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The Free Press (CBS News)

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The Free Press (The FP), formerly Common Sense, is an American media company based in New York City. Founded by opinion writer Bari Weiss and her spouse Nellie Bowles,[1] the company started as a newsletter in 2021,[2] and grew into an associated media company in 2022.[3] Since October 2025, it is an independent entity within CBS News, whose parent company Paramount Skydance acquired it in 2025 for $150 million. Its views have been broadly described by news media and political commentators as right-leaning, "anti-woke", and pro-Israel.[4]

The Free Press
FormerlyCommon Sense (2021–2022)
TypeNews media
FoundedJanuary 2021; 5 years ago (January 2021)
Founders
HeadquartersNew York City, U.S.
ParentCBS News
Websitethefp.com

History

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Bari Weiss, a former The New York Times opinion columnist, and her spouse, the journalist Nellie Bowles, launched Common Sense as a newsletter on the Substack platform in January 2021. The publication was named after the political pamphlet by Thomas Paine[5] and covered politics, culture, and current events.[6][7] Weiss described Common Sense as a "newsletter for the 21st century".

By August 2021, the newsletter had 14,000 subscribers, yearly revenue of $800,000, and three staff members.[8][9] In March 2022, Weiss raised between $1 million and $5 million from investors such as venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and David Sacks; former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz; Allen & Company; and former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.[10] In 2025, Weiss said the company was valued at over $200 million.[11]

Rebranding as The Free Press

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Weiss rebranded Common Sense as The Free Press in 2022, while maintaining its mainly opinion/editorial (op/ed) journalism genre.[12][13] Coinciding with the rebranding, The Free Press expanded into a media company with a dozen staff and writers as well as contributors and a subscription-based business model.[12][13] Andy Mills, former producer of The Daily, was hired to develop audio programming for the company.[3] By October 2023, the company employed about 25 staffers in New York City and Los Angeles.[14]

In December 2024, Wall Street Journal editor Dennis K. Berman was hired as the company's first publisher and president.[15] In April 2025, The Free Press added author and economist Tyler Cowen, legal scholar Jed Rubenfeld, writer Coleman Hughes, journalist Matthew Continetti, and author Batya Ungar-Sargon as regular columnists.[16][17] In 2025, Semafor reported that journalist Michael C. Moynihan resigned from The Free Press. He was critical of the direction of the publication, saying, "[One] didn't have to be especially prescient to spot those 'anti-woke' types who would just slowly become MAGA flunkies".[18]

Purchase by Paramount

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On October 6, 2025, Weiss was named to the newly-created position of editor-in-chief of CBS News and that Paramount Skydance, CBS News' owner, would acquire The Free Press for roughly $150 million in cash.[19][20] The Free Press now operates under the CBS News banner.[21]

Overview

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Staff and contributors

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Journalists and writers who have written for The Free Press include Emily Yoffe, Michael Shellenberger,[3] Matti Friedman[22] and Joe Nocera.[23] Other contributors include Douglas Murray[24] and Vinay Prasad.[25]

Subscribers

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As of August 2024, the site had over 100,000 paid subscribers and over 750,000 total subscribers. Substack confirmed that it was the top newsletter on the platform by revenue. It is also at the top of the leaderboard at Substack for politics.[10][26] As of December 2024, The Free Press had over 136,000 paid subscribers and was taking in at least $10 million annually.[15] By the time of the Paramount acquisition in October 2025, the outlet had grown to more than 170,000 paid subscribers and an additional 1.3 million free newsletter subscribers.[27] Press Gazette estimated more than $18 million in annual subscriber-based revenue, in addition to fundraising, advertising, and other channels.[28]

Events

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The Free Press expanded into organizing and hosting events in 2023, holding its first one in September 2023—a debate over the sexual revolution featuring Grimes, Louise Perry, Anna Khachiyan, and Sarah Haider. The sold-out event at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles was attended by 1,600 people.[14] During 2024, The Free Press held live debate events in San Francisco, Dallas, Washington, D.C. and New York City.[29]

Podcasts

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In June 2021, as part of Common Sense, Weiss launched the Honestly podcast, which has since featured guests including Kim Kardashian, Bill Barr, and Andrew Yang.[30][31] In early 2023, Megan Phelps-Roper hosted a podcast series at The Free Press, titled The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling, featuring interviews with Rowling and other persons from all sides of the cultural conflicts surrounding the author and her views on transgender people.[32][33] The podcast series attracted over five million listeners.[34]

