Inside Bari Weiss’s Rise: LA, Sun Valley, and the Mogul Network

Channels with Peter Kafka

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Tv & Film, Business News, News

4.4 • 585 Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2026

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How, exactly, did Bari Weiss become the head of CBS News? We know that David Ellison, who bought Paramount last year, hired her — and bought The Free Press, the publication she started a few years earlier. But how did she get on Ellison’s radar? And why are so many media moguls, like Ellison, huge fans? New York magazine’s Charlotte Klein knows. She recently published an excellent profile of Weiss that tracks her ascent over the last few years, and I wanted to talk to her about it. It’s a story about networking, talent, and timing, and I think it tells us a lot about where we’re at right now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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1:34.3	From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is channels with Peter Kafka. That's me. I'm also chief correspondent
1:44.8	at Business Insider. Happy New Year. I want to kick off 2026 by talking about Barry Weiss,
1:51.6	the writer and editor and founder of the free press, who is also now the head of CBS News. As you
1:57.9	know, people have a lot of strong feelings about Weiss. I think a lot of them only
2:01.9	know a caricature of her. So I was delighted to read Charlotte Klein's profile of Weiss a few weeks
2:06.9	ago in New York Magazine, which happened to come out around the same time as the Barry Weiss
2:11.8	60 Minutes was blowing up. So I think it got overshadowed. Let's shine some light on it now and
2:17.2	talk about what it tells us about the moment we're in. Welcome to Charlotte. Hi, Peter. Thanks for having me. Nice to see you in the studio. You're kind of my fellow co-work. Yeah. What a weird world we live in. Let's talk about Barry Weiss instead of me. When you started reporting about Barry Weiss, what was, what did you want to write about?
2:36.3	What was the plan? So I started reporting this in the fall. It was, you know, late September,
2:41.4	early October. And at that point, she had just become, you know, editor-in-chief of CBS. And my editor
	...

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