In her letter to CBS News employees—essentially, a manifesto—Bari Weiss lists as number one “journalism that reports on the world as it actually is.” This echoes my definition of postjournalism in 2020 Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers: “Journalism strived to depict the world-as-it-is. Postjournalism imposes the world-as-it-should-be.”
Did the mobbing at The New York Times in 2020 make Bari Weiss who she has become at The Free Press and now CBS? (Spoiler: yes.)
Will she be able to reverse postjournalism and bring journalism back to CBS? (Spoiler: no.)
One of the filters in the Propaganda Model was “flak”—the mechanism of the negative feedback by which elites “disciplined” the media. I argued that under new conditions, when news media became more dependent on subscriptions (or viewership) than on advertising, the nature of flak changed. It was no longer elite flak that intimidated and disciplined newsrooms, but grassroots flak—the flak of the digital crowd. As media shifted from advertising revenue to reader revenue (in The New York Times, this reversal occurred in 2012), negative feedback from “desired” audiences became more powerful than pressure from advertisers or elites.
Flak from the digital crowd—and its most vocal representatives on Twitter, the Twitterati—became the main filter shaping the tone and coverage of the mainstream media in the late 2010s. I illustrated the power of grassroots flak with the story of Bari Weiss’s ousting from The New York Times. Here is a passage from Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers (2020) that discusses her departure from NYT.
“…Soon after James Bennet, another staff editor and NYT op-ed writer, Bari Weiss, resigned, saying she had finally had enough of the newsroom atmosphere and accusing some colleagues of bullying her in company Slack channels and on Twitter for holding dissenting views. In her resignation letter, she recalled that the Times hired her and other authors after admitting its failure to anticipate the 2016 election outcome, when it became clear that the paper “didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers.” The idea was to bring centrist and conservative voices to the opinion page and foster understanding of “other Americans.”
This new approach seemed reasonable. To understand Trumpism, nothing was less useful than the conventional, publicly approved take on Trump. So, any alternative was worth a shot. However, according to Weiss, the lesson was not learned. She wrote:
Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.
“Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times,” she concluded. “But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.”
NYT’s publisher Arthur Sulzberger said in 2018 that the paper would be neither “baited” nor “applauded into becoming ‘the opposition.’” But it nevertheless began to happen, though in a slightly different way—the paper was pushed by the audience and without much applause. Without any allocative control of money, once mediated through advertisers’ influence, grassroots flak began directly affecting the newsroom’s operational control over the selection of topics and authors.
Considering the significance of The New York Times, the career trajectories of its opinion editors—whatever their individual specificities—set an example for the industry, which is another effect of flak. At a systemic level, the chilling effect of these cases will narrow the spectrum of voices in the media, as everyone has seen what can happen to them individually when flak takes over journalism.”
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Now, as Bari Weiss is appointed to lead CBS News, most commentators focus on her personal and professional profile. That makes sense, but I’m afraid the prospects of CBS News have little to do with what Weiss may or may not accomplish.
The right question is media-ecological: Is the media environment even suitable for journalism anymore? After all, the mutation of journalism into postjournalism was not someone’s evil plot—it was an “organic,” objective institutional reaction to changes in media conditions.
Not to discourage Bari Weiss, but no: some positive changes may be possible, yet the full reversal of postjournalism back into journalism—with all those admirable “core values” Weiss emphasized in her manifesto—is impossible. It’s not about a lack of will or professional skill; there are still plenty of journalists who remember how to do journalism. The problem is that today’s media environment can no longer sustain it.
There are three conditions that enabled postjournalism and won’t let it go away: economic, political, and media-ecological.
The economic condition. When Weiss refers to the “core journalistic values that have defined this profession since the beginning,” that’s not entirely accurate. Those values emerged only in the 20th century and were the product of a specific business model. In fact, everything we associate with quality journalism—its standards of impartiality, objectivity, and investigative rigor—took shape only in media outlets that earned 70–80% of their revenue from advertising.
Those standards arose to protect newsroom autonomy from pressure by individual advertisers. Newsroom autonomy itself emerged only because advertising made the media lavishly rich, allowing them to afford independence, which turned journalism into not just a business but also a public service. In other words, the professional standards of journalism and the entire “public good” of the news media were side effects of that specific business model. By the end of the 20th century, advertising had made the news media unprecedentedly prosperous, powerful, and independent—at least compared with any other era before or after.
But those conditions and that business model are gone. By around 2010, advertising had fled to the internet. News supply moved there too, and audiences followed. Unable to sell either ads or news, media outlets turned to soliciting donations disguised as subscriptions. To attract donations, they needed a noble cause. At first, it was the cause of saving “objective” journalism, but it soon evolved into something more agitated and “noble”: promoting progressive ideas and, as the preponderance of those ideas propelled Trump to power, something even more noble—protecting democracy. This required journalists to take political stances according to their understanding of democracy. It was no longer about news or objectivity.
Bottom line: having 70–80% of revenue come from advertising was the only “material” and ecological condition that allowed objective journalism to exist. Any other business model results in the loss of newsroom autonomy to external forces—whether the digital crowd, a billionaire, a philanthropic foundation, a subsidizing government authority, or a parent company covering losses.
The political condition. Since the shift in the business model made the news media desperately seek the crowd’s approval, they moved from news supply to news validation—framing stories within a certain value system to attract, please, and retain the digital audience. In the early 2010s, that audience was mostly progressive for simple demographic reasons: the young, educated, urban, and progressive were the first digital adopters. This triggered the Digital Rush: institutions raced to accommodate the progressive digital audience and adopted its values—with the media leading the way.
