Bari Weiss tells CBS News to act like a start-up and reach bigger audiences

Bari Weiss, the recently hired editor in chief of CBS News, opened her first networkwide meeting by acknowledging staff uncertainty and urging the organization to think like a start-up. Addressing hundreds of employees gathered in bureaus across the globe, she said, “We are not producing a product enough people want.” Weiss outlined a plan to shift CBS News from a tradition-bound institution into a more digitally savvy operation that meets audiences “far from broadcast TV,” dismissing day-to-day Nielsen ratings as outmoded.

“What winning looks like writ large for this company is building incredible journalism for audiences that are so much bigger than the one that we currently have,” she said, and asked reporters to become “dynamic Swiss Army knives capable of writing, speaking, hosting, reporting, analyzing and writing.” She also announced a new roster of contributors including Andrew Huberman, Niall Ferguson, Casey Lewis and Coleman Hughes, with descriptions of their viewpoints provided at the meeting.

The session addressed early controversies in Weiss’s tenure, including her decision in December to postpone a “60 Minutes” segment about a prison in El Salvador.