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Nick Bilton recently flew to New York to meet with director Martin Scorsese to discuss the screenplay he adapted from his forthcoming book with Dwayne \u201cThe Rock\u201d Johnson, about a Hawaiian crime syndicate, when a very different career opportunity presented itself. During the trip, Bilton also met up with CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, whom he got to know professionally in Los Angeles, and she gauged his interest in taking over 60 Minutes. \u201cIt was an unbelievable opportunity and I couldn\u2019t get it out of my head,\u201d Bilton recalled Thursday, just hours after being named the newsmagazine\u2019s new executive producer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, look, I want to present my ideas to you and the way I would want to do it, and if you are interested in them, then we can move the conversation forward,\u201d Bilton said in an interview. \u201cAnd so I did, and she loved them, and I have so many ideas and innovative ideas that I just cannot wait to bring to 60.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weiss\u2019s selection of Bilton sent shock waves through the network and coincided with a broader shake-up as CBS News cut ties with 60 Minutes executive producer Tanya Simon, daughter of late 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon; veteran executive editor Draggan Mihailovich; and correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharon Alfonsi, the latter who accused Weiss in December of making a \u201cpolitical\u201d decision in abruptly pulling<\/a> her report on a notorious El Salvadoran prison, one of several<\/a> missteps <\/a>throughout Weiss\u2019s seven-month tenure.<\/p>\n Weiss has already made significant changes, like installing Tony Dokoupil as anchor of the CBS Evening News, but upending 60 Minutes is a far bigger risk. The evening newscast has been perennially in third place, whereas 60 Minutes is not only the network\u2019s most prestigious news show, it remains widely popular, averaging 9.1 million viewers this season<\/a>. With Thursday\u2019s moves, Weiss is fully putting her stamp on the program, or as one CBS News staffer put it, \u201cIt\u2019s a full hostile takeover.\u201d<\/p>\n In a memo introducing himself to the staff, Bilton said he looked forward to speaking with them about what\u2019s working and what\u2019s not, and expected that \u201cin about 30 days I\u2019ll come back to all of you with where we go from here.\u201d There\u2019s, understandably, trepidation inside 60 Minutes and uncertainty among staff about precisely how to proceed before Bilton gives a sense of the future direction. While 60 Minutes just finished the 2025-2026 season, staffers are already preparing pieces for the fall \u2014 the fate of which could change depending on Bilton\u2019s interest. The other concern is that Bilton, like Weiss before him, is assuming a powerful perch at CBS News without any network-news experience.<\/p>\n Bilton is an accomplished journalist, having covered technology, politics, and culture for the New York Times and Vanity Fair, where I edited him for several years. I found him to be a prescient columnist \u2014 check out what he was writing on AI<\/a> back in 2022 \u2014\u00a0and a thoughtful and generous colleague. He\u2019s got a wide-ranging r\u00e9sum\u00e9, having written books on the early days of Twitter, dark-web marketplace Silk Road, and the aforementioned one about the Hawaiian mob, along with producing documentaries for Netflix and HBO and writing the screenplay for a Scorsese film.<\/p>\n When I asked about his lack of TV experience, Bilton mentioned how he came to Vanity Fair as a reporter but also started hosting a podcast:\u00a0\u201cI\u2019d never done that before,\u201d he said. \u201cI went off to Hollywood; I did documentaries. I\u2019d never done that before. I went off to write screenplays and did them for Scorsese with the Rock and so on, and had never done that before. And I think it\u2019s all storytelling at the end of the day.\u201d He\u2019s got a decade of experience in documentaries, he said, and a season of 60 Minutes is essentially a hundred short-form docs.<\/p>\n \u201cDo I need to know which button to press to make sure the show goes on air on a Sunday night? No. If there are questions I don\u2019t have the answers to, there is a building full of people who can answer them,\u201d Bilton said. \u201cBut for me, I know how to report, I know how to do investigative journalism. I know how to work with producers, to tell stories in all different formats. And I also bring this understanding of media and technology that spans pretty much every form of storytelling there is, with the exception of comic books, I guess. And so it feels to me like the absolute perfect job and honestly the honor of my career to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Bilton also told staff in the memo that the job was the \u201chonor of my career\u201d and described 60 Minutes as \u201cthe most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced.\u201d And yet, he said, \u201cthe audience that watched that first episode is not the same,\u201d as they \u201chave unlimited channels to choose from, not three.\u201d Weiss had struck a similar tone months earlier when she laid out<\/a> her \u201c21st-century vision\u201d to staff, speaking admirably of the news division\u2019s legacy \u2014 and bluntly about the need for change. \u201cWe have to start by looking honestly at ourselves,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are not producing a product that enough people want.\u201d While CBS legend Walter Cronkite \u201chad two competitors,\u201d she said, the network now fights for attention with a \u201cvast universe of podcasts and YouTube and Twitch and newsletters.\u201d<\/p>\n Though 60 Minutes exists within CBS News, the program has traditionally enjoyed a good measure of autonomy. It had long operated separately on West 57th Street, rather than the CBS Broadcast Center. Bilton acknowledged the longtime separation, but said he thinks \u201cthere are opportunities to utilize some of the incredible reporters in CBS News to help with some of the stories that we want to tell on 60.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you think that someone like me is going to take this job so that I can be told what I\u2019m going to do and the kinds of stories. No, I\u2019m taking this job because I see what we can do with 60 Minutes,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think that there are so many missed opportunities in terms of going beyond the broadcast on Sunday night, which is only one hour long, of doing all different kinds of storytelling. And to me, that\u2019s the most exciting part of this job, that I get to work with this incredible team of producers and correspondents. I get to think of new ideas and new ways to tell stories to reach bigger audiences across all different platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n CBS News under David Ellison\u2019s ownership, and Weiss\u2019s stewardship, has been seen by critics as going soft<\/a> on the current administration; Paramount\u2019s private party<\/a> last month \u201chonoring the Trump White House\u201d only fed such perceptions. \u201cThere\u2019s a feeling that the wall has come down between editorial independence and corporate interests,\u201d Alfonsi told<\/a> the Times on Wednesday. \u201cThe concern is we\u2019re going to end up with a broadcast that looks like 60 Minutes but doesn\u2019t have the courage or the character to produce 60 Minutes journalism that actually matters.\u201d<\/p>\n When I asked Bilton about such perceptions, he maintained that his job has always been to \u201chold power to account,\u201d adding, \u201cIt\u2019s why I\u2019ve written all the stories I\u2019ve written for 20 years about the tech companies and the CEOs. It\u2019s why I covered the elections the way I did, both Hillary and Trump and Biden and Trump and so on. And that\u2019s what I want to continue doing.\u201d<\/p>\n This post has been updated to reflect that 60 Minutes is still operating out of its West 57th St. offices despite reports of relocating. <\/p>\n Sign Up for the Intelligencer\u00a0Newsletter<\/p>\n Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n