Two months after a major shake-up, CBS\u2019 \u201c60 Minutes\u201d has hired a lineup of new correspondents and contributors in time for its 59th season, including Ross Douthat, a conservative opinion columnist at The New York Times, and Norah O\u2019Donnell, former anchor of \u201cCBS Evening News.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show\u2019s new executive producer, Nick Bilton, announced the news in a staff memo Tuesday, shared on X. Joining Douthat and O\u2019Donnell will be author Sebastian Junger, Trevor Phillips and Gianna Toboni. All will be contributors to the show.<\/p>\n
The new journalists join current correspondents Lesley Stahl, Jon Wertheim and Bill Whitaker. Their hirings come two months after a shake-up at the storied program, led by the network\u2019s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.<\/p>\n
Weiss installed Bilton, who has little substantive broadcast news experience, as executive producer, replacing Tanya Simon, who was let go after a 30-plus-year tenure with the show. Also let go were correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega \u2014 and soon after, Scott Pelley, after a tense confrontation with his bosses over the changes.<\/p>\n
In addition to the three dismissed, Anderson Cooper \u2014 whose primary job is at CNN \u2014 said earlier this year he was leaving of his own accord after two decades.<\/p>\n
Weiss and Tom Cibrowski, the CBS News president, praised the new hires in an internal memo. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t be more excited about this news,\u201d the two said, welcoming the new additions. \u201cOnward!\u201d<\/p>\n
Bilton called Douthat \u201cone of the preeminent public intellectuals in America today, a thinker of uncommon rigor and a journalist of deep empathy.\u201d The columnist has spent nearly two decades at the Times and is an author of numerous books.<\/p>\n The producer called O\u2019Donnell \u201ca powerhouse.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve seen her all over the network. She\u2019s launched a new podcast. And you\u2019ll see much more of her in our halls because Norah will be a correspondent on 60 Minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n Bilton praised Junger for his nonfiction work \u201cThe Perfect Storm,\u201d about a catastrophic 1991 storm. The book \u201clanded with an electric charge in the world of reported nonfiction, defining an intense and intimate form of storytelling and establishing Sebastian as a generational talent,\u201d Bilton said.<\/p>\n Toboni joins \u201c60 Minutes\u201d as a contributor and CBS News as a national correspondent. Previously a senior correspondent with VICE News and \u201cVICE on HBO,\u201d she comes to the program from CNN.<\/p>\n Calling her a journalist of \u201cextraordinary range,\u201d Bilton noted that Toboni has interviewed members of the Islamic State militant group, investigated cartel violence in Mexico and written a book on the death penalty.<\/p>\n Also serving as contributor will be Trevor Phillips, announced last month as the news division\u2019s senior global affairs correspondent. Based in London, he is \u201cone of the most respected and trusted voices in the United Kingdom for his ability to ask the toughest questions and hold anyone in power to account,\u201d Bilton wrote in his memo.<\/p>\n Turmoil had raged at \u201c60 Minutes\u201d for more than a year before the May shake-up. Much of it came after President Donald Trump sued the show over its editing of a 2024 interview with then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.<\/p>\n That became part of a broader shake-up at CBS News after Weiss was named to the new role of editor-in-chief by parent company Paramount late last year following David Ellison\u2019s arrival as the network\u2019s corporate leader.<\/p>\n This post appeared first on https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two months after a major shake-up, CBS\u2019 \u201c60 Minutes\u201d has hired a lineup of new correspondents and contributors in time for its 59th season, including Ross Douthat, a conservative opinion columnist at The New York Times, and Norah O\u2019Donnell, former anchor of \u201cCBS Evening News.\u201d The show\u2019s new executive producer, Nick Bilton, announced the news <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fastmoneyeduaction.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fastmoneyeduaction.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fastmoneyeduaction.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fastmoneyeduaction.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fastmoneyeduaction.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fastmoneyeduaction.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fastmoneyeduaction.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fastmoneyeduaction.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fastmoneyeduaction.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fastmoneyeduaction.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}