Vol. 178: Turmoil at '60 Minutes’

How not to manage a transition

Suppose you’ve just been hired to run America’s most-watched and admired TV news program, despite your total lack of experience in television or any sort of management. The woman who hired you also lacks broadcasting or management experience. The man who hired her is— well, you get the idea. Suffice it to say that he and his father are tech billionaires with other priorities, among them keeping in the good graces of a certain White House occupant.

In such a situation, how should you proceed? (Choose one.)

a. Seek to reassure your famously aggressive and independent-minded staff journalists by addressing their legitimate concerns about you.

b. Go straight to work without acknowledging the elephant in the room.

c. Fire anyone who questions your qualifications for this job.

If you chose “c,” you could well be tapped as the next executive producer of “60 Minutes,” the iconic Sunday flagship of CBS News. Since the arrival last month of Nick Bilton, a technology journalist and filmmaker who, I repeat, never worked in this business, three of the program’s seven correspondents have been fired, and a fourth left voluntarily.

Cage full of tigers

These sackings have widened a rift that long existed between the leaders of CBS News and the staff of “60 Minutes,” who are accustomed to operating with a high degree of independence from the network. Since its debut in 1968, “60 Minutes” has hosted some of the storied names in broadcast journalism, from Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley, and Morley Safer to Lesley Stahl and Anderson Cooper. Don Hewitt, who created the show, often described its brutally competitive environment as “a cage full of tigers,” noting that he had to massage big egos and occasionally coax them back into the cage. But the bottom line with those “tigers” was an understanding that, at the end of the day, they were all pros who wanted what was best for the program and its audience.

By contrast, last month, Scott Pelley, a senior correspondent who was at the network for 37 years, told Bilton, “You have slender qualifications for this job” and accused Bilton’s boss, Bari Weiss, of “murdering ‘60 Minutes’.” For this offense, Bilton fired him the next day.

A complaint about the Times

The turmoil at “60 Minutes” actually began last year with the hiring of Weiss, a former print and Internet opinion columnist (sort of like me, come to think of it, except that I’d never presume to run a TV news operation), who ousted the show’s senior leadership before she installed Bilton. Weiss was appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News by David Ellison, a tech scion who took control of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, in a multibillion-dollar merger. David’s father is Larry Ellison, cofounder of the software company Oracle and said to be the world’s sixth-richest man.

Weiss was once an editor at the opinion section of the New York Times, where she was tasked with attracting conservative and centrist voices. But she left the Times in 2020 after three years, writing a kvetchy (and public) resignation letter in which she complained, among other things, that she was the victim of “constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and racist.” This is sort of like a soldier griping because somebody is shooting at him, or a quarterback whining because people are trying to tackle him. As Don Hewitt could have told her, when you’re a journalist, criticism comes with the territory.

Remember TWA?

Weiss and Bilton claim that the broadcast TV industry will soon be obsolete and that “60 Minutes” needs to reinvent its 58-year-old formula to avoid the fate of other media highflyers brought low, like Time Magazine or America Online. And they could be right. Nothing lasts forever. But the key question to my mind is: How do you manage the transition— not just at “60 Minutes,” but everywhere— because the whole world is transitioning every day?

I’m old enough to remember when mighty companies like J.P. Morgan, A & P, Bethlehem Steel, Standard Oil of New Jersey, RCA, and Trans World Airlines had carved a permanent place in the nation’s consciousness, or so everybody thought. Philadelphia, where I live, was once dominated by seemingly eternal fixtures like the Pennsylvania Railroad, Curtis Publishing, Drexel & Company, the First Pennsylvania Bank, Scott Paper Company, John Wanamaker’s department store, the Horn & Hardart restaurant chain, and the Evening Bulletin. Now all are gone.

Alan Halpern’s method

The turmoil at “60 Minutes” got me thinking about Alan Halpern, my editor at Philadelphia Magazine more than half a century ago. Most bosses instinctively hire people they feel comfortable with– employees who will work well together as a team. Alan was a notable exception.

He didn’t hire staff writers for their compatibility or teamwork. He hired them because they were good writers with diverse interests and backgrounds (but not so diverse, to be sure, as to hire Blacks, Latinos, or Muslims). He recognized that the best journalists, by their nature, tend to be individualistic, egotistical, insecure, and neurotic. But he willingly spent his days surrounded by such eccentrics as the price of bringing vibrant writing to his magazine’s pages.

The result— at least during my two and a half years there— was a staff that resembled a dysfunctional family (somewhat, I suspect, like “60 Minutes” in its prime). Alan would tolerate hostile behavior from his writers as long as they produced good copy. “If you spit in Alan’s face,” I once remarked to Herb Lipson, the magazine’s publisher, “he’ll tell you it’s raining.”

“Oh, worse than that,” Herb replied. “If you stabbed Alan, he would apologize for messing up your knife.”

Jim Quinn departs

By contrast, after Alan left Philadelphia magazine in 1980, he was succeeded by Art Spikol, who had other priorities. As a new boss (like Weiss and Bilton), Spikol felt the need to assert his authority. One day in his office, Spikol found himself on the receiving end of a diatribe from the magazine’s strong-willed restaurant critic, Jim Quinn. As that meeting was later described to me, midway through their tempestuous quarrel Quinn rose, turned his back on Spikol, and headed for the door.

“If you go through that door,” Spikol told him, “don’t come back.” That was how Philadelphia Magazine lost one of the city’s most fiercely brilliant writers.

Alan Halpern lasted 29 years as editor of Philadelphia Magazine. Art Spikol lasted less than two. Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton at CBS? We shall see.

Full disclosure: My daughter, Lisa Yellin, was for several years Don Hewitt’s personal trainer.

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s newest book, The Price We Paid: An Oral History of Penn’s Struggle to Join the Ivy League, 1950-55. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com