Could a New Media upstart — and a New York Times escapee — end up controlling a major mainstream media outlet? The Free Press may soon take over the Tiffany Network’s news division — and if so, get ready for the screaming.
According to Dylan Byers at Puck News, the newly purchased Paramount has quiclkly settled into its new Skydance era. After canceling the Late Show on CBS and giving South Park a $1.5 billion deal to keep the Comedy Central tentpole up, new boss David Ellison has turned his sights onto CBS News. Skydance had pledged to address bias at their news division, and some of us wondered whether that was just smooth talk to get FCC approval for the acquisition.
Apparently not:
Now, David has made advances on yet another target: an acquisition of The Free Press, the defiantly heterodox news and opinion media entity founded by Bari Weiss. As you know, David has been courting Bari for almost a year, and formally pitched her on acquiring the company at the Allen & Co. conference in July. Those talks have progressed in recent days, and I am now told that the two sides have agreed in principle to a deal and lawyers are hard at work finalizing a formal agreement.
David’s offer for The Free Press is expected to be well above the site’s most recent $100 million valuation, but well below the $200 million figure that was recently floated in the Financial Times. (That was an absurd ask; The Free Press does $15 million in annual subscription revenue, and Bari’s politically charged content makes it hard to scale the advertising business. Plus, there’s no tech stack—it’s all on Substack.) Either way, it will land Weiss a king’s ransom just a little over five years after her dramatic departure from the Times. The deal is not done yet, of course, but, as a source with knowledge of the negotiations told me this afternoon, it is “on the 1-yard line.”
As a Free Press subscriber, I must confess that this news initially made me consider canceling my access. And if Shari Redstone had cut this deal for the previous iteration of Paramount, I may have done so. However, Ellison reportedly plans this more as a Free Press takeover of CBS News than the other way around:
As part of the deal, I am told David plans to give Bari a role at CBS News that would, among other things, task his fellow Millennial with guiding the editorial direction of the division. Bari’s avowedly pro-Israel and anti-woke worldview—not to mention her broadly shit-kicking anti-establishment disposition—would inevitably inspire blowback from various corners of the newsroom, and could dramatically change the editorial posture and reputation of one of the most storied, and certainly self-important, institutions in American journalism. For David, that’s likely part of the point.
Self-important? You bet. Perhaps no other news organization has its head so far up its own backside as CBS News, trying desperately to claim the mantle of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite while offering up the ethics of Walter Duranty and your average multi-level marketing salesman. The only media outlet that may exceed CBS News’ unearned arrogance is the New York Times — which Bari Weiss knows only too well.
With that in mind, Weiss would have to know the kind of hostile environment into which she’d walk. Will Ellison have her back when Weiss starts making wholesale changes to editorial practice and focus, and the staff starts revolting? (Yes, yes, I know The Wizard of Id cartoon.) Byers thinks staff departures are exactly what Ellison wants:
If the lifers at CNN threatened to burn the place down when Chris Licht moved his office to a different floor, imagine the looming hysteria that will transfix CBS News. Assumedly, for Ellison, employee migration is also part of the point.
Well … why not? The hacks at 60 Minutes and CBS News cost Paramount (and Skydance) millions of dollars for their latest attempt to manipulate the news for their desired political outcome. Ellison may want to clear out anyone who’s cooking the news to avoid the next settlement with Donald Trump — or perhaps the next Nick Sandmann, and so on. If that can be accomplished by self-migration of indignant hacks, all the better.
Speaking of which, they’re already beginning to self-identify (via Twitchy):
Bari Weiss: Identifies untapped market void, raises funds for a start-up to fill it amid ridicule from her peers. Successfully fills void, sells company to established player for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Taylor Lorenz: this is right wing grift. pic.twitter.com/2LaIekP5iR
— Nathan Brand (@NathanBrandWA) September 4, 2025
Lorenz doesn’t work for CBS News; she doesn’t work for anyone but herself at the moment, apparently. Lorenz claimed that she left the Washington Post to launch her own brand. Of course, that’s what Bari Weiss did and actually succeeded at it, whereas Lorenz is … still Lorenz. Envy doesn’t explain everything in life, but it explains an awful lot. And if one needs a moral compass to judge the merit of certain developments, Lorenz at least provides a steady reading for due moral south.
Back to CBS, where the Bari Era may hold plenty of surprises. Her all-voices-of-reason approach at The Free Press would be a breath of fresh air in the Protection Racket Media, if Ellison allows her to truly transplant it into CBS News. It certainly will be fun to watch Weiss try it, and might even be worth watching CBS News in the future. Occasionally, anyway.
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