News commentary

Bari Weiss strikes again, hiring the incredibly boring Ross Douthat as a ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent

Media Nation · Dan Kennedy · last updated

I had to laugh when I read New York Times opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury’s praise for columnist Ross Douthat, who’s leaving the Times to take a job at “60 Minutes”:

Katie Kingsbury, the opinion editor at The Times, said in a memo to her staff that Mr. Douthat made the case for “a religiously serious, intellectually restless conservatism.”

“He was right about things early, wrong about things honestly and never, not once, boring,” she added.

Douthat is incredibly boring, and I find it hard to imagine that Kingsbury disagrees. I also doubt she’ll have much trouble finding a more engaging conservative to replace Douthat if that’s what she wants to do. She might consider Kevin Williamson of The Dispatch, who, like Douthat, is a conservative Catholic, and whose recent takedown (sub. req.) of JD Vance’s book “Communion” is both hilarious and devastating.

As for Douthat, I thought perhaps CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton were planning to use him as a commentator. Nope. He’ll be a full-fledged correspondent, despite having no television experience and, as far as I know, no reporting background.

Related Knowledge Center: The CBS submission

State of Play

Corporate pressure has led to capitulation by CBS News in a number of conflicts with the Trump regime — including its newly ideological coverage philosophy.

The White House vs. the press


More informationabout The CBS submission

Related Knowledge Center: Inside the newsroom

State of Play

As newsrooms struggle with rickety business models and precarious finances — as well as new technologies —  they are deploying an array of editorial responses. 

The Times and its critics  |  Washington Post mortem    


More informationabout Inside the newsroom