We're offering a 2-week trial of WrapPRO for $1. If you’ve been wanting to check out our full coverage, now’s the time. Greetings!Bari Weiss wants CBS News to be "fit for purpose in the 21st century," but what exactly does that mean? If today's additions to its contributor roster are any indication, it's about leaning more deeply into commentary. After a rocky first four months at the helm, Weiss laid out her vision for CBS News in the newsroom town hall on Tuesday. Gone are the days of Walter Cronkite, she noted, when CBS primarily competed against ABC and NBC; now the network is vying for attention against a “vast universe of podcasts and YouTube and Twitch and newsletters.” To that end, Weiss and CBS News announced the addition of 19 contributors, a wide-ranging group of voices spanning tech and lifestyle, history and economics, politics and, well, happiness. In building a new stable of prominent — and at times provocative — voices, Weiss appears to be taking a page from the Free Press, the right-leaning, contrarian news and opinion site she co-founded and sold to CBS-parent Paramount in October for $150 million. In her remarks, Weiss spoke aspirationally about regaining the trust of US viewers, and said the network would "present people with the fullest picture - and the strongest voices on all sides of an issue," which would then lead to viewers making up their own minds. It's unclear if that model is fit for a traditional news network or its entrenched, albeit shrinking, audience. Weiss has already tried to steer the voice of CBS News further right, rebooting "CBS Evening News" with new anchor Tony Dokoupil, who already garnered flack by saying he would rely less on academics and experts and talked about the press missing MAGA-coded stories like "Hunter Biden's laptop." Early ratings have reflected the cool reception to the new "CBS Evening News," with viewers in Dokoupil's first week down 23% from a year ago and down 19% compared to the January 2025 debut of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois. But at least "CBS Evening News" deals with, you know, actual news. The contributors added should be familiar to Free Press readers, including historian Niall Ferguson, social scientist and happiness authority Arthur Brooks, podcast host Coleman Hughes and author Elliot Ackerman. Also on board: Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, tech journalist Patrick McGee, Manhattan Institute president and conservative commentator Reihan Salam, “Abundance” co-author Derek Thompson, fashion journalist Lauren Sherman, former national security adviser HR McMaster, physics and astronomy professor Janna Levin, New York chef Clare de Boer, cookbook author Caroline Chambers, Gen-Z and Gen Alpha-focused journalist Casey Lewis, neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, Ph.D and Dr. Mark Hyman, a proponent of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. These are experts who are keen to pontificate, but is that what the CBS News audience really wants? The addition of these contributors signals a shift toward the type of punditry already found on Fox on the right and MSNBC on the left. If network news audiences wanted that kind of back-and-forth, there are already plenty of options. The news network remains in third place behind NBC and ABC, so you could argue that there is less to lose. For Weiss, it's a gamble that spectacle and viral commentary will bolster CBS News. But it's not just ratings at stake, but the credibility of the storied CBS news organization. Roger Cheng 
Weiss used the town hall to address the "tumult" of her early tenure at CBS News, promising to earn the newsroom's trust... 
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