Leadership1 publisher2 min readPublished
CBS News's premiere memo asks the whole newsroom to help market 60 Minutes
Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton signed a rare all-newsroom note on Sunday that congratulates the 60 Minutes team and asks colleagues across CBS News to share the season's promos, months after Bilton fired Scott Pelley.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
What happened
- CBS News leaders including top editor Bari Weiss sent a memo to the entire newsroom on Sunday ahead of the 60 Minutes season premiere, a note signed "Nick, Bari, and Tom".
- Business Insider reports season 59 will have 10 regular contributors, five of them correspondents: Stahl, Whitaker, Wertheim, Norah O'Donnell and Ross Douthat, who came from The New York Times in July.
- Pelley had questioned Bilton's qualifications, asked why Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were let go, and accused Weiss of "murdering" the Sunday telecast.
- Stahl, Whitaker and Wertheim decided to return, and wrote their own memo setting out the condition under which they would stay with the program.
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Why it matters
- constraint Leadership's room to keep reshaping the show is bounded by a standard three of its five correspondents wrote down in public, so any further change gets judged against their sentence.
- decision Asking staff outside the show to post promos hands people in social, digital, graphics and marketing a choice about lending personal accounts to a relaunch they did not design.
- exposure With three correspondent seats emptied and five names carrying the season, one more exit would show up on screen, not only in an internal note.
- contradiction The leadership memo describes a team to congratulate while the correspondents' memo describes a show that might die; both documents are current, and the second one sets the terms for reading the first.
The memo's last request reaches past 60 Minutes and into the rest of the building. Leadership wrote that the "It's Time" campaign "continues through tonight's game" and asked staffers to "spread the word to your friends and followers by sharing these promos today" [7]. The note also thanks social, digital, graphics, marketing and, "above all, the investigative unit" for their support over the summer [6]. Colleagues in other departments are being asked to put the relaunch on their own accounts.
Business Insider reports the 59th season will carry 10 regular contributors, five of them correspondents [4]. Five of the ten are therefore identified; the report does not name the rest [15]. Pelley was fired by Bilton, and Vega and Alfonsi were let go. That is three correspondents gone from the program before the premiere [16].
The three veterans who stayed put a condition on it. "If we can continue doing the work that made this show what it is ... we're here for it. If not, we leave," Stahl, Whitaker and Wertheim wrote in their own memo [14]. They also said they "don't want to see 60 Minutes die," that they are "working to build trust" with Bilton, and that they "heard all the right things" in his memo [13]. Weiss, addressing the Pelley firing, told staffers she is "only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect" [11]. Bilton told employees his first week had been "a trying and difficult few days" [12].
This is not the note every show sends before a premiere. The memo says as much in its opening line: "We don't often send notes to the whole newsroom. But today calls for it. It's a big moment for 60 Minutes and CBS" [2].
The premiere is built to look like a normal hour: three original stories, one a hidden camera investigation and one a profile of an NFL superteam's wunderkind coach, plus a cameo from a new correspondent on AI [5]. The lead is the interview "everyone has been chasing," with a US Air Force officer rescued from Iran in April [3]. That is a strong booking, and it gives Bilton cover with staff and viewers for a while.
The turnover came fast. Weiss picked Bilton in May, Bilton fired Pelley in his first week after a confrontation in front of staffers [9], and the memo arrives months after that string of exits [17]. The consequence of the sequencing is that season 59 now runs with five named correspondents, three of whom have published the terms on which they will keep showing up [15][14].
What to watch
- Whether Stahl, Whitaker or Wertheim leaves during season 59, the first test of the terms the three published.
- Whether CBS fills the correspondent seats left by Pelley, Vega and Alfonsi, or runs the season with five.
- Whether the five unnamed contributors on the 10-person roster are announced, and at what seniority.