Bari Weiss

Bari Weiss is a journalist who founded The Free Press and, since October 2025, has been editor-in-chief of CBS News.

The New York Times and the Resignation Letter

Weiss worked in the opinion section of The New York Times. She left in 2020, publishing an open resignation letter addressed to the paper’s publisher in which she said she had “joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago” and was leaving because she believed it had abandoned intellectual diversity: “Twitter has become its ultimate editor,” and “self-censorship has become the norm.” She concluded that she could “no longer do the work that you brought me here to do.”

The letter drew wide attention on its own. It was published on her own site rather than in any outlet, and it circulated as a document about newsroom culture — an early instance of a journalist’s departure from an institution being communicated directly to an audience rather than mediated by one.

The Free Press

Weiss founded the publication that became The Free Press, originally called Common Sense. Paramount’s own account dates the company’s founding to 2021. It describes itself as “a new media company built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of great American journalism: honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence,” and publishes eight stated values including independence and “belief in the American project.”

At the time of the Paramount deal the company reported revenue growth of 82% over the preceding twelve months and subscribers up 86% to 1.5 million, of whom more than 170,000 were paying. Those are the company’s own figures as stated in the acquirer’s release.

Paramount and CBS News

On 6 October 2025, Paramount, a Skydance Corporation, announced that it was acquiring The Free Press and that Weiss — the company’s co-founder and CEO — would join CBS News as editor-in-chief. Financial terms were not disclosed in the release.

The release describes the following arrangement: The Free Press keeps its own brand and operations; Weiss reports directly to Paramount chairman and CEO David Ellison rather than through the news division; and she partners with CBS News President Tom Cibrowski, who reports to Paramount. Ellison framed it as part of “Paramount’s bigger vision to modernize content and the way it connects.”

Digital Political Impact

• Her 2020 resignation letter is a standing reference point in argument about newsroom culture, published direct-to-audience rather than through a publisher
• The Free Press is a case of a subscription newsletter growing into a company large enough to be acquired by a broadcast network’s parent
• The acquisition put the founder of an independent subscription outlet in charge of a legacy broadcast newsroom, reporting to the corporate chairman rather than to the network

What Is Not Established Here

Removed in the citation audit: her birth year; X and YouTube follower counts; her dates at The Wall Street Journal and the characterization of what she wrote there; the dates 2017-2020 for her Times tenure as precise employment dates (her letter says “three years ago” and gives no dates); the claim that she commissioned opinion pieces “across the ideological spectrum”; the affiliation with Columbia University; and the claim that the newsletter “relaunched as a standalone publication in 2022”, which conflicts with Paramount’s founding date of 2021. The Honestly podcast is covered on its own page rather than asserted here.