BARI: THE ANTI-WOKE SUPERSTAR SHAKING UP AMERICAN JOURNALISM

As America’s political and media elite partied in Washington, DC, following Donald Trump’s inauguration at the start of the year, one event in particular drew the great and the good.

The Free Press, an online news publication founded by outspoken US journalist Bari Weiss, teamed up with Uber and Elon Musk’s X for a party that played host to famous faces, including the Republican senator Ted Cruz, controversial Irish UFC star Conor McGregor and former prime minister Liz Truss.

The star-studded bash was a coup for Weiss, the former New York Times journalist who in recent years has become one of the hottest names in US media.

Now, though, her star – and her fortune – have risen further after Hollywood giant Paramount inked a deal to buy The Free Press for a reported $150m price tag.

The takeover embeds a news startup at the heart of one of America’s largest media empires.

More controversially, however, the deal will also see Weiss take up the role of editor-in-chief of CBS News in a move that could herald the biggest overhaul in the Paramount-owned network’s near-100-year history.

Weiss, 41, rose to prominence during her time at the most staid outpost of US journalism – the New York Times.

On the newspaper’s opinion desk, Weiss gained notoriety for a string of barbed pieces bemoaning the rise of “woke” culture and what she viewed as the growing intolerance of the American liberal Left.

But it was in 2020, when Weiss resigned following a controversy over an opinion piece by US senator Tom Cotton calling for a military response to protests over the police killing of George Floyd, that the journalist took on an outsized position in the spotlight.

In a caustic 1,500-word open letter to the publisher of the New York Times, Weiss accused her colleagues of bullying and said the newspaper had fallen victim to “groupthink.” The New York Times said it was “committed to fostering an environment of honest, searching, and empathetic dialogue between colleagues, one where mutual respect is required of all.”

After leaving the New York Times, Weiss launched her own Substack. From scrappy beginnings, The Free Press has quickly professionalized, with more than 50 employees and offices in New York and Los Angeles.

The publication now has 1.5 million subscribers, more than 170,000 of whom pay a monthly fee, putting it among the most-read – and lucrative – newsletters on Substack.

Weiss, who hosts her own podcast and was a guest at Jeff Bezos’s wedding earlier this year, has also demonstrated her nous as an entrepreneur, impressing industry executives at the exclusive Sun Valley Conference and attracting investment from the likes of Marc Andreessen and David Sacks.

For Weiss, independence has always been at the heart of The Free Press.

Announcing the takeover to subscribers on Monday, she wrote:

“From day one, the promise – and the business proposition – of this publication was simple: We would marry the quality of the old world to the freedom of the new. We would seek the truth and tell it plainly. And we would treat readers like adults capable of making their own choices.”

In some ways, the political leanings of The Free Press evade straightforward categorization.

While the publication has often sided with the Trump administration – especially on cultural issues – it is by no means a pro-Trump outlet.

After Disney’s ABC suspended late-night host Jimmy Kimmel last month, The Free Press ran an editorial accusing the US government of “jawboning” the broadcaster and warning of the threat to free speech.

Weiss, who has founded the free speech-focused University of Austin, favors the term “heterodox” to define her intellectual stance. In a clear indication of her non-partisan intentions, she wrote today that the US was facing the threat of illiberalism from both the “America-loathing far Left” and the “history-erasing far Right.”

Yet despite attempts to disown any ideological bent, there is a clear narrative strand running through Weiss’s output.

The Free Press is characterized by a disdain for policies or cultural trends deemed “woke,” reserving particular contempt for issues such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and cancel culture.

Weiss – who is Jewish and has written a book on anti-Semitism – has also put Israel at the center of The Free Press’s output.

The publication has given extensive coverage to Columbia University – Weiss’s alma mater – over accusations it failed to protect Jewish students in the wake of the Oct 7 attacks.

Columbia has since agreed to pay a $200m settlement to the Trump administration. Columbia said the settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing.

In August, The Free Press published an article reporting that a number of malnourished Palestinian children whose images had appeared in major media outlets had pre-existing health conditions.

While the reporting prompted clarifications from CNN and The Washington Post, it also attracted criticism owing to concerns that the output was attempting to downplay or even deny the famine conditions in Gaza.

The Free Press does publish stories on both sides of partisan divides.

It has also attracted high-profile writers and its journalistic coups include the posthumous publication of letters penned by Russian dissident Alexei Navalny from his gulag prison cell.

Nevertheless, Weiss is viewed by many as an edgy new voice on the Right.

Young, female, and gay, she has carved out her place as an unorthodox modern mouthpiece for conservative values.

For her part, Weiss has made clear her ambitions to reshape CBS in the mold of The Free Press, describing it as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

But by handing the top job at CBS News to a Right-leaning opinion writer with no broadcasting experience, Paramount risks the ire of both its audience and workforce.

The Free Press has previously taken aim at CBS in its own pages, publishing a scathing insider account of the network’s response to Oct 7.

It has also been a vocal critic of NPR, the US public broadcaster that has been subjected to brutal funding cuts under Trump.

Insiders are reported to be both “apoplectic” and “literally freaking out” about Weiss’s arrival.

Aside from her editorial stance, Weiss has been branded a “wrecking ball” for her chaotic management style.

A number of high-profile journalists, including former senior New York Post editor Margi Conklin and Andy Mills, co-creator of the New York Times’s The Daily podcast, have left The Free Press in recent months. Weiss was approached for comment.

It comes at a febrile time for CBS owner Paramount, which was taken over by Skydance, the Hollywood studio run by David Ellison, in an $8bn deal this summer.

Ellison, who is the son of Silicon Valley billionaire Larry and to whom Weiss will report directly, has insisted he will not politicize the network, but many remain unconvinced.

RedBird Capital, the US private equity firm seeking to lead a consortium to acquire The Telegraph, is owner of the second-largest shareholding in Paramount.

In the run-up to the takeover, Paramount settled a $16m lawsuit with Trump despite the claim being widely dismissed as baseless by legal experts.

When Stephen Colbert, host of The Late Show, branded the settlement a “big fat bribe,” he was promptly taken off air.

Since the Skydance takeover, CBS has also overhauled editing rules on its Sunday morning Face the Nation show in a move that has also been viewed as a concession to the Trump administration.

Paramount has declined to comment on these changes but denied that it struck any agreement with Trump ahead of the takeover.

Announcing his takeover of The Free Press on Monday, Ellison said it formed part of Paramount’s “bigger vision to modernize content,” adding: “We believe the majority of the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based, and we want CBS to be their home.”

For Weiss, the deal cements the success of a newsletter she grew from nothing into a $150m business in just four years.

There are no signs, however, that her ambitions will be satisfied.

“The values that we’ve hammered out here over the years – journalism based in curiosity and honesty, a culture of healthy disagreement, our shared belief in America’s promise – now have the opportunity to go very, very big,” she wrote.

James Warrington is the Media and Telecoms Editor of the London Telegraph