Soon, however, social media spread deeper and wider across the population, and the less progressive, less urban, and less educated formed their own digital crowd, fueling conservative ressentiment and Trump’s rise. The public sphere became highly polarized, demanding news coverage that matched its degree of polarization.
The affluent, educated class—the backbone of institutions and the main consumers of news—normally progressive when young and conservative with age, became hostages of the digital progressives during the Digital Rush. It was not a major issue at first; after all, many of them had once enjoyed anti-capitalist rhetoric at universities. Yet the progressive revolutionary momentum unleashed by the Digital Rush didn’t stop there. Activism and progressivism evolved into anti-colonialism, then into anti-Western leftism, and so on, until many among the elites found themselves in bed with radicals. The other side of the political spectrum radicalized accordingly.
Not only does this environment have no demand for balanced coverage—it doesn’t even tolerate it. How could Bari Weiss, or anyone else, balance news coverage in a polarized media environment? Add a few leftist (or Hamas, or Antifa) talking points to please the former Twitterati, now the Bluesky Politburo? Impossible. Nothing misaligned with their values can satisfy the Bluesky Politburo—they can sense infidels with their spinal cords and will be outraged anyway. The new Twitter Politburo responds in kind. “Balanced” coverage of opposing radical views amplifies polarization, not middle ground. Those moderate and willing to abstain simply choose news avoidance, leaving the pit to the radicals.
Bottom line: balanced, moderate news coverage is impossible—not because of a lack of will or skill, but because the environment does not “want,” does not fund, and even cannot tolerate it.
The ecological condition. According to Marshall McLuhan’s fourth Law of Media, any medium or technology, when pushed to its extreme or limit, reverses its effect. For example, cars improve mobility—but when there are too many of them, mobility reverses into a traffic jam.
With digital media, society reached the extreme—the ultimate speed of interaction—which became the precondition for various social reversals, all merging into one tectonic Digital Reversal. The reversal of journalism into postjournalism was just one instance of this global process.
Is the reversal of a reversal possible? Since postjournalism has seemingly reached its extreme forms, could a “forceful” and deliberate reversal of postjournalism bring us back to “normal” journalism? Unfortunately, no. Nothing can be “normal” when social interactions have reached their maximum—digital—speed. Some people see political changes as pendulum movements, but they are not. The core condition of any reversal is extremity, and extremes only accumulate with each new reversal.
Having lost ad revenue and newsroom autonomy, postjournalism tried to appease the digital crowd—first exclusively progressive, then both progressive and conservative in an increasingly polarized environment. The essence of the next, already ongoing reversal in the media environment is the shift from appeasing digital crowds to appeasing institutional powers, which have regained their strength after a decade of public revolt.
With new driving forces under the Trump administration, the transformation of the media may resemble a return to the so-called corporate media of the late 20th century. But there is a significant difference: these new “corporate media” have no sustainable ad-based business model and therefore cannot maintain the newsroom autonomy that once secured their market value. That autonomy previously kept the parent company away from newsroom decision-making—or at least gave the newsroom the power and financial reason to resist. Now, under the new conditions, the only market value the media can have is their ideological value.
Bottom line: the postjournalistic media will undergo the next reversal, and Bari Weiss will likely spearhead a version of it. However, it will not be a retrieval of old journalism but rather a struggle against the extreme forms of postjournalism that have dominated over the past decade. What form this new post-postjournalism will take, we shall see.
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What about the success of The Free Press then? Doesn’t it suggest that CBS News could be successfully revamped to tell the truth plainly—wherever it leads?
Well, the success is evident, but does The Free Press really carry on the legacy of legacy journalism? A Substack blog has sensationally evolved into a full-fledged media outlet with a nearly classical (as it seems) newsroom and a reach exceeding that of many legacy media from the elite tier. Nevertheless, The Free Press seems to be driven by a cause. It has been guided by the conviction that the mainstream media have drifted away from foundational journalistic ideals and that there is an unmet demand for an outlet returning to those principles without ideological distortion. There has certainly been a demand for such a cause, and the success of The Free Press has proved it.
But the pursuit of a cause had never been the cause of traditional journalism—only a side effect of its ad-based business model. Unlike the plentiful advertising of the past, the pursuit of a cause can never sustain newsroom autonomy. The seemingly professional cause of The Free Press is nevertheless also ideological.
But most importantly, newsroom autonomy will always be susceptible to those who pay to support a cause—be they paying subscribers or backing billionaires and corporations. They have their own motives for supporting such “journalism,” and these motives will always set the course and the boundaries for newsroom autonomy, meaning there is no actual autonomy. Corporate affiliation also imposes additional political risks (will CBS News be free to harshly oppose Trump?). In classic journalism, this risk was lower because newsrooms generated cash flow (through advertising) rather than relied on subsidies.
So, as a reaction to postjournalism, it will be just the next, reversed iteration of postjournalism—post-postjournalism, with the unusual cause of balancing coverage and restoring to the mainstream its original meaning.
Anyway, it will be an interesting attempt to watch, in no small part due to Bari Weiss’s background and the success of The Free Press.
This is interesting but I think it's strange to deal in such broad generalizations and abstractions and also take Bari Weiss at face value. The Free Press is mostly engagement bait for a select audience, not a particularly successful truth-telling crusade
This is interesting but I think it's strange to deal in such broad generalizations and abstractions and also take Bari Weiss at face value. The Free Press is mostly engagement bait for a select audience, not a particularly successful truth-telling crusade
We wish her well.