Reception

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Media critics have described the outlet as occupying a space between mainstream and conservative media, often associated with the "anti-woke" or centrist movements.[35] The New York Times described The Free Press as "an unflinching alternative to traditional media organizations"[36] and that it "frequently lambastes the perceived excesses of the so-called woke left".[37] Politico characterizes it as a "conservative digital media outlet".[38] CNN describes it as a "conservative-leaning publication"[39] that "has won fans, and created plenty of fodder for critics, with heterodox columns and features". It further said that "its volume of so-called anti-woke content has stood out" along with "opinion pieces conveying strong support for Israel".[40] The Washington Post describes it as "an outlet for contrarian, sometimes controversial and often right-leaning commentary".[41] NPR describes it as a "provocative news site known for criticizing mainstream media and left-leaning "woke" culture".[42]

After its acquisition by Paramount, John Oliver said on his show Last Week Tonight that one of the main positions of The Free Press is that "the left has gone too far".[43] Writing for the liberal website the Unpopulist, Matt Johnson wrote that "one reason for The Free Press's popularity is that it offers intellectual reassurances to legions of anti-anti-Trump readers – sophisticated conservatives who may be uneasy about Trumpism, yet want to believe that wokeness and other left-wing excesses are the primary threats to western civilization."[44]

Pro-Israel viewpoint

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Drop Site News argued that the publication's reporting consistently reflects a pro-Israel perspective or downplays the genocide in Gaza by characterizing any criticism of the Netanyahu government as "antisemitic".[45] David Klion wrote in The Guardian that Bari Weiss "used The Free Press to empower right-wing factions within established elite institutions" and to suppress progressive and pro-Palestinian views, citing the criticism of NPR's reporting on the Trump administration's investigation into alleged antisemitism at Columbia University as an example.[46]

In 2025, conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan criticized The Free Press for what he views as its reluctance to stand up for the free speech rights of anti-Israel activists.[47][48] Writing for The New Statesman, the journalist Ross Barkan described the organization as "unapologetically hawkish and anti-Palestinian".[49] The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft described the Free Press as "a pro-Israel media outlet often sympathetic to the neoconservative worldview".[50]

Reporting and events

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The founding of the University of Austin was first announced in Common Sense in the year of 2021 article by founding president Pano Kanelos.[51][52][53] In December 2022, The Free Press published information about the Twitter Files, after Twitter CEO Elon Musk provided Weiss with access to records of Twitter's internal communications.[30][54] The information Weiss discussed included blacklisting of accounts and the suppression of "trending" topics.[55][56] For their Twitter Files coverage, Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger shared the inaugural Dao Prize for Excellence In Investigative Journalism, awarded by the conservative organization National Journalism Center.[57][58]

In late 2023, articles from The Free Press condemned the October 7 attacks on Israel and criticized mainstream media coverage of the ensuing war for what it says was the "spread of misinformation".[59][58] In 2024, The Free Press first reported on a video of NYU professor Amin Husain, in which he denies sexual and gender-based violence in the 7 October attack on Israel and describes New York as a "Zionist city" at a Students for Justice in Palestine rally. NYU suspended Husain after the video and the report were publicized.[60] In March 2024, The Free Press stated the crime rate in Austin, Texas, had increased under district attorney José Garza when some crime rates had actually gone down.[61][43] In 2024, the Austin Statesman stated that overall crime was down 11% compared to 2020.[62] The Texas Tribune questioned the Free Press's claims about rising crime in Austin, Texas, suggesting that the outlet had misrepresented or oversimplified local statistics.[63]

In August 2025, The Free Press reporters Olivia Reingold and Tanya Lukyanova investigated the pre-existing health problems of Palestinian children starving in the Gaza Strip during the Gaza famine.[64] Reingold received support from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, for her reporting.[46] The report was criticized by the president of Refugees International who countered that children with pre-existing conditions were the most susceptible to famine.[46] Drop Site News contacted the families of three of the children investigated by The Free Press. Each family said that their child's medical situation was driven by the famine and not by pre-existing conditions.[45]

