The spending spree isn’t over yet. Confirming widely reported rumors, Paramount on Monday officially announced acquiring digital media publication The Free Press and named co-founder Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News.
Paramount CEO David Ellison’s deal unites a young digital subscription media outlet with the long-time broadcast news division CBS, which includes programs like 60 Minutes, among others.
Per The New York Times, the acquisition is said to value The Free Press around $150 million.
Co-founded in 2021 by Weiss, who is also CEO, The Free Press has grown to 1.5 million subscribers, including more than 170,000 paid. Per Paramount, the digital outlet grew revenues 82% in the past 12 months and saw 86% subscriber growth.
The Free Press positions itself as an alternative to traditional media outlets and Paramount’s announcement said the “publication’s commitment to independent, fact-based journalism has earned it a broad and influential following that spans generations.”
Under Paramount, The Free Press will maintain its own independent brand and operations and continue to do reporting, video and audio podcasts. The site is taking down its subscription paywall from October 6 through October 12 to introduce The Free Press to American audiences more widely as part of a special Free Press “Free Week.”
As for the new influence of Weiss over CBS, Ellison said it’s part of a larger vision for trusted news.
“We are thrilled to welcome Bari and The Free Press to Paramount and CBS News. Bari is a proven champion of independent, principled journalism, and I am confident her entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision will invigorate CBS News,” Ellison said in announcing the deal. “This move is part of Paramount’s bigger vision to modernize content and the way it connects – directly and passionately – to audiences around the world.”
“This is an important initiative for our company and Bari will report directly to me – leading the work of The Free Press and collaborating with our CBS News team in the pursuit of making it the most trusted name in news,” Ellison continued. “We believe the majority of the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based, and we want CBS to be their home.”
Further illustrating that point, TVREV’s Alan Wolk previously commented on rumors that Paramount would scoop up The Free Press and install Weiss at CBS, noting Ellison’s bet and the potential to resonate with audiences that don’t feel tightly aligned to either political party.
“American media has largely turned into a scrum of left- and right-leaning voices, driven partly by politics and partly by owners who realize that angry viewers are loyal viewers.
Ellison seems to be betting on the fact that there are a large number of viewers who are sick of the excesses of both sides, who just want to get the news without any sort of fixed ideological ‘our side’ slant and that Weiss is the person to do that,” wrote Wolk in a September 5 column.
If the idea works, Wolk described a vision of how it could make CBS News a place for relevance and to bring more independent audience into the national conversation – one where politicians go to get noticed, young reporters flock and a place “that contributes hundreds of meme-able clips each day to Twitter and YouTube and TikTok.” But the analyst also acknowledged things may not play out that way and warned Ellison that network TV news “may be too far gone, the partisan divide may be too deep, the people claiming you are only doing this to suck up to Trump too convinced for it to happen.”
The CBS News division came under pressure from President Donald Trump who filed a lawsuit against the media company over alleged editing of a 60 Minutes interview, which Paramount settled, agreeing to pay $16 million.
The lawsuit settlement came earlier in June before Ellison’s $8 billion deal for Paramount secured FCC regulatory sign-off, which also included making commitments to the FCC around CBS News operations that were meant to “address concerns about media bias” that were raised during the proceeding, including putting an ombudsman in place for at least two years.
The Paramount-Skydance deal closed in early August and Ellison has been on a bit of shopping spree since as he takes steps to shape his content ambitions for Paramount, including a 7-year $7.7 billion UFC deal and a film agreement with Activision to develop, produce and distribute a live-action feature film based on the Call of Duty video game franchise, as two examples.
And now it has a revamped vision for CBS News with Weiss at the helm, where she will shape editorial priorities, and lead innovation on how the organization reports and delivers news. In her role Weiss will partner with CBS News President Tom Cibrowski, who reports to Paramount’s Chair of TV Media George Cheeks. Paramount said the partnership of Weiss and Cibrowski reflects the media company’s recognition that the future of its news operation as dynamic and multiplatform requires unified leadership across TV, streaming, digital, audio, social media and events.
“This is a great moment for The Free Press. This partnership allows our ethos of fearless, independent journalism to reach an enormous, diverse, and influential audience,” said Weiss in a statement. “We honor the extraordinary legacy of CBS News by committing ourselves to a singular mission: building the most trusted news organization of the 21st Century.”