CBS News Taps nick bilton As ‘60 Minutes’ Boss

Benjamin Mullin and Michael M. Grynbaum reported for The New York Times this week CBS News, specifically editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, has shaken up 60 Minutes in a major way. She has appointed Nick Bilton to be the program’s new executive producer while also firing correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecelia Vega. Bilton, who will be relocating from Los Angeles to New York City for the job, will be replacing Tanya Simon.

“In a bid to remake the country’s top-rated news program, Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, on Thursday unveiled an overhaul of ‘60 Minutes,’ replacing the show’s executive producer with a tech journalist and firing two of its on-air correspondents,” the Times reported on Thursday. “Ms. Weiss named Nick Bilton, a former New York Times technology columnist and a filmmaker who has directed and produced documentaries for HBO and Netflix, as her pick to lead the 58-year-old Sunday show. Mr. Bilton, who has never worked in traditional broadcast news, will replace Tanya Simon, who had been at the show for more than three decades.”

Bilton, I’ll note, authored one of my favorite books in recent years in Hatching Twitter.

I have a soft spot in my heart for 60 Minutes as an institution. The show has done a good bit of disability coverage over the years, and as a diehard news junkie, I try my best to catch 60 Minutes every Sunday. In fact, I have the 24/7 60 Minutes channel favorited in Pluto TV, which is my preferred FAST app. As I wrote on X the other day, the show has produced a number of disability-centric stories, and I hope Bilton continues to prioritize amplifying the community once he takes his place in the catbird seat.

I also have a major soft spot in my heart for these inside baseball media stories. I eat them up. Granted, I never went to journalism school nor have I worked in a traditional newsroom—but would like to; you should hire me!—but I just adore these media dealings reports rife with palace intrigue—and this New York Times story is full of it, thanks to Weiss herself. I’ve admittedly been lax on doing so, but one of the things on my reading to-do list is to subscribe to Oliver Darcy’s Status newsletter so I can further feed my insatiable appetite for these kinds of media dealings stories that crop up.