Bari Weiss looking to sell The Free Press for $250M: report
Weiss, who quit the New York Times opinion page over its woke policies and launched the outlet in 2022, had reportedly met with Skydance Media CEO David Ellison at the high-powered Allen & Co. 'summer camp for billionaires' in Sun Valley, Idaho, earlier this month.
Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, was reportedly interested in buying The Free Press as Skydance continues to await regulatory approval of its $8 billion merger with CBS parent Paramount.
5 Bari Weiss has been shopping her start-up news outlet The Free Press for as much as $250 million, according to a report.
Getty Images for The Free Press
Weiss is seeking a valuation of between $200 million and $250 million and Ellison wants to position 'anti-woke' Free Press alongside CBS News, according to the Financial Times.
Weiss's strong pro-Israel stance is one of the factors that is said to have appealed to Ellison, people familiar with the relationship told the publication.
The FT report also cited sources as saying that Weiss held discussions with The Post's parent company News Corp about a possible 'collaboration' though that did not include any discussions about a possible acquisition.
A News Corp spokesperson declined to comment.
5 Weiss has reportedly met with Skydance CEO David Ellison about a possible role at CBS News once the merger with Paramount is complete.
AFP via Getty Images
Talks of a potential sale took place just three years after Weiss started the venture with funding from venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and David Sacks.
Last year, The Free Press, which is hosted on the Substack newsletter platform, raised $15 million from investors at a company valuation of $100 million.
In April, Axios reported that the outlet had 1.25 million subscribers on Substack with around 155,000 paid subscribers.
The reported talks come as Ellison looks to reshape assets he would inherit through the Paramount transaction.
5 Weiss (seen left with House Speaker Mike Johnson) founded The Free Press after leaving the New York Times.
Getty Images for Uber, X and The Free Press
Paramount, like other media giants, is in the midst of a cost-cutting spree. Its television property CBS recently announced that it would discontinue production of the 'Late Show with Stephen Colbert.'
Critics charged that the move was done to curry favor with President Donald Trump, a frequent target of Colbert.
Trump recently agreed to a $16 million settlement with Paramount after he filed a lawsuit against CBS News over a '60 Minutes' interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris that he claims was deceptively edited.
5 Ellison is reportedly eyeing wholesale changes at CBS News once Skydance mergers with the network's corporate parent Paramount Global.
Christopher Sadowski
The president said that the total value of the settlement is $36 million when factoring in a 'side deal' that includes $20 million worth of public service announcements promoting causes favored by Trump. Paramount Global has denied the existence of a side deal.
Skydance has declined to comment.
Since setting out on her own, Weiss has successfully positioned herself as an alternative to mainstream publications such as the Times.
5 In 2020, Weiss resigned from the New York Times claiming that she was 'bullied' in the newsroom for her political views.
csuarez
In 2017, the Times hired Weiss 'with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives.'
But she soon became a lightning rod inside the paper.
In her July 2020 resignation letter she warned, 'Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times, but Twitter has become its ultimate editor,' and charged that the newsroom was shaping coverage for 'the narrowest of audiences.'
Weiss said colleagues 'bullied' her, 'called me a Nazi and a racist,' and fostered a 'hostile' environment for non‑left‑of‑center views — an episode conservatives cite as proof of mainstream media intolerance.
The Post has sought comment from Weiss.
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