Firings at ’60 Minutes,’ layoffs at NPR, the end of CBS Radio and Colbert: Thoughts at end of tough week for media

Imagine you have an amazing, classic car, which runs well and seems to improve its performance, year after year. It is the most-admired car among your friends and acquaintances. And everytime you hop inside, it delivers better than the performance you expect, winning awards and new fans every year you own it.

Now imagine hiring someone with zero experience as a mechanic to completely overhaul the car because you’re worried, at some unknowable point in the future, the car may not perform as well as it is doing now.

That’s the closest comparison I can think of to what just happened at CBS News and 60 Minutes, where editor-in-chief Bari Weiss just fired as the show’s Executive Producer, Tanya Simon – a woman who worked on the program for more than 25 years, was its first female executive producer and is a daughter of former correspondent Bob Simon. This firing came, despite the fact that the show has top ratings, a digital audience which is robust and growing and is winning major awards.

As Simon’s replacement, Weiss hired Nick Bilton, an author, editor and writer who has never worked in broadcast TV news. To helm TV journalism’s most storied, admired and widely watched newsmagazine.

Feels a lot like electing someone president who has never been an elected official before. What could go wrong?

This news topped a tough week for journalism. NPR saw nearly 30 people leave, with 10 laid off, including close friends of mine. Ace journalists with loads of institutional knowledge like Neda Ulaby, Don Gonyea, Nell Greenfieldboyce and many others went out the door, despite record fundraising and donations.

It was something I feared would happen, once President Trump made plain his plans to defund public media. But it also part of a larger dynamic – a drive by this current administration to restrict, punish or eliminate independent journalism which dares to report stories the President does not like.

Defunding of public media, including PBS and NPR. The crippling of Voice of America. Layoffs of nearly half the newsroom at the Washington Post. The death of CBS Radio and Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show. These instances all seem connected to efforts by Trump and his allies to curb journalism and voices in media who dare to cross the current administration.

Certainly, that’s the opinion of one 60 Minutes alum – Steve Kroft, who retired from the program as a correspondent in 2019 after 30 seasons working there, told the media newsletter Status, “Since I retired, I often wondered what would happen to 60 Minutes. But I never expected it would be executed by the president of the United States.”

In addition to firing Simon and hiring Bilton, Weiss ousted Cecilia Vega, the show’s first Latina correspondent, and Sharyn Alfonsi, the reporter whose story on a prison in El Salvador used by the Trump administration as a warehouse for people deported from the country was held up under suspicious circumstances by Weiss. Alfonsi had the temerity to question Weiss’ decision publicly, helping feed an escalating series of embarrassing press stories connected to the new editor-in-chief’s moves to change CBS News in ways which seem calculated to win favor from the Trump administration.

Alfonsi’s reaction to Weiss’ ill-advised decision regarding her story shouldn’t have surprised anyone who knows anything about 60 Minutes. As the network’s crown jewel in its journalism crown – a show which has been at the top of TV ratings for decades, proving that quality journalism can draw a large viewership and make money – 60 Minutes developed a reputation for independence, even from CBS News. Its correspondents always seemed willing to speak out when they thought it was necessary, regardless of whose feathers got ruffled.

Bringing major changes elsewhere in CBS News, where ratings are down and programs like CBS Mornings and the CBS Evening News are struggling to climb from third place, might make some kind of sense. But blowing up a program in first place, beloved by viewers for its journalistic independence, to hire someone with no experience in the medium with a boatload of untested ideas? That sounds like an agenda other than building better journalism or bigger audiences at work.

I wonder if Weiss wanted to hire someone with no broadcast TV news experience, just to make it less likely she would be challenged over her own lack of knowledge. I have always felt that one sign of a terrible leader, is someone who surrounds themselves with subordinates they can easily dominate or who know less than they do. It’s a sign of insecurity and a signal that finding the best solution is no longer the mission – supporting the boss’ ideas, regardless of whether they are the best ideas in the room, may now be the mission.

None of this, of course, is tethered to any sort of reality. What exactly are these changes supposed to achieve? Where’s the data or history to indicate this is something audiences will respond to? Are there any modern news outlets which have managed to pull off the enormous feat to alienating their core audience and reaching toward a new one at the same time?

CNN’s chief media analyst Brian Stelter spent time talking to Bilton and others and reported for the Reliable Sources newsletter that Weiss is trying to shake up an archaic institution in need of reinvention.

Stelter wrote:

From my perspecitve, working with experienced people who have bought into your vision and want it to succeed seems much more likely to actually work. Firing people for daring to disagree with you in ways which make it seem as if you’re capitulating to a press-hostile presidential administration doesn’t seem like that smart a strategy.

Don’t mistake me for a traditionalist pining for the good old days in journalism. If I thought these changes were rooted in any kind of logical plan for rescuing CBS News and its programs, I’d counsel a wait and see attitude.

But instead of focusing on the areas of CBS News which really need help — a third place morning show and third place evening newscast — she’s firing and chasing away the people who built and maintained the most successful program in their stable.

All I see are opportunists taking advantage to make changes which boost their own power at the expense of the institutions they are leading.

The firings at CBS News and layoffs/buyouts at NPR came a week after Stephen Colbert delivered his last edition of The Late Show on CBS – cancelled by owners who didn’t even try to find cost savings which might have kept the show on the air. The day after Colbert’s final show, CBS Radio shut down, ending 99 years of service providing news headlines to stations across the country. Killed by the same ownership who are dismantling 60 Minutes and allowed Colbert to leave the air.

Since The Late Show ended, CBS has floated the notion that they’ll earn $15 million by leasing the timeslot to mogul Byron Allen to air his mediocre comedy show, Comics Unleashed. This may work out for Paramount short term, but given the timeslot has seen a massive loss in viewership from Colbert’s levels, I can’t help wondering how long the math will work for Allen. And what will CBS do if Allen decides he will not or cannot keep leasing the space?

Once CBS has trained audiences to avoid the timeslot or expect mediocre material there, how will they rebuild audiences if they ever decide to actually create new content?

Unfortunately, what we seem to have here, are executives who don’t really have answers – just ways to claw out short term benefits while destroying institutions which have been around for decades.

And if Allen steps away from late night, or audiences crater for 60 Minutes and all the online experiments Weiss and her crew try fail to move the needle for broadcast viewership or overall revenues, they will have destroyed important media and journalism institutions for what exactly – beyond gambits which will increase their own personal wealth and power?