But she would Douthat

Out with several accomplished television journalists. and…

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 for the show’s 59th season, which will 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 be a correspondent as well.

They are the first significant hires at 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.

Ms. Weiss has been trying to rebuild the “60 Minutes” staff in recent weeks after a tumultuous period. In moves that rattled the program’s personnel, she dismissed the correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, along with the show’s senior leadership team, including its former executive producer Tanya Simon.

In all seriousness, this is a trade that is likely to hurt both teams. It’s likely that whatever ideological DEI hire replaces Douthat at the Times will be worse (the astonishing return of Pamela Paul!) And, for that matter, given what Bari is trying to do to 60 Minutes the problem with Douthat isn’t really ideological — the alternative would presumably be Eli Lake or Niall Ferguson or Alex Berenson or some shit. It’s just that “columnist/podcaster” and “television journalist” are very different jobs, and Weiss still seems to not have the slightest grasp on this concept.

Anyway, for his first story, I suggest that Douthat spend some time in Alabama and Mississippi and then in Seattle and San Francisco, and be forced to live one of either the former or latter two for a year. I would actually watch that, but alas we’ll probably get “is it bad when women are allowed to join the workplace?” instead. (Come to think of it, I’m surprised that Weiss hasn’t tapped Helen Andrews yet. Maybe she’s seeing if Olivia Nuzzi is available first.)