CBS News announced a fresh round of layoffs on Friday as the network continued to reshape its news division under the leadership of its editor in chief, Bari Weiss.
More than 60 jobs, or roughly 6 percent of the news division, are set to be eliminated under the plan, according to a person who requested anonymity to share internal details.
“Certain parts of this newsroom need to get smaller in order for us to make room for the things that we need to build to remain competitive in the future,” Ms. Weiss, who started her job in October, said during a newsroom-wide conference call on Friday, according to a recording.
The news division also laid off about 100 employees last year.
The layoffs on Friday include the entirety of CBS News Radio, a century-old division that broadcast Edward R. Murrow’s historic World War II dispatches from London.
“CBS News Radio served as the foundation for everything we have built since 1927,” Tom Cibrowski, the president of CBS News, wrote in a memo.
CBS came under the control of David Ellison, a billionaire tech heir, after his Hollywood studio Skydance absorbed the media giant Paramount last year. The Trump administration approved Mr. Ellison’s purchase after Paramount paid $16 million to settle a suit brought by President Trump against “60 Minutes.”
Mr. Ellison said he wanted CBS News to appeal to a centrist audience, and he installed Ms. Weiss, an opinion journalist and critic of the mainstream news media, as its new leader.
She made swift changes, re-engineering “CBS Evening News” and hiring new contributors, arguing that the news division needed to more quickly adapt to the digital era. CBS’s morning and evening newscasts routinely rank behind its rivals ABC and NBC in the Nielsen ratings.
Ms. Weiss has also been accused of hewing to a more Trump-friendly editorial approach, especially after she postponed a “60 Minutes” segment that was critical of the Trump administration’s deporting Venezuelan migrants to a harsh Salvadorean prison. (Ms. Weiss has said she makes editorial decisions on her own.)
In a memo to CBS News on Friday, Ms. Weiss and Mr. Cibrowski wrote that “it’s no secret that the news business is changing radically, and that we need to change along with it.”
“New audiences are burgeoning in new places, and we are pressing forward with ambitious plans to grow and invest so that we can be there for them,” they wrote.
Ms. Weiss has signaled that she would like to add more podcasts at CBS News and bring on younger internet-savvy contributors who may appeal to audiences more accustomed to consuming news on social media.
On the Friday morning call, Ms. Weiss told employees that the layoffs had “absolutely nothing to do with the quality of your work and the way you have poured your heart and soul into this organization.”
“It simply has everything to do with the times we’re living in,” she said.
Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016.
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