{"id":464821,"date":"2026-02-12T20:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T20:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/464821\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T20:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T20:16:07","slug":"11-take-buyouts-amid-bari-weiss-overhaul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/464821\/","title":{"rendered":"11 Take Buyouts Amid Bari Weiss Overhaul"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTony Dokoupil<\/a> suddenly has fewer people helping him produce each day\u2019s broadcast of \u201cCBS Evening News<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA significant chunk of the production team behind \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d has opted to take buyouts that were offered in late January<\/a>, according to three people familiar with the matter, the latest sign of ambivalence by journalists at CBS News<\/a> regarding the plans of the unit\u2019s leader, Bari Weiss<\/a>. She recently articulated a new vision <\/a>that would place more focus by the Paramount Skydance operation on streaming video and stories that are \u201cdifferentiated, that are things you can\u2019t get anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tApproximately 11 members out of a production staff of about 40 have opted to leave, according to these people. Some of the departures come from among the youngest members of the CBS News staff, two of these people say, a dynamic that has raised concern about the ability to bring new perspectives to familiar routines. At least two employees taking the buyouts, however, were veteran producers, who played significant roles in getting \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d out each weekday.<\/p>\n

\n\tCBS News declined to make executives available for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe exodus puts a new spotlight on CBS News under Weiss, whose experience is largely tied to opinion writing and not the ins and outs of newsgathering. Weiss\u2019 lack of knowledge has resulted in several errors since her arrival in October<\/a>, after Paramount bought her conservative-opinion site The Free Press for $150 million. There have been entanglements with \u201c60 Minutes\u201d<\/a>; exits by senior executives; and a rough start for Dokoupil\u2019s new tenure at \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d following comments he made online about his intentions for his new job.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne senior producer, Javier Guzman, left \u201cEvening News\u201d in January, with people familiar with the matter saying he had issues with the new direction of the program. Several of the producers leaving were previously tied to an uptick in production of investigative segments that were aired under the rubric \u201cEye on America.\u201d But that has changed as part of Dokoupil\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are still sings of a stressed out staff. On Wednesday, a letter from one producer, Alicia Hastey, described a scenario under which stories might be judged by Weiss\u2019 take on a certain topic, rather than the facts that are gathered. \u201cStories may instead by evaluated not just on their journalistic merit, but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations \u2014 a dynamic that pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid challenging narratives that might trigger backlash or unfavorable headlines,\u201d she wrote in a farewell note to CBS News staff members. Hastey is among the staffers leaving the program.<\/p>\n

\n\tHastey could not immediately be reached for comment on the note she wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring a January town hall,<\/a> Weiss restated a mantra she has used since her arrival at CBS News \u2014 mainstream media is no longer trusted \u2014 and stressed that CBS News had to be a place where viewers could come to hear all sides of a debate, even if doing so made them uncomfortable. Independent Americans \u201cwant to equip themselves with all the facts,\u201d she said at the time, \u201cand are curious to hear what is actually going on, even if it offends their sensibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are good reasons to shake up \u201cCBS Evening News.\u201d The program has long run in third place behind ABC\u2019s \u201cWorld News Tonight\u201d and NBC\u2019s \u201cNBC Nightly News.\u201d Before Dokoupil, CBS News experimented with a two-anchor format that relied on Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson, as well as an emphasis on enterprise and feature reporting. Viewers did not embrace the concept, and ratings dropped.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the four days ended Dec. 5, \u201cCBS Evening News\u201d notched an average of nearly 4.57 million viewers, according to data from Nielsen, compared with 8.98 million for ABC\u2019s \u201cWorld News Tonight\u201d and about 7.23 million for \u201cNBC Nightly News.\u201d All three networks did not submit their Friday newscasts for consideration owing to the start of the Winter Olympics. And while both the NBC and ABC programs captured an average of 1.1 million or more people between 25 and 54 \u2014 the audience coveted by advertisers in news programming \u2014 CBS\u2019s show only lured 579,000 \u2014 a 7% downturn from the previous week and a decline of 14% from the year-earlier period.<\/p>\n

\n\tSome of the staffers leaving are said to have become \u201ca bit intransigent,\u201d according to one of the people familiar with the matter, largely because they were tied to production of features, which are being scaled back. Older producers who are leaving are doing so, this person says, because the exit offer is a generous one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Dokoupil suddenly has fewer people helping him produce each day\u2019s broadcast of \u201cCBS Evening News.\u201d A significant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[100518,61590,7930,88,149597,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-464821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-bari-weiss","9":"tag-cbs-evening-news","10":"tag-cbs-news","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-tony-dokoupil","13":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}