Who Is Bari Weiss? 7 Things to Know About the CBS News Editor-in-Chief

CBS News added Bari Weiss into the fold.

Born on March 25, 1984, in Pittsburgh, Penn., the media company's new editor-in-chief grew up in a Jewish family and celebrated her Bat Mitzvah at Tree of Life Synagogue.

While attending Columbia University as a sophomore, she joined a group of Jewish students in pressing the university to address what they described as anti-Israel intellectual intimidation of the pro-Palestinian professors in its Middle East studies department, per Reuters. After investigating the allegations, the inquiry concluded that only one incident constituted unacceptable behavior.

The history major graduated from Columbia University in 2007.

Following her college graduation, Weiss began working at Jewish news outlets, including Tablet, Haaretz Newspaper and The Forward.

She later joined the Wall Street Journal as an op-ed and book review editor in 2013, but she left her post after Donald Trump took office in 2017.

"It was heartbreaking for me to see people who I thought that we sort of shared fundamental values making peace with a candidate who, I mean, just from the most basic perspective ran a campaign on denigrating and demonizing the weakest people in our culture," she told Reason, explaining she resigned due to the employer's reluctance to run political opinion pieces deemed "too anti-Trump."

That same year, Weiss moved to The New York Times' opinion desk as a staff editor and writer.

She told the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle about the move, "I've gone in the last year from being the most progressive person at The Wall Street Journal, to being the most right-wing person at The New York Times."

In July 2020, she wrote a lengthy resignation letter addressed to publisher A.G. Sulzberger, citing "bullying by colleagues" and an "illiberal environment."

"The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people," she wrote, in part. "Nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back."

Weiss is also an author. Her first book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism, published in September 2019, won a 2019 National Jewish Book Award and a Natan Notable Book Award.

In 2018, Weiss met her future wife, Nellie Bowles, in the cafeteria at The New York Times. They began dating and tied the knot "at a strip mall" in Encino, Calif., in 2020.

"It was a hilarious situation," she said of the ceremony during a December 2021 appearance on "The Megyn Kelly Show." "We basically decided let's not tell anyone because we want to have a huge party after COVID, and we don't want to give anyone an excuse not to come. But it's been a year, COVID's still going on, and it became too difficult not to say, 'She's my wife!'"

The couple welcomed a daughter in 2022 and a son in 2024.

Together with her wife, Weiss co-founded the media company, The Free Press, in 2021. It began as a Substack newsletter called Common Sense before it was rebranded as The Free Press in 2022.

According to its About page, The Free Press is "built on the ideals that once were the bedrock of great American journalism: honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence."

"We publish investigative stories and provocative commentary about the world as it actually is—with the quality once expected from the legacy press, but the fearlessness of the new," the page reads. "Originally called Common Sense, we focus on stories that are ignored or misconstrued in the service of an ideological narrative. For us, curiosity isn't a liability. It's a necessity."

In October 2025, Paramount confirmed it had acquired the company.

"This is a great moment for The Free Press. This partnership allows our ethos of fearless, independent journalism to reach an enormous, diverse, and influential audience," Weiss said in a statement. "We honor the extraordinary legacy of CBS News by committing ourselves to a singular mission: building the most trusted news organization of the 21st Century."

In a 2021 post on X, Weiss confirmed she and her colleagues planned to open the University of Austin to help reform the country's "broken" higher education system.

"We got sick of complaining about how broken higher education is. So we decided to do something about it. Announcing a new university dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth: @uaustinorg," she shared.

She co-founded the private liberal arts university alongside Joe Lonsdale, Pano Kanelos, Niall Ferguson, Caitlin Flanagan and Andrew Sullivan.

Weiss also sits behind the microphone to host her weekly podcast, "Honestly with Bari Weiss," the flagship audio program of The Free Press. She launched the digital media series in 2021.

When Paramount acquired The Free Press for $150 million in October 2025, Weiss was officially appointed editor-in-chief for CBS News.

David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Paramount, said, "We are thrilled to welcome Bari and The Free Press to Paramount and CBS News. Bari is a proven champion of independent, principled journalism, and I am confident her entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision will invigorate CBS News. This move is part of Paramount's bigger vision to modernize content and the way it connects – directly and passionately – to audiences around the world."

"This is an important initiative for our company and Bari will report directly to me – leading the work of The Free Press and collaborating with our CBS News team in the pursuit of making it the most trusted name in news," Ellison added in a press release. "We believe the majority of the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based, and we want CBS to be their home."

Months into her tenure, 60 Minutes underwent a major shake-up that resulted in the departures of its senior leadership and several correspondents. In response, Paramount Skydance reportedly launched a search for a business executive to help oversee the organization's operations alongside the EIC, per Variety. Among those reportedly under consideration are Cesar Conde, chairman of NBCUniversal News Group; Noah Oppenheim, the former NBC News chief; and Mark Thompson, the current CNN CEO.

Additionally, a new report claimed Weiss is poised to take charge of CNN's editorial operations if and when Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery receives regulatory approval.