CBS News will learn a lot about its future next week when Bari Weiss, founder of the upstart news site the Free Press, is expected to enter the hallowed halls where Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace once roamed.

Weiss, 41, is joining CBS News in a new role of editor in chief, according to people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to comment publicly. The appointment could be announced as soon as Monday.

David Ellison, 42, chairman and chief executive of CBS-owner Paramount, approached Weiss months ago, part of his campaign to shake things up. She will report to Ellison and work alongside CBS News President Tom Cibrowski, who joined the network in February.

Under the deal, Paramount has agreed to buy Weiss' four-year-old digital media business, which offers newsletters, reported pieces, podcasts, and what it calls "sense-making columns," for around $150 million in cash and stock. For months, her anticipated arrival at CBS News, an aging pillar of the press establishment, has been a hot topic in the news business.

The rapid rise of Weiss — a former newspaper opinion page staff editor — to a major role in shaping the coverage of a TV news organization with no previous experience in the medium is an extraordinary move that is likely to be highly scrutinized.

Will she remold the news division — which has been beset by management turnover and sustained pressure from President Donald Trump — in her image? There will also be questions as to whether the founder of a relatively lean digital operation such as the Free Press will have a leadership role at a legacy TV news organization with more than 1,000 employees.

A shake-up is clearly on the agenda of new Paramount owner Skydance Media. When the company went through regulatory approval to complete its $8 billion merger, Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr said he welcomes Skydance''s "commitment to make significant changes to the once storied CBS broadcast network."

In order to clear a path for the deal, Paramount paid $16 million to settle Trump's $20-billion lawsuit — deemed by legal experts to be spurious — over an interview he claimed was edited to help then-Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in the 2024 election. He has left the network alone ever since.

Skydance and the Free Press did not comment on the expected appointment of Weiss. When asked in August about her joining the network, Ellison — son of Oracle co-founder and Trump ally Larry Ellison — focused on how he wants the news division to speak to what he views as the 70% of Americans who consider themselves center left or center right politically.

In a crowded sea of political and cultural pundits, Weiss found her own lane as a gay Jewish woman who attacked what she called the excesses of the political left, often saying it was intolerant of opposing viewpoints. She called herself "a diversity hire" at the New York Times' reliably liberal opinion section and gained a following through her appearances on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher."

When she quit the New York Times in 2020, she accused her former employer of failing to protect her from internal criticism by her colleagues. Her public resignation letter was shared on social media by Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who used it to advance their case of institutional liberal bias in the media.

Described as a confident and skilled communicator, Weiss used her notoriety to attract investors for the Free Press, a digital media business offering newsletters, reported stories, opinion pieces and podcasts. Launched in 2021, it now ranks as the No. 1 bestselling politics platform on Substack.

The Free Press has made itself heard in the national conversation. A treatise on the left-wing leanings of NPR, written by a longtime editor at the radio service, generated massive attention and likely helped set the stage for eliminating federal funding to public media.

Last year, the Free Press also broke the story over the internal CBS News controversy surrounding "CBS Mornings" co-host Tony Dokoupil's aggressive questioning of author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank to the Jim Crow era of segregation in the U.S.

Dokoupil said Coates' book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist." After some staffers complained, Dokoupil was admonished by CBS News leadership on an editorial call that the Free Press posted online.

Weiss is extremely popular among corporate executives disdainful of high taxes and big government. Finance and private equity executives rave about Free Press missives against purportedly "woke" attitudes and DEI initiatives that they believe have made it more difficult to do business.

Weiss has become a celebrity as well, attending the wedding of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez in Italy. She was the star attraction at the annual gathering of media moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Newsrooms are typically suspicious of outsiders and change has never come easy at CBS News, which has a culture steeped in its storied past.

"A place like CBS News is so rooted in its traditions and in what it believes in," said Tom Bettag, a veteran network news producer who is a lecturer for the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. "It's got its own theology and an outsider has to win the confidence of the people inside."

Even like-minded conservative commentators such as Megyn Kelly suggested that Weiss might face challenges in navigating such an entrenched institution.