References

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  1. ↑ Elliott, Vittoria. "Trump's Twitter Ban Was Unfair, but Not for the Reason You Think". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  2. ↑ Stelter, Brian (October 17, 2021). "Bari Weiss' next act: a Substack newsletter that serves as 'the newspaper for the 21st century'". CNN. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 Fischer, Sara (December 13, 2022). "Bari Weiss reveals business plan for buzzy new media startup". Axios. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  4. ↑ Tobitt, Charlotte (October 6, 2025). "The Free Press goes from zero to $150m valuation in five years on Substack". Press Gazette. Archived from the original on June 25, 2026. Retrieved June 30, 2026.
  5. ↑ Svetkey, Benjamin (December 22, 2022). "Bari Weiss's L.A. Adventure". Los Angeles. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  6. ↑ "Vicious, Demented Animal Cruelty or Social Construct? Who's to Say?". National Review. September 20, 2022. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  7. ↑ Kafka, Peter (August 3, 2022). "The newsletter boom is over. What's next?". Vox. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  8. ↑ Arends, Brett (August 16, 2021). "How much? Times walkout Bari Weiss breaks the rules, makes a mint". MarketWatch. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  9. ↑ Dodgson, Lindsay. "Musk's media renegades: The anti-establishment writers including Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss chosen for the 'Twitter Files'". Insider. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  10. 1 2 Matt Flegenheimer (August 11, 2024). "Bari Weiss Knows Exactly What She's Doing". The New York Times 100000009532451. ISSN 0362-4331. Wikidata Q128869565. Retrieved August 11, 2024.
  11. ↑ Levingston, Ivan (July 22, 2025). "Bari Weiss seeks more than $200mn for media start-up The Free Press". Financial Times.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  12. 1 2 "Can Bari Weiss bite the hand that feeds her?". Semafor. December 18, 2022. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  13. 1 2 "McCarthy's Rebellion & The Greene-Gaetz Civil War". Puck. December 21, 2022. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  14. 1 2 Fox, Emily Jane (October 2, 2023). "Bari Weiss's Salon for the Disenfranchised Is Just the Beginning for the Free Press". Vanity Fair. Retrieved January 31, 2024.
  15. 1 2 Fischer, Sara (December 10, 2024). "The Free Press hires a publisher amid expansion". Axios. Retrieved December 12, 2024.
  16. ↑ Cowen, Tyler. "Tyler Cowen: Why I'm Joining The Free Press". www.thefp.com. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  17. ↑ Weiss, Bari. "Bari Weiss: Big News from Our Newsroom". The Free Press. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  18. ↑ Smith, Ben; Tani, Max. "Inside the identity crisis in anti-woke media". Semafor. Retrieved June 11, 2025.
  19. ↑ Bauder, David (October 6, 2025). "CBS buys The Free Press website and installs founder Bari Weiss as CBS News editor-in-chief". AP News. Retrieved October 6, 2025.
  20. ↑ Weiss, Bari. "The Future of The Free Press". www.thefp.com. Retrieved October 6, 2025.
  21. ↑ Mullin, Benjamin; Hirsch, Lauren; Grynbaum, Michael M. (October 6, 2025). "Paramount Buys The Free Press, Ushering in a New Era at CBS News". The New York Times. ISSN 1553-8095. OCLC 1645522. Archived from the original on October 6, 2025. Retrieved October 14, 2025.
  22. ↑ Weiss, Bari (May 14, 2026). "The Free Press | Bari Weiss | Substack". www.thefp.com. Retrieved June 30, 2026.
  23. ↑ Pino, Dominick (May 7, 2025). "There's a Trade Surplus of Poorly Reasoned Protectionist Think Pieces". National Review.
  24. ↑ Gordon, David (May 10, 2025). "Interview with author Douglas Murray: 'Canada has disgraced itself'". National Post.
  25. ↑ Lovelace, Berkeley; Zadrozny, Brandy (May 7, 2025). "FDA names oncologist Dr. Vinay Prasad, a Covid vaccine critic, as the new vaccine chief". NBC News.
  26. ↑ "Independent journalist era takes off". Axios. August 13, 2024.
  27. ↑ Tobitt, Charlotte (October 6, 2025). "The Free Press goes from zero to $150m valuation in five years on Substack". Press Gazette. Retrieved May 4, 2026.
  28. ↑ Tobitt, Charlotte (October 6, 2025). "The Free Press goes from zero to $150m valuation in five years on Substack". Press Gazette. Archived from the original on June 25, 2026. Retrieved June 30, 2026.
  29. ↑ Weiss, Bari. "A Note from Bari—and Our Big Thanksgiving Deal". The Free Press. Retrieved February 13, 2025.
  30. 1 2 Grynbaum, Michael M. (December 5, 2022). "Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi, and a Very Modern Media Maelstrom". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  31. ↑ "The words GOP lawmakers may never be able to say". Roll Call. December 2, 2022. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  32. ↑ Spangler, Todd (February 14, 2023). "J.K. Rowling Addresses Backlash to Her Anti-Trans Comments in New Podcast: 'I Never Set Out to Upset Anyone'". Variety. Retrieved April 20, 2023.
