I actually can not consider you’ve willingly determined to enter the worst form of job that exists: administration at a dying firm.
That is the glass cliff to finish all glass cliffs
Managing sucks! It sucks even if you like the individuals you’re managing and it’s a low-stress place! And I’m certain I don’t must let you know: working CBS Information shouldn’t be a low-stress place. You’re going to get blamed by everybody above you for selections which might be made by individuals beneath you, and you will get blamed by individuals beneath you for the selections which might be made by individuals above you. You’re additionally going to get blamed on your personal selections, only for kicks. You could have elected to take a job the place the first objective is so that you can eat shit and personal the dying of broadcast TV information, a factor that’s going to die it doesn’t matter what you do. Good work!
That is the glass cliff to finish all glass cliffs. You’re Marissa Mayer at Yahoo with out the Googler road cred. You’re Nancy Dubuc at Vice with out the string of hit TV exhibits. You’re Linda Yaccarino at Twitter with out the advertiser relationships. You could have been employed as a sop to a Trump administration that’s actively hostile to the precise free press, and you can be made to supervise wave after wave of layoffs till you stop or get fired and your complete information division is shut down in a ultimate spasm of cost-cutting after the subsequent inescapable media merger.
Nobody can save CBS Information, as a result of it was made for a media ecosystem that’s now useless. Broadcast tv is slowly circling the drain, its growing old viewers drifting towards the good inevitable. Youthful persons are getting their information from TikTok and Instagram in ever-greater numbers, they usually belief institutional media lower than ever. CBS particularly — that’s your new firm, now — has the oldest viewers in primetime TV. These people aren’t The Free Press’ assiduously courted “classical liberals,” both. It’s normie grandparents, a bunch of whom are planning to look on the subsequent No Kings rally. I’d invoke Edward R. Murrow, however they keep in mind him. They don’t have any goodwill towards you. They don’t know who you might be in any respect. And they aren’t going to defend you if you screw up.
You are actually caught claiming your purpose is to win again youthful audiences, which you can not do, whereas your actual job is to handle decline. There isn’t a approach to win right here, solely barely higher methods to lose.
You additionally must handle Expertise
Now, it’s doable that you simply’re delusional sufficient to suppose that Larry Ellison’s takeover of TikTok will provide you with a tailwind. I imply, your proprietor is Ellison’s son, in spite of everything, and why wouldn’t the Ellison household help one another? It’s best to have identified the second you noticed Rupert Murdoch on the investor record that wasn’t going to occur — in spite of everything, did MySpace assist Fox Information? Or did Information Corp catastrophically fumble an asset it didn’t perceive?
On a enterprise degree, your drawback with TikTok is that this: Platforms exist to erode establishments like CBS Information. You can’t remedy your issues with improved distribution on TikTok. The issues that work on tv for 60-year-olds don’t work on TikTok for 14-year-olds, initially. However extra importantly, TikTokers monetize their content material by immediately integrating promoting and types immediately into their content material, a method in speedy battle with the values and ethics of a storied information group like CBS Information. Even in case you one way or the other handle to crack TikTok’s algorithm, you continue to received’t make sufficient income to outlive with out trashing the very soul of the establishment you’re purporting to save lots of.
It’s really even worse than that. You additionally must handle Expertise. Well-known TV Expertise, the individuals your viewers really is aware of and likes, and who will eat you alive in the event that they suppose you’ve screwed them over. To ensure that that to work, you really have to fully disappear and let the Expertise be the face of the community, and fairly frankly nothing about your historical past suggests you’re able to that. And one of many fundamental issues with Expertise, particularly Well-known TV Expertise, is that they’re egomaniacal monsters who love getting paid and throwing hissy matches, and hate being instructed what to do. You suppose you had a foul time at The New York Occasions? Child, you haven’t any concept what a foul time is. You’ll discover out if you attempt to inform Norah O’Donnell something in any respect about her reporting. For those who’re fortunate, she’ll simply shake her Emmys at you when she tells you to fuck off. You suppose Gayle King or David Martin are going to sit down via a lecture from you? Like for actual? Come on. Jane Pauley has already triggered one media firestorm by altering jobs. Are you prepared for this?
Managing requires sure sorts of soppy abilities, ones I’m not assured you possess. They weren’t crucial in your comfortable Wall Avenue Journal op-ed job, or your cushier New York Occasions op-ed job. They had been barely required on the publication you invented, The Free Press. So now you’re the top honcho at CBS Information. Let’s say you resolve to skip ranges to immediately edit a 60 Minutes story. It doesn’t even must be a controversial story to make all hell break unfastened — as a result of you’ve neither the credibility nor the relationships required to take this sort of work on. And what’s extra, you’ve obtained a information division composed completely of formidable piranhas beneath you — not your handpicked cronies, like Tyler “I want to see Hollywood virgins” Cowen. These individuals have many years in tv, and you’ve got a e-newsletter and a historical past of throwing your colleagues beneath the bus.
