tuning in.

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