Ross Douthat to Join CBS News’ “60 Minutes” as Correspondent
Key Takeaways
- •Ross Douthat is leaving The New York Times to become a correspondent for CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”
- •The show’s 59th season is scheduled to premiere on Sept. 13.
- •Sebastian Junger and Gianna Toboni will join as contributors, while Trevor Phillips and Norah O’Donnell are also joining the program.
- •The new hires are the first major additions to “60 Minutes” since Bari Weiss became CBS’s editor in chief and led a newsroom shake-up.
- •Three top correspondents, including Scott Pelley, left the program this spring.
Ross Douthat, an opinion columnist at The New York Times, is leaving to join the CBS News program “60 Minutes” as a correspondent, the show’s executive producer said in a memo to staff on Tuesday.
Mr. Douthat is among a group of journalists joining the program for its 59th season, which is set to premiere on Sept. 13. The writer Sebastian Junger and Gianna Toboni, a former Vice News correspondent, will become contributors, along with Trevor Phillips, a British journalist who joined CBS last month. Norah O’Donnell, the former anchor of “CBS Evening News,” will also be a correspondent.
The hires are the first major additions to the long-running Sunday program since CBS’s new editor in chief, Bari Weiss, orchestrated a shake-up that led to the departure of three top correspondents this spring, including the veteran journalist Scott Pelley. The changes come as CBS updates one of its flagship news brands ahead of a new season, a reminder that even established programs periodically refresh their on-air rosters to shape the mix of reporting and commentary viewers will see each week.
Primary source links: Ross Douthat column at The New York Times, CBS/60 Minutes reporting on the shake-up, NYT report on Douthat joining 60 Minutes.