Gilberto Tadday/TED
Bari Weiss, the founder of The Free Press, “is on the verge” of having her publication acquired by Paramount and being given control of CBS News, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported on Wednesday night.
David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance – the parent company of CBS – has been trying to woo Weiss for more than a year, Byers said, with those talks accelerating in recent days.
“With Paramount securely in his pocket, David Ellison is on the verge of acquiring Bari Weiss’s The Free Press and tossing her the keys to CBS News,” Puck reported. “The deal is on the 1-yard line, I’m told.”
Byers added:
Now, David has made advances on yet another target: an acquisition of The Free Press, the defiantly heterodox news and opinion media entity founded by Bari Weiss. As you know, David has been courting Bari for almost a year, and formally pitched her on acquiring the company at the Allen & Co. conference in July. Those talks have progressed in recent days, and I am now told that the two sides