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With the long-expected Paramount layoffs hitting the CBS newsroom Wednesday morning, new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss instructed the reporters and journalists impacted by the brutal cuts that she was there to supply “assist” to anybody who wanted it.
“That is simply such an enormously tough day for thus many individuals who’ve given years of their lives to this firm,” she stated through the morning editorial name, in keeping with audio reviewed by The Impartial.
“And I’m sorry, and I wish to assist everybody in no matter approach I can,” she added. “My door is open, whether or not I’m sitting up right here or downstairs.”
The community’s cuts, in the meantime, have led to the cancellation of two digital exhibits and the gutting of CBS Information’ Saturday morning providing. On prime of that, The Impartial has realized that the community’s race and tradition unit has additionally been shuttered.
“This actually is a massacre,” one CBS Information staffer stated, including that the cuts expanded throughout the whole newsroom.
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Weeks after Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison paid $150 million to buy Weiss’ “anti-woke” digital outlet The Free Press, and amid his ongoing spending spree to construct up a burgeoning media empire, Ellison introduced that he was axing roughly 10 p.c of the corporate’s workforce.
Of the roughly 1,000 Paramount staff let go as a part of Ellison’s restructuring of the media large, sources inform The Impartial that about 100 got here from CBS Information. A community spokesperson declined to touch upon the layoffs and their influence on CBS Information.
“In some areas, we’re addressing redundancies which have emerged throughout the group,” Ellison wrote in a memo despatched to workers on Wednesday morning. “In others, we’re phasing out roles which might be now not aligned with our evolving priorities and the brand new construction designed to strengthen our give attention to development. Finally, these steps are essential to place Paramount for long-term success.”
“We’re deeply grateful to your exhausting work, professionalism, and resilience throughout this era of transition,” he added. “We stay assured that Paramount’s greatest days are forward, and we’re dedicated to constructing a robust basis for the longer term.”
Following these steep cuts — the primary at Paramount for the reason that politically fraught merger with Ellison’s Skydance in August — the corporate is predicted to ultimately let go of at the least one other 1,000 staff over the approaching months. Following his buy of Paramount, Ellison said that he supposed to trim $2 billion from the corporate’s ledger.
In the meantime, Ellison – with the backing of his father, Oracle founder and shut Trump ally Larry Ellison – has been aggressively pursuing a takeover of rival media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery. In addition to seeking to mix the 2 corporations’ large film studios and streaming operations, a merger – which Donald Trump has reportedly already greenlit – may probably mix CBS Information with CNN.
A community supply acquainted with the matter confused to The Impartial that the cuts to the newsroom have been already within the works earlier than Weiss was put in because the community’s prime editor and earlier than Ellison purchased The Free Press. Days after she took over as editor-in-chief, Weiss urged all newsroom staff to ship her a memo describing their workday hours.
As a part of the network-wide cost-cutting, CBS Information is closing its Johannesburg bureau in South Africa. The layoffs additionally impacted a number of staffers within the London bureau.
Moreover, the CBS Race and Tradition Unit was fully gutted, and the whole group has been laid off. This additionally comes simply two weeks after Claudia Milne, the community’s head of requirements, handed in her resignation.
Days earlier than the Paramount merger was accredited by the Trump administration, Skydance promised Trump’s handpicked Federal Communications Fee chairman Brendan Carr that the brand new Paramount would remove variety, fairness and inclusion insurance policies throughout the corporate.
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Past that, the community can be eliminating its streaming exhibits CBS Mornings Plus and CBS Information Evenings Plus, together with their complete groups. That additionally contains the night present’s govt producer Alturo Rhymes.
CBS Information Evenings Plus had been anchored by John Dickerson, who at the moment co-anchors the companion broadcast model of the present. Dickerson, who has been with CBS for 16 years, introduced this week that he was leaving each the community and CBS’s flagship night information present in December.
Whereas it hasn’t been canceled but, CBS Saturday Morning is dropping about two-thirds of its workers, together with co-hosts Dana Jacobson and Michelle Miller, in addition to govt producer Brian Applegate.
This system will now be overseen by CBS Mornings govt producer Shawna Thomas, and far of the weekday morning present’s workers will now additionally work on CBS Saturday Morning. It hasn’t but been decided who will host the weekend program.
The layoffs come because the “radically centrist” contrarian Weiss is seeking to make a splash throughout her first weeks on the job, together with courting high-profile on-air expertise to leap to the community, resembling Fox Information’ Bret Baier and CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Baier has already famous that he’s locked up in his Fox Information contract by means of 2028, whereas Cooper has instructed others that he’s “not ” in anchoring CBS Night Information.
She’s additionally been seen because the community’s “chief booker,” taking part in a key position in snagging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an unique interview with morning present host Tony Dokoupil. Her push to deliver on big-name company has additionally led to some puzzling moments throughout editorial calls.
Throughout a morning assembly earlier this month, as first reported by Breaker, Weiss steered the community e-book The Da Vinci Code writer Dan Brown to debate the latest Louvre heist. Staffers on the decision instructed The Impartial that different editors defined to Weiss that there was no theft in The Da Vinci Code, and that maybe she was considering of The Thomas Crown Affair. This prompted additional jokes that they need to get actor Pierce Brosnan as an alternative of Brown.
