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Weeks after CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss fired a slew of "60 Minutes" correspondents and top producers, the Sunday newsmagazine announced a new slate of on-air talent headlined by conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat.
In an email to staff obtained by The Washington Post, executive producer Nick Bilton said that Douthat would be a correspondent for "60 Minutes," along with Norah O'Donnell, who was previously a contributor to the show. He also named author and filmmaker Sebastian Junger, former Vice correspondent Gianna Toboni and British broadcaster Trevor Phillips as contributors. Phillips was previously announced as CBS News's senior global affairs correspondent.
Bilton called Douthat "one of the preeminent public intellectuals in America today, a thinker of uncommon rigor and a journalist of deep empathy."
New York Times Opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury announced Douthat's departure from the newspaper in an email to her staff, also obtained by The Post. "He was right about things early, wrong about things honestly and never, not once, boring," she wrote.
"60 Minutes" has been in turmoil since Weiss, also a former conservative columnist at the New York Times, fired top producers including executive producer Tanya Simon, and installed Bilton, a tech journalist without extensive broadcast experience. She fired Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega, and later - following a contentious meeting with Bilton - veteran correspondent Scott Pelley, all of whom have alleged Weiss interfered with the editorial integrity of stories. The network has strenuously denied those claims.
The remaining correspondents - Lesley Stahl, L. Jon Wertheim and Bill Whitaker - said they were "deeply upset" by the firings, but would stay on. "We don't want to see 60 Minutes die," they wrote in a letter to the show's staff last month.
While Douthat is primarily an opinion writer, he has hosted a video podcast for the Times since 2025. Recent guests have included Vice President JD Vance, conservative writer Rod Dreher, and investor and crypto proponent Anthony Pompliano.
Junger, Toboni and Phillips bring more experience on small and large screens.
Junger is one of the filmmakers behind the 2010 war documentary "Restrepo," which received top honors at the Sundance Film Festival. In January 2026, he wrote an article for Weiss's website the Free Press, titled "How Democrats Lost Men."
Toboni, who spent a decade as a correspondent at Vice News, directed a documentary called "Just Kids" about transgender kids facing state bans of gender-affirming care.
Phillips is a former U.K. politician who was knighted in 2022. Before that, in 2020, he was suspended from the Labour Party over allegations of Islamophobia, a suspension that was later lifted. Before joining CBS, he hosted a Sunday political show on Sky News.
CBS parent company Paramount Skydance, run by tech scion and Donald Trump ally David Ellison, recently paused its $110 billion deal to buy rival Warner Bros. Discovery, while facing a lawsuit from 12 Democratic state attorneys general.
If that deal eventually closes, which the company said will not happen until next year or until a court rules, it would put CBS News and cable news giant CNN under the same roof.
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Previously:
• Prez's fresh mocking of CNN reporter renews calls to end correspondents' dinner
• Voice of America's exiled journos must find meaning in work outside newsroom