With the long-expected Paramount layoffs hitting the CBS newsroom Wednesday morning, new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss told the reporters and journalists impacted by the brutal cuts that she was there to offer “support” to anyone who needed it.
“This is just such an enormously difficult day for so many people who have given years of their lives to this company,” she said during the morning editorial call, according to audio reviewed by The Independent.
“And I’m sorry, and I want to support everyone in whatever way I can,” she added. “My door is open, whether I’m sitting up here or downstairs.”
The network’s cuts, meanwhile, have led to the cancellation of two digital shows and the gutting of CBS News’ Saturday morning offering. On top of that, The Independent has learned that the network’s race and culture unit has also been shuttered.
“This really is a bloodbath,” one CBS News staffer said, adding that the cuts expanded across the entire newsroom.
Weeks after Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison paid $150 million to purchase Weiss’ “anti-woke” digital outlet The Free Press, and amid his ongoing spending spree to build up a burgeoning media empire, Ellison announced that he was axing roughly 10 percent of the company’s workforce.
Of the approximately 1,000 Paramount employees let go as part of Ellison’s restructuring of the media giant, sources tell The Independent that about 100 came from CBS News. A network spokesperson declined to comment on the layoffs and their impact on CBS News.
“In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization,” Ellison wrote in a memo sent to staff on Wednesday morning. “In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure designed to strengthen our focus on growth. Ultimately, these steps are necessary to position Paramount for long-term success.”
“We are deeply grateful for your hard work, professionalism, and resilience during this period of transition,” he added. “We remain confident that Paramount’s best days are ahead, and we’re committed to building a strong foundation for the future.”
Following these steep cuts — the first at Paramount since the politically fraught merger with Ellison’s Skydance in August — the company is expected to eventually let go of at least another 1,000 employees over the coming months. Following his purchase of Paramount, Ellison stated that he intended to trim $2 billion from the company’s ledger.
Meanwhile, Ellison – with the backing of his father, Oracle founder and close Trump ally Larry Ellison – has been aggressively pursuing a takeover of rival media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery. Besides looking to combine the two companies' massive movie studios and streaming operations, a merger – which Donald Trump has reportedly already greenlit – could potentially combine CBS News with CNN.
A network source familiar with the matter stressed to The Independent that the cuts to the newsroom were already in the works before Weiss was installed as the network’s top editor and before Ellison bought The Free Press. Days after she took over as editor-in-chief, Weiss urged all newsroom employees to send her a memo describing their workday hours.
As part of the network-wide cost-cutting, CBS News is closing its Johannesburg bureau in South Africa. The layoffs also impacted multiple staffers in the London bureau.
Additionally, the CBS Race and Culture Unit was completely gutted, and the entire team has been laid off. This also comes just two weeks after Claudia Milne, the network’s head of standards, handed in her resignation.
Days before the Paramount merger was approved by the Trump administration, Skydance promised Trump’s handpicked Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr that the new Paramount would eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion policies across the company.
Beyond that, the network is also eliminating its streaming shows CBS Mornings Plus and CBS News Evenings Plus, along with their entire teams. That also includes the evening show’s executive producer Alturo Rhymes.
CBS News Evenings Plus had been anchored by John Dickerson, who currently co-anchors the companion broadcast version of the show. Dickerson, who has been with CBS for 16 years, announced this week that he was leaving both the network and CBS’s flagship evening news show in December.
While it hasn’t been canceled yet, CBS Saturday Morning is losing about two-thirds of its staff, including co-hosts Dana Jacobson and Michelle Miller, as well as executive producer Brian Applegate.
The program will now be overseen by CBS Mornings executive producer Shawna Thomas, and much of the weekday morning show’s staff will now also work on CBS Saturday Morning. It hasn’t yet been determined who will host the weekend program.
The layoffs come as the “radically centrist” contrarian Weiss is looking to make a splash during her first weeks on the job, including courting high-profile on-air talent to jump to the network, such as Fox News’ Bret Baier and CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Baier has already noted that he is locked up in his Fox News contract through 2028, while Cooper has told others that he is “not interested” in anchoring CBS Evening News.
She’s also been seen as the network’s “chief booker,” playing a key role in snagging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an exclusive interview with morning show host Tony Dokoupil. Her push to bring on big-name guests has also led to some puzzling moments during editorial calls.
During a morning meeting earlier this month, as first reported by Breaker, Weiss suggested the network book The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown to discuss the recent Louvre heist. Staffers on the call told The Independent that other editors explained to Weiss that there was no robbery in The Da Vinci Code, and that perhaps she was thinking of The Thomas Crown Affair. This prompted further jokes that they should get actor Pierce Brosnan instead of Brown.