To make issues worse, you’ve by no means reported, they usually all understand it
The media reporters are already circling you want a pack of wolves. Like, take your opening memo to the information division, the one about “the identical core journalistic values that outlined this career from the start,” which for some purpose consists of utilizing “all of the instruments of the digital period.” Not solely might it have been higher edited, and based mostly on precise journalistic historical past, however you might need held off on insinuating you propose to include AI slop into the work course of till someday after your first day. Contemplate all of the individuals you now lead who’ve precise reporting expertise. Do you suppose they will do one thing aside from name their favourite media reporter the second you interject your self right into a story or impose some nonsensical AI “bias meter” evaluation?
To make issues worse, you’ve by no means reported, they usually all understand it. You don’t know something in regards to the challenges or judgment calls required for classy tales. You’re an op-ed author who rode Bret Stephens’ coattails into The New York Occasions newsroom, then stop in a huff as a result of they wouldn’t hearth you for no matter it was you needed to fake to be a free speech martyr for. (You would possibly wish to pay on your private web site, by the best way. It’s expired.) The closest you got here to doing something like reporting was the flop “Twitter Information” work, which uncovered… um, individuals having banal conversations. Within the context of the Twitter Information, this was a win because you didn’t actively dox anybody.
Actually, I believed your expertise with Elon Musk might need ready you for what a foul concept this was, since, you realize, he obtained mad at you if you requested the improper questions on China. Positive, you’ve made a profession out of kissing the precise asses to maneuver forward, however you should have realized by now which means you can be disposed of each time it’s handy.
You had such a great gig going, too. Your complete pitch at The Free Press — lol, lmao — was that you simply had been standing boldly in opposition to massive dangerous company media that merely wouldn’t inform the reality! This was a simple pitch — albeit one made by each Substacker from Taylor Lorenz to Ken Klippenstein to Naomi Wolf — and, judging by your viewers, a reasonably profitable one. You didn’t even must get tales proper! Keep in mind when your columnist Coleman Hughes printed a column about George Floyd that was so improper it obtained dogwalked not as soon as however three instances by Radley Balko? And also you personally obtained dogwalked a fourth time? And your response was that Balko ought to do your podcast?
Any insufficiently aggressive reporting on the state of affairs in Gaza is in the end going to be blamed on you, Ms. Zionist Fanatic
Nobody however the terminally on-line remembers that little kerfuffle, as a result of the stakes had been small potatoes. However you’re on TV now, babe. Do you keep in mind when CBS Information’ Dan Slightly didn’t adequately confirm some paperwork purporting to be about George W. Bush’s navy service, and it become a nationwide controversy that lasted for weeks? That’s what it’s important to stay up for, particularly in case you personally log off on compromised reporting.
And that controversy is coming for you at warp velocity. Greater than half of America thinks Israel has “gone too far” in Gaza, and any insufficiently aggressive reporting on the state of affairs in Gaza is in the end going to be blamed on you, Ms. Zionist Fanatic. Plus, CBS Information isn’t going to maneuver the needle on younger individuals’s attitudes towards Israel as a result of they don’t watch it. This particularly is an space of reports the place there are not any profitable strikes for you due to your proudly worn biases. You don’t even must be concerned in a bum story to get blamed for it, as a result of getting blamed for reporters’ tales is a very powerful a part of your job.
Although reporters are close to and pricey to my coronary heart, they aren’t your worst drawback. Your worst drawback is, one way or the other, Brendan Carr.
I don’t imply that he’s going to personally come for you, Bari. I imply that you simply’ve clearly been put answerable for CBS Information as a approach of appeasing the Trump administration — one thing to permit the merger to undergo. Carr blessed the Skydance acquisition after CBS paid $16 million to President Donald Trump in what was positively not a bribe, and didn’t renew Late Present host Stephen Colbert’s contract. Skydance promised Carr an anti-DEI, professional “variety of viewpoints” nanny within the Information division. That nanny is a Republican donor who one way or the other has even much less journalistic expertise than you do.
In order that form of places you in a precarious place, babe. The second that deal is closed, you’re disposable. And there are simply so some ways to eliminate you! Every single day shall be an exhilarating new journey. Will a Reality Social publish finish your profession? Will you unintentionally publish AI slop? Is there going to be a mass stop, leaving you with a gaping gap in your programming? Or will a MAGA-pilled influencer inevitably goad Musk into an advertiser harassment marketing campaign that ends your profession? Maybe there shall be a newsroom scandal I’ve not adequately foreseen! It is a deck that’s stacked in opposition to you, and also you haven’t obtained the abilities to finesse your approach via the deal.
Congrats on that $150 million payout for The Free Press. Another person owns it now.