"I'm worried they're going to eat her alive, because CBS is among the worst when it comes to being insular," Kelly said on her Sirius XM podcast last month. "Like you have to be raised by CBS to be respected by CBS people."

A number of veterans inside CBS News who were not authorized to speak publicly said they have a wait-and-see attitude over the pending Weiss appointment, as they are uncertain on what her role will entail. They don't believe Weiss will want to deal with day-to-day news coverage decisions such as how many correspondents and technical crews to send to cover a natural disaster.

Having an opinion journalist in a leadership role may not sit well among a number of staffers. But with layoffs sweeping through the TV news business, an employee exodus predicted in some reports appears unlikely, according to one former CBS News executive.

One possible source of tension may be in international coverage, primarily the war in Gaza, which has been the subject of internal debate in many newsrooms.

Weiss, who once belonged to the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh that was the site of a shooting massacre in 2018, is a staunch Israel supporter. She's joining a company that, led by its new management, was the only studio to push back against a campaign gathering steam among Hollywood progressives to boycott Israeli film festivals and organizations.

But ideological newsroom flare-ups that spill into public view are rare. Managing a network TV news division largely consists of keeping an eye on costs, ratings and maintaining a pipeline of stories for dozens of hours of scheduled programming each week.

Despite its well-documented troubles, CBS still has two of the most successful news programs on television in "60 Minutes" and "CBS Sunday Morning."

Even after the gauntlet "60 Minutes" went through earlier this year, viewers showed up when it returned for its 58th season Sunday with a season premiere that drew 10 million viewers, making it the most-watched non-sports show of the week, according to Nielsen data.

Bettag noted that even though former Paramount majority shareholder Shari Redstone was updated on "60 Minutes" stories amid the legal battle earlier this year, he believes the program retained its editorial rigor and independence.

"If anything, it stiffened spines," Bettag said.

"CBS Sunday Morning" remains the most watched weekend morning program and increased its share of the TV audience last season, averaging close to 5 million viewers weekly.

While those two programs still attract large, loyal audiences, CBS News is faced with declining ratings and revenue, as viewers continue to move away from traditional TV to digital video offerings. CBS News has long operated a 24-hour streaming channel, but it doesn't attract the same audience levels or ad rates as the network.

CBS News also has to regain the trust of the audience that has listened to right-wing pundits pound away at the credibility of mainstream press.

It's hardly a new development as conservative North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms tried to lead a takeover CBS in the mid-1980s so he could "become Dan Rather's boss." But social media have amplified those bias allegations, driving MAGA-supporting viewers to Fox News and other conservative-leaning outlets.

Bettag believes CBS News has to do a better job of getting the public to understand the editorial process and how it strives for accuracy and fairness to counter the right-wing narrative of media bias.

"If Bari Weiss can come in and explain what they're doing and why they're doing it then I think she can be successful," he said.

Veteran TV news executives warn that any overt attempt to woo disaffected conservatives risks alienating the millions of viewers who are still watching CBS News programs. CNN's attempt to try to cater to right-leaning consumers — at the behest of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery — led to a decline in audience that has not bounced back.

One idea circulating at Paramount is having the Free Press remain as an independent entity within the company, providing contributors and commentators to its special coverage, the Sunday round table program "Face the Nation" and streaming channel.

While the Free Press has been embraced by conservatives, Weiss has been fluid in her political leanings, at least in the voting booth. Her recent votes for president were Mitt Romney in 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.

In a video posted last fall, Weiss said the Free Press staff was split three ways between Trump, Harris and undecided in their 2024 vote. She called it a reflection of the nation.

Weiss is pro abortion rights and favors pro-gun control and LGBTQ rights (Weiss is married to Nellie Bowles, a former New York Times journalist who also works at the Free Press).

She has said she was among the many who cried at their desks when Trump was first elected in 2016. But she told Fox News in early 2024 that her view of the president had moderated since, as she approved of his handling of Israel and the economy during his first term.

"I'm the first to admit that I was a sufferer of what conservatives at the time would have called TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome," Weiss said.

But the Free Press does not give Trump a free pass as other right-wing outlets have. One of the current lead stories on the site is a highly critical take on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's speech on warrior ethos given to military leadership on Tuesday.

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(Staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.)

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