CBS News is laying off employees on Friday as part of a strategic restructuring announced in a memo to staffers from its editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, and president, Tom Cibrowski. Employees will be informed by the end of the day if their job has been affected, the two executives said in the memo.
“We recognize that this is a difficult time for those who will be leaving CBS News,” they wrote. “Because these aren’t just names on a list. They are talented, committed colleagues who have been critical to our success. We’ll treat them all with care and respect.”
Weiss and Cibrowski said: “These are very hard choices and today is a difficult day.”
While the executives did not share the scope of the cuts, they put them in the broader context of the changing media business.
“It’s no secret that the news business is changing radically, and that we need to change along with it,” Weiss and Cibrowski wrote. “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. That means some parts of our newsroom must get smaller to make room for the things we must build to remain competitive.”
Weiss opened the network’s 9am editorial call by explaining to employees how the cuts will work and emphasizing that “this is really hard and really tough”.
“The most important thing that I want to say to everyone in this newsroom and in particular to the people that are going to be affected today, is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of your work and the way you have poured your heart and soul into this organization,” Weiss said, according to an audio recording of her remarks obtained by the Guardian. “It simply has everything to do with the times we are living in, and the way that this industry perhaps more than any other industry is being just transformed.”
“We are here to support you today, and we are here to support you beyond today. I promise you,” Cibrowski said on the call. “In the meantime, you will have questions, and we are here to answer them to the best of our ability. But let’s respect the process of today as it begins.”
The cuts follow an earlier round of layoffs in late October that were described at the time as a “blood bath”, and came just weeks after Weiss began her tenure atop the newsroom. In contrast, Friday’s cuts are thought to have been more directly strategized by Weiss, who is now in her sixth month at the network.
The network has also lost several key staffers through buyouts – offered to the staff of the CBS Evening News – and some notable resignations, including the prominent justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane earlier this month, who said he planned to go the independent route.
The network’s most-watched show, 60 Minutes, suffered a blow when correspondent Anderson Cooper – also a CNN primetime anchor – announced last month that he would not continue with the program.
Weiss and Cibrowski acknowledged that the timing of the cuts is particularly difficult, considering the network’s journalists are busy covering a burgeoning war in Iran and the global fall out from it.
“This is a tough message to receive at any time, and especially in the middle of an exceptionally intense news cycle,” they wrote.
After talking about the layoffs at the beginning of the morning meeting, Weiss pivoted to discussing the news of the day. “Let’s start with the war, if we could.”