  33. ↑ Paul, Pamela (February 16, 2023). "In Defense of J.K. Rowling". The New York Times. New York. Retrieved February 19, 2023.
  34. ↑ Carman, Ashley (April 21, 2023). "A Podcast About J.K. Rowling's 'Cancellation' Has Reached Over 5 Million Listeners". Bloomberg News.
  35. ↑ "CBS News was just taken over by a Substack". The Verge. October 6, 2025.
  36. ↑ Hirsch, Lauren; Mullin, Benjamin (September 10, 2025). "Bari Weiss Closes In on Major Role at CBS News". The New York Times. Retrieved September 16, 2025.
  37. ↑ Mullin, Benjamin; Hirsch, Lauren; Grynbaum, Michael M. (October 6, 2025). "Paramount Buys The Free Press, Ushering in a New Era at CBS News". The New York Times. Retrieved April 26, 2026.
  38. ↑ "Amy Coney Barrett: Reports of a constitutional crisis have been greatly exaggerated". POLITICO. September 4, 2025. Retrieved September 5, 2025.
  39. ↑ Gold, Hadas (September 26, 2025). "How Larry and David Ellison reached the peak of their wealth – and political power | CNN Business". CNN. Retrieved October 4, 2025.
  40. ↑ Stelter, Brian (October 6, 2025). "Bari Weiss is now CBS News editor-in-chief after Paramount acquires The Free Press". CNN. Retrieved April 26, 2026.
  41. ↑ Oremus, Will (October 6, 2025). "Bari Weiss named editor in chief of CBS News". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 26, 2026.
  42. ↑ Treisman, Rachel (October 6, 2025). "Who is Bari Weiss? CBS News' new editor-in-chief is a vocal critic of legacy media". NPR. Retrieved April 26, 2026.
  43. 1 2 Baragona, Justin (October 13, 2025). "John Oliver skewers Paramount for hiring 'irresponsible' Bari Weiss to run CBS News". The Independent. Retrieved October 13, 2025.
  44. ↑ "Paramount to acquire Bari Weiss's The Free Press for $150 million". Associated Press. October 6, 2025.
  45. 1 2 Grim, Ryan (September 2025). "Media Watchdog Accuses The Free Press of Incomplete Reporting on Gaza". Drop Site News.
  46. 1 2 3 Klion, David (September 10, 2025). "Disgruntled NYT journalist to 'anti-woke' power grab: how far can Bari Weiss go?". The Guardian. Retrieved September 11, 2025.
  47. ↑ Andrew, Sullivan (April 19, 2025). "Just made the mistake at looking at the publication that with increasing levels of nerve calls itself The Free Press". Substack. Retrieved April 29, 2025.
  48. ↑ Lewis, Helen (April 25, 2025). "Finally, Someone Said It to Joe Rogan's Face". The Atlantic. Retrieved September 21, 2025.
  49. ↑ Barkan, Ross (June 11, 2025). "Blind support for Israel has muzzled Bari Weiss's Free Press". New Statesman. Retrieved July 19, 2025.
  50. ↑ Berger, Harrison (May 15, 2025). "The desperation of Gaza famine denialism". Responsible Statecraft. Retrieved August 11, 2025.
  51. ↑ McHale, Patrick (November 8, 2021). "Higher-Education Critics Launch University of Austin". Bloomberg News.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  52. ↑ Menchaca, Megan (November 8, 2021). "Coming soon: The University of Austin, focused on 'the intrepid pursuit of truth'". Austin American-Statesman. Archived from the original on November 9, 2021.
  53. ↑ Kanelos, Pano (November 8, 2021). "We Can't Wait for Universities to Fix Themselves. So We're Starting a New One". The Free Press.
  54. ↑ Peters, Justin (December 19, 2022). "The Great Internet Grievance War the Right Has Wanted Is Here. It Ain't Going Well". Slate Magazine. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  55. ↑ Dodgson, Lindsay. "Musk's media renegades: The anti-establishment writers including Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss chosen for the 'Twitter Files'". Insider. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  56. ↑ Wulfsohn, Joseph (December 15, 2022). "Bari Weiss claps back at critics saying Twitter Files 'cherry-picks' reporting: 'Twitter misled the public'". Fox News. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  57. ↑ "Twitter Files Awarded Inaugural Dao Prize for Excellence In Investigative Journalism". November 2, 2023.
  58. 1 2 Bruell, Alexandra (November 30, 2023). "Bari Weiss's Surging News Startup Lures Readers Miffed at Media Coverage of Israel". The Wall Street Journal.
  59. ↑ Weiss, Bari; Wiseman, Oliver (October 18, 2023). "When the Misinformation Comes From Inside the House". The Free Press. Retrieved October 23, 2023.
  60. ↑ Keene, Louis (January 25, 2024). "NYU instructor suspended after denying Oct. 7 atrocities at SJP event". The Forward. Retrieved January 31, 2024.
  61. ↑ Arnis, Grace (March 5, 2024). "Has crime in Austin increased while José Garza has been DA, as some ads claim?". KVUE. Retrieved October 13, 2025.
  62. ↑ Seipp, Skye (April 22, 2024). "Austin crime drops through first quarter of the year to lowest numbers since 2020". Austin American-Statesman.
  63. ↑ "Crime Debate in Austin Sparks Dispute Over Free Press Report". Texas Tribune. April 17, 2024.
  64. ↑ Lennard, Natasha (August 19, 2025). "Bari Weiss's Free Press Wants You to Know Some Kids Being Starved by Israel Were Already Sick". The Intercept.